With mom on her way, I am mulling this question again...here are my thoughts about Ray's Boathouse.
The warm welcome that greets you at Ray's stays with you until the moment you leave. The vertical-grained-fir walls of the dining room glow under pinspot lighting from the ceiling, and the well-spaced tables allowed you the privacy you want for hushed conversation. Even after the sun dances across Puget Sound and retires behind the Olympic Mountains and Rays' Sound view is a promise you make yourself for summer a cozy window table makes any dinner memorable and intimate.
Chose a dry, golden-hued McCrea Viognier, with its pear, citrus and toasted-French-oak flavors, to accompany an appetizer from the sea. More premium, hand-picked Dungeness crab than you can eat is perched atop shredded greens and classic cocktail sauce. The crab cocktail is full of succulent snow-white leg meat presenting the perfect balance of sweet flesh and sea salt. When the Penn Cove mussels arrive, their open shells offer bite-size morsels luxuriating in a rosy, silken stew of coconut and red curry. An exotic perfume of Thai basil, chiles, garlic, lemon-grass and ginger rises from the bowl.
For a main course, you cannot go wrong with Chatham Straits black cod in sake kasu. Encrusted in sesame seeds, the kasu-marinated cod gives generously of nut and yeast (kasu is a byproduct of sake fermentation) without a trace of fishy aromas. In the mouth, each tender flake of the perfectly cooked fish is reminiscent of a first French kiss—soft, moist and fleshy—and hints at the forbidden. The accompanying sesame-scented rice cake echoes the nutty flavors imparted by the kasu, and the pale green pool of wasabi-ginger emulsion bites gently with horseradish and zesty heat for excellent contrast.
To finish, try two regionally produced goat cheeses. The firm, creamy Quillisascut goat cheese has a hint of fruit and spice, having been marinated in olive oil and chipotle peppers. The fresh Juniper Grove Farms' tumalo tomme has a dense texture and delivers high notes of grass and earth.
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