December 4, 2002

Aqua minor

By Paul Reidinger

IN A CITY of bottoms (if I may borrow the late Randy Shilts's lapidary phrase) it was probably inevitable that someone would, sooner or later, launch a restaurant in the Castro District called Catch. Next item on the agenda: an associated bakery called Pitch, and our double entendre will be cleverly completed.

While we wait for Pitch to take shape in the shadow of the new Pottery Barn, I can reveal that I thought Catch would be a kind of Aqua in a minor, neighborhood key, with less marble, perhaps, and lower prices, but still a temple to seafood. The truth is more complicated, as the truth is wont to be. Certainly Catch is about seafood among other things, but there are plenty of those other things. And it probably can be called a neighborhood restaurant, if the Castro still can be called a neighborhood, though neighborhoods with very heavy tourist traffic (and these days the Castro seems to be rivalling the twisty block of Lombard on that score) develop layerings, the most visible of which consists of Disneyland echoes and tour buses replete with gawkers, though we must of course resist the (tremendous) temptation to disdain gawkers, since they are paying customers in a city that seriously needs them. Yet somewhere beneath and behind all the corporate glitz lurks a real city neighborhood with real residents – quite a few of whom no doubt have risked rubbing elbows, or something, with out-of-towners to secure a table at Catch.

Why are they going to all that trouble? Because Catch is physically attractive? It is, particularly if you're the sort who likes to eat while sitting on a canopied terrace watching the parade go by – as, in the Castro, it ceaselessly does. Catch has such a terrace. The inside (a drastic makeover of the old NAMES Project/Under One Roof space) is appealing too – sand tones, stainless steel details, lacquered woodwork, high ceilings, a handsome piano with a handsome piano player evenings – though perhaps a bit careful.

Careful too – in the sense of being risk-averse – is the cooking. It tilts toward seafood, but there are routes of escape for carnivores (a big burger) and vegans (crisp, fat polenta fries with marinara dipping sauce, $4) alike. But in the main the menu emphasizes seafood in what we might call its second-tier incarnations: in pastas and stews, sandwiches and crab cakes.

The crab cakes ($9) were B-movie crab cakes – a pretty dark-gold color, and served with a good roasted-tomato aioli, but a bit limp, a bit thin, a pair of emaciated disks languishing in a bed of mixed greens. They seemed to have been made beforehand and reheated for the occasion of our ordering them. Better was the linguine with clams ($10.50), which featured a tasty sauce of white wine and garlic, plenty of clams in their shells (a tolerable inconvenience), and some strips of roasted red pepper thrown in for much-needed color.

It's hard to miss with clam chowder ($3.75 for a cup), but Catch does. Our cupful looked impressively chunky, but looks don't always accord with flavor, and our sample had been drastically underseasoned. The fritto misto ($8) – battered, deep-fried chunks of calamari and artichoke hearts – was tastier, though the accompanying mayo struck us as commercial stuff spooned from a jar. We had no complaints about a salmon sandwich ($9.50, with fries) except that it was forgettable.

Here and there the arresting dish does pop up. A Gruyère fondue ($6), with thin slices of pear and toast rounds, was a masterpiece of elegant simplicity. A bowl of mussels sautéed in garlic and Pernod ($9.50) gave fresh and stylish life to a local staple, with the added bonus of good frites thrown into the bowl. And spaghetti frutti di mare ($9.75), with mussels and prawns asplash in a bright tomato sauce, bolstered the already convincing case that some kind of seafood pasta is the thing to order at Catch.

Dessert is a necessary exception to that guidance, of course. The offerings here (all $5) are straightforward, ranging from a chocoholic fix (a warm fudge brownie with vanilla-bean ice cream and chocolate sauce) to a feathery panna cotta napped with a strawberry coulis and a scattering of fresh berries. The brownie was plenty for two people and possibly enough for three (a boon for the budget-conscious), but it was the panna cotta we lingered over.

The live piano music also encourages lingering, at least if, like me, you find the piano's seductions irresistible. The great appeal of Catch, in fact, is that it captures so many moods – that of the European sidewalk café, the piano bar, the downtown expense-account palace – without apparent effort or strain. It seems to have a little something for everyone (including wines by the half-liter carafe – another boon to the budget-conscious, and the sociable), which is a good thing when you mean to catch a touristy fish or two from the great sea of possibilities all around you.