I didn’t pull up to Pantego Bay in an especially generous mood. Few roads lead to the town of Pantego, and getting there during weekday rush hour traffic can be a frustrating exercise. My guests and I converged, at long last, on the geographically and culturally landlocked hamlet for the express purpose of eating some seafood, but the kitschy name (plus the boat parked out front) threatened Jimmy Buffet’s idea of a good time. I wasn’t sure I had the strength.
I’ve never been so pleased to find my prejudices and preconceptions misplaced. The marina motif notwithstanding, Pantego Bay has the relaxed and unpretentious vibe of a family-run and family-friendly stalwart, the kind of place where guests can set their own pace of an evening against an easy backdrop of classic rock and photos of Gulf Coast fauna.
The menu (perused with a basket of hot, buttered hush-puppies) promised familiar favorites from the Texas Gulf. It’s worth noting that Pantego Bay isn’t out to jazz things up with chef-driven apparatus like house-brined pickles or homemade ketchup. The focus instead is on classic dishes with classic preparations, made with the best available seafood. The occasional controlled drift into Cajun country is about as exotic as the menu gets, but the net effect of the kitchen’s superb execution was like a time-hop to Galveston circa 1985. A few local craft beers are the only nod to the changing times.
[box_info]Pantego Bay
Gulf Coast stuffed shrimp ………………………………….$5.99
Shrimp cocktail ………………………………………………..$8.99
Fried pickles …………………………………………………….$5.99
Crawfish etouffee …………………………………………..$11.99
Surf-n-turf ………………………………………………………$19.99
Grilled tilapia …………………………………………………$10.99
Pecan pie ………………………………………………………..$4.99
Key lime pie …………………………………………………….$4.99
Banana pudding ………………………………………………$4.99[/box_info]
The kitchen’s appetizers were anything but a delicate nosh to tease the palate — these were serious starters that begged to be shared. A shrimp cocktail was a half-dozen of the plumpest, sweetest Gulf shrimp I’ve had in recent memory, peeled and cleaned, perched immodestly on the lip of a tulip dish. The horseradish bite of the cocktail sauce was just right. Fried pickles came lightly battered and almost impossibly thin, like poker chips, with a crisp crunch that held up over time. The appetizer to write home about, however, was the butterflied Gulf Coast shrimp, stuffed with crabmeat and deep-fried like a corndog at the State Fair. Somehow the kitchen managed to get a deep golden brown on the outer shell while leaving the shrimp inside as juicy and sweet as his friends on the cocktail.
My guest’s tilapia entrée was flakey and tender, if a bit bland. Tilapia isn’t the kind of fish one usually craves for its own sake, and I might find it more appealing blackened rather than grilled. A choice of homemade side dishes included oven-roasted red potatoes and green beans cooked with bacon and onions.
Another guest maxed himself out on the kitchen’s surf-n-turf, a thin-cut (but flavorful) 8-ounce sirloin steak served with another half-dozen perfectly fried Gulf shrimp. It reminded me very much of a meal one might find at Pantego Bay’s sister restaurant, the Candelite Inn in Arlington, where these timeless favorites are presented, as they have always been, without irony.
I enjoyed a dish of etouffee, mostly because of the brilliant gems of perfectly cooked crawfish bejeweling the plate, but also because of the foundation of thick, dark-brown roux flavored with the “trinity” of celery, bell peppers, and onions, along with plenty of thyme.
Somehow, after all of that, my crew found room for dessert, and so should you when you visit. Homemade and decadent, the Texas pecan pie had a buttery, molasses caramel that soaked into a crumbly shortbread crust like an oil spill. The key lime pie was an electric tingle of citrus custard layered thick on a graham-cracker crust. The banana pudding, perfectly passable on its own, had a hard time competing with the pies — but worked well as a palate cleanser between bites.
At the end of two hours, having gorged on home-style cooking and hospitality, I started the long drive home from Pantego with a smile on my face and a spring in my step. I might have even been whistling “Kokomo.”
