Something’s Fishy: The Saltwater Cowboy

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Randal Smathers

What does a boy who grew up on a cattle ranch out west know about fish?

It’s self-defense, really.

The first thing a steak guy learns when he orders a sirloin east of Chicago is: don’t. It’s kind of like getting cheddar or maple syrup when I go back to visit my folks. It’s got the same name, but it’s not the same food. Or when I do find the genuine article, it’s crazy expensive, and you’ve still got to trust a cook who has never, ever scratched his steak behind the ears, back while it still had them.

There’s a reason I have the business card from the Cattle Baron, a Calgary steakhouse, with a picture of a 20-odd-ounce filet mignon on it, on my office door, next to the pictures of my wife and kids.

But fish? Easterners get fish. When I first moved East, to marry a nice Vermont girl, we lived in Baltimore and I learned about crabs — blue, soft-shell, crab cakes, jumbos — you name it.

Then we moved to Maine, and the only indigenous crabs were those tiny little peekytoes, but they had lobster not so much by the pound as in the pound, those little, tiny, sweet Maine shrimp, and a handful of white fish: mostly haddock, cod and pollock.

The woman at the local lobster pound heard my accent and carefully lectured me on how to steam — not boil — lobsters, and I learned all about soft versus hard shells, males versus females, and how to crack the shells so my family (westerners … hmph!) could eat them easier.

Now, in the only landlocked state in New England, I still get Maine seafood cravings. Fortunately, they’re a little easier to cure than flying to Alberta for a beef steak, although there is a cowboy involved: The Saltwater Cowboy, to be precise, the seafood market and restaurant on North Main Street, purveyor of all things fishy.

When they opened, they were sautéing most everything, but customer demand meant a switch to deep-frying, and the Cowboy now provides a daunting list of fried seafood, from fish and chips to the family fish feed (two pounds of fish), all of which include fries, coleslaw and tartar sauce.

I like the haddock, which to my palate has a little more flavor than pollock — served in the standard fish and chips — but there are certainly enough options.

The fish is always excellent, fresh and delicious, with a nicely seasoned coating. The fries are the deluxe, puffy, preseasoned Frankenfries: good enough as a second choice but in no way comparable to hand-cut wedges of fresh spuds.

The same basic list of fish is also available as side orders, sans the slaw, fries and tartar, or on rolls. I’m less crazy about the rolls, which just aren’t the same as when you order them at a surfside stand where you can smell the ocean from whence the lobster came.

The salads are worth a mention: Good fresh greens topped with a variety of shellfish or chicken … the only landfood option on the menu.

And the chowdah is first-rate: thick and rich, with nice chunks of potato and clam (not the clam-flavored strips of rubber from the familiar red-and-white canned product). I’d like a few more clams per bowl, but I expect I’d always like a few more clams, no matter how many there were, and it tastes like it’s made with fish stock and cream, not water and flour.

But the Cowboy’s edge over most other landlocked seafood restaurants is the freshness of their ingredients.

The fish is battered and cooked to order — which takes me back to my days of cooking in a restaurant that served “fresh” fish in Alberta, which was actually fresh frozen, shipped several thousand miles, thawed, then battered, partly fried and refrigerated, ready for reheating for the lunch rush … just another reason to eat the steak.

In the case of the Cowboy, fresh means buying it off the pier in Boston and trucking it in twice a week or so. If you order the scallop roll or plate, don’t be surprised to see the cook pop out of the kitchen to snag your dinner-to-be from the iced display case … that whole cook-to-order thing.

If you don’t like your fish fried, there’s a small takeout section, typically with six to 10 choices, depending on the season, plus a lobster tank.

I confess that for chowders or stews, we often buy fish at the supermarket, but for fish as a centerpiece, for guests, or especially for the grill, it’s worth a side trip to get the freshest you can find.

You can grill lobster, shrimp, swordfish, tuna, even salmon (I prefer the wild-caught sockeye I grew up with in British Columbia). It’s a great way to celebrate summer. Buying the freshest fish you can not only gives you better flavor, but never-frozen fish stands up way, way better on a grill. Frozen fish is cheaper until you figure the cost in cooked ounces on the plate as opposed to all the bits that fall through the grate on the grill.

Funny, never-frozen beef grills better, too. Maybe this fish thing isn’t so different from real meat after all. If they just had ears to scratch …