If you happen to find your refrigerator empty on one of our famous drinking holidays, make sure to preclude your food-going adventure with some thoughts and prayers sprinkled with good vibes and a cherry on top. With St. Patrick’s Day being on the first 80-degree weekend since winter, I exclaimed, “Let’s go to Huntington Beach!” The kid yelled, “OYSTERS!” And I was all, “Yay.”
We headed to Pacific City, Huntington Beach’s outdoor restaurants-and-shops collective, for some proper seafood with an ocean view. The problem is the rest of the world had the same idea that day. Normally, a trip to Ways & Means Oyster House is as easy as an ocean breeze, but on St. Paddy’s Day, it was about as hard as getting an invite to a speakeasy inside an escape room.
But we Nagels persevere. With one cheek to the ocean and the other to the bar, we sat down to a dozen oysters and some cocktails. There was also epic HB people-watching, as various train wrecks, supermodels and surfer bros flip-flopped from bar to bar in silly hats, sometimes stopping for a selfie with the sea in the background.
Feeling as if we were on a mini-vacation, I ordered a Vacation cocktail, which reminds me of the Tahitian word for excellence, maita’i, as well as the classic cocktail called mai tai. It’s shaken with one of my go-to rums, Papa’s Pilar Blonde, which is sort of inspired by Ernest Hemmingway’s ocean travels, and topped with Ways & Means’ custom, barrel-refreshed Papa’s Pilar 24 year, which adds a nice exclamation point to the drink.
Most of Ways & Mean’s cocktails are on the light, fruity and shaken side of things, which, like the rest of the place, is built around oyster consumption. Small plates dominate the rest of the food menu.
I’m not the kind of person who prefers lobster dunked in a bucket of butter akin to a county-fair dunk tank. I tend to like more simplistic preparations for the crustacean, with it fitting into a fresh corn tortilla alongside cabbage or shoved into a roll with aioli.
One menu classic that holds up is the jerk-seared salmon bowl, for which a surf-wax-sized hunk of sustainable salmon is plunked on a bed of really good coconut rice, then topped with sweet papaya salad. The rub gives balance to all that sweetness, offering a gentle kick of heat and smoke to the whole bite.
If you’re not into oysters in their birthday suit, you can order them dressed in a few stylish outfits: the muumuu (chorizo and hollandaise), Madras (grilled with garlic, butter, Parmesan, parsley and bread crumbs), or even the hip sunset shooter (mango, tequila, lime, Tabasco and cocktail sauce), among others. I went with Chiapas, which is sort of like an oyster draped in a festive ceviche serape.
I think I’ll plan my next visit for Cinco de Mayo.
Ways & Means Oyster House at Pacific City, 21010 Pacific Coast Hwy., Huntington Beach, (714) 960-4300; wmoysters.com.
Greg Nagel has been writing about beer since 2011, is an avid homebrewer of wine, cider, and beer, is a certified Cicerone Beer Server, level 1 WSET in Wine, a podcaster with the Four Brewers Show, and runs a yearly beer festival called Firkfest happening on June 29th in Anaheim!
Why go here and spend twice as much as you would at Shuck or Slapfish. Better parking at both other locations, better service, and a better quality and a much better tasting food
Rude staff, especially at the door. Worst service ever.
I don’t imagine we will ever try it again.