I love fisherman’s stews. When a restaurant’s offerings include an assortment of fish and shellfish in a broth, they’ve got me right there.
Vero Beach has several restaurants that do a good job with this kind of dish. But on a recent visit to San Francisco, I decided it was time to recalibrate my taste buds.
After all, how can you visit the City by the Bay and not try the quintessential San Francisco cioppino? And where better to savor a cioppino than at the restaurant of the same name?
Now, I’m sure a few of you are already dashing off an email telling me I missed out on some other San Francisco restaurant with a better or more authentic cioppino. Alas, I did not have a month to sample all the contenders.
Instead, I decided to take my cue on this from Mario Batali, who said he could eat Cioppino’s signature dish “every day.” How can you argue with Mario Batali?
So off we went to Cioppino’s, a slightly dowdy, family-owned restaurant. With red-checkered table cloths, it has more the ambiance of a classic Italian-American bistro than of a seafood restaurant, with a pretty standard Italian menu.
Within minutes of being seated, we were sipping wine as we dipped delicious San Francisco sourdough bread into a dish of olive oil. The crusty sourdough – baked a few blocks up the street at the Boudin Bakery – is the real deal!
For those not familiar with cioppino, this dish supposedly was invented by fishermen who would toss their leftover catch into a pot at the end of the day. Just about every cioppino starts with tomato sauce and shellfish, but the exact recipe varies considerably from place to place.
Cioppino’s version of their signature dish ($29.95) is a bountiful array of dungeness crab, clams, mussels, snapper, calamari, shrimp and tomatoes braised in a fennel-scented stew. I went for the “lazy style,” where the crab is shelled in the kitchen instead of doing it myself.
The dishes server Andrew brought to our table were stuffed with very fresh and tender seafood, and the tomato broth was well seasoned and extremely flavorful. This succulent maritime stew certainly set the standard for those I will have during the coming year.
Some may view Cioppino’s – because it is located on Fisherman’s Wharf – as a bit of a tourist trap. I was a bit skeptical at first, but I would gladly go back. The portions were very generous, and our server was pleasant and efficient.
If you find yourself in San Francisco and are craving some hearty cioppino, I doubt many places are better.
I welcome your comments, and encourage you to send feedback to me at tina@verobeach32963.com.
The reviewer dines anonymously at restaurants at the expense of Vero Beach 32963.
