Romantic dinner from local waters

Hard to believe today, but once upon a time, Newport was pretty small potatoes. Sure we had the Rendezvous and the Pavilion, which drew crowds of dancers, and the Drugless Drugstore and other establishments that drew the drinkers.

But for the most part, Newport was a summer destination for people who lived inland. Once September came, the place closed up shop. The year-round population was pretty small, and this was true of all the other towns along the coast.

These small populations didn’t have much of an effect on the ocean. For a great deal of my life, I looked at the ocean much the way I looked at the grocery store, as a place to get food.

Hungry? Put on your trunks, head over to the rocks south of Little Corona, and get a couple of lobster for dinner, or maybe some abalone. The same thing was true of the Back Bay. We’d go back there and get scallops and steam them.

I remember one memorable meal. I had met a young woman at the beach that day. We hit it off, and I invited her over to my place for dinner that night. I will confess up front that I was intent on seducing her.

I left the beach and headed over to Little Corona, where I picked up a couple of abalone. On the way in, I saw a small octopus and grabbed that as well.

That afternoon, I prepared the abalone, slicing it into steaks, and then pounded away at those steaks with an empty milk bottle until they were perfectly tender. When the time came, I rolled them in cracker crumbs and fried them with a little lemon juice. Once the abalone was tenderized, I took the octopus and diced the tentacles into a seafood cocktail, and everything was ready.

My date arrived. I offered her a drink, she accepted, and we had that drink, then another, and I was practically rubbing my hands in glee, so well were my plans proceeding.

I put the seafood cocktail on, while plying the young woman with another drink. By this time, we were exchanging deep, meaningful glances, and I could hardly wait to get through dinner and to the main purpose of the evening, at least from my eager young man’s point of view.

My date had virtually demolished the seafood cocktail and was fishing around with her fork for the last little morsel.

A woman of appetite! I liked that.

She speared the last piece of the cocktail and looked at it. This piece had an intact circle of the little suction cups that line the bottoms of octopus tentacles. She looked at it more closely. She frowned.

“What is it?” she asked.

“It’s the octopus -- .” I didn’t even get the word “tentacle” out of my mouth before she threw up all over herself and the table.

So much for my romantic evening.

Of course, nowadays, everyone and his mother, brother and cousin twice removed wants to live at the beach. There are no coastal towns with small populations, and the ocean has paid a price for its popularity.

Today, if you want a lobster, you go to the market. Abalone have become like diamonds in their scarcity, and I don’t think anyone would want to eat anything that came out of the Back Bay. I don’t dive anymore, but I occasionally snorkel around, and you don’t even see Garibaldi, which used to be extremely common.

I understand there’s some move afoot to protect certain areas of the ocean like we protect our national parks. It might be something to consider.

* ROBERT GARDNER was a Corona del Mar resident and a judge who died in August, 2005. This column originally ran in December, 2002.

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