Galley Ho! Four seafood lovers prowl Eugene's Full Boat. By The Kat Pack Icy cold, half-moon Friday night, our pack prowled and howled outside the glass doors of Fisherman's Wharf. Scents of the wine-dark sea wafted through open cracks, saturating the air with intoxicating aroma of salmon, snapper, tilapia, oysters and fresh crab. We were four -- WildKat, Soho Sandy, Pegleg Pete, Lenney Lankshanks -- ravenous as the world for ocean succulents. Soho Sandy: I've always been jealous of Woody Allen's New York; child-free couples with disposable income are always eating at tiny, street-side bistros where Mamma Mia throws her arms around you and brings out one outrageous ravioli after another because you're a special guest at her six-table hole-in-the-wall. Eugene finally has its equivalent in Fisherman's Market, I mean Full Boat. On a night like Friday, the outside approach is as cold as a stroll to the end of a breakwater, but on the way in, the crab pots steamed up my glasses. The place smells like Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco or Pike's Street Market in Seattle. If you like the scent of fresh fish, this is heaven. If 50 eyes staring up at you from 25 fresh red snapper inspires you to order up halibut with pesto, this is your piece of New York … Pesto Halibut ($9.95) grilled pesto glazed halibut with Greek White Bean Stew. PERFECTLY grilled, moist, huge pesto-topped fish draping a bowl of beautiful beans. The slightly salty and highly flavored beans melted on the palate mingling with the delicate pesto-charged fish. Pegleg Pete: Naw, it's the stainless steel galley of a rolling oil tanker 60 miles out. Or it's the Mermaid Tavern, and, behind the iced fish, stand seamen wearing rubber boots and holding big, glistening fish, I love it -- I'm a low tide kind of guy, so I order rock shrimp, sun dried tomatoes, and creamy yellow saffron and fennel sauce on pasta ($9.95). Yeah, and some crocodile, yuppie Tyrell's 1998 Chardonnay ($10.99) from Australia, mate. I bloody luv it! The heaping bowl of glistening saffron yellow penne, mounded with rock shrimp was creamy, warm, al dente and delicious. WildKat: Full Boat's where landlocked, sea-loving mates go for great grub. Yeah, the place is cold inside this time of year, but food, friendly cheer from fellow shipmates rubbing elbows and ogling each other's dinners, and warm greetings from the ship's crew takes the nip off. Walk in; eyeball the fresh board, grab a steel topped table loaded with buckets of plasticware, nappies and condiments. Starving? Can't wait for the hot plate? Start with Shrimp or Crab Cocktail ($3/$5) or Oyster Shooters ($1) so sweet, firm, fresh and clean; it's like havin' 'zert first. The Pack also lashed into some Cioppino -- mussels, clams, rock shrimp, bay scallops, snapper and squid simmered with red wine, tomato, bell pepper and herbs ($1.75 cup/$3.50 pt). Consensus, heavy/rich well-spiced broth that warmed the cockles, but rather overwhelmed the flavors of the delicate seafood. Also nibbled on Ceviche ($6.99/lb) snapper morsels marinated in lime with black beans, corn, tomato and jalapeno. Tasty, but missing fresh cilantro. I shared the Thai Prawns, Stirfry Veggies on Coconut Rice with Spicy Peanut Sauce ($9.95) -- AARRH. Beautifully butterflied tender prawns topped the circle of shredded crunchy veggies surrounding the pile o' shredded coconut rice. Considering these guys have no "professional" training, work with funky equipment in what could be a ship's galley and using recipes from Mike West's imagination, Yo Ho Ho!!! Skinny Lenny: Couldn't resist hooking into fresh salmon, never could, never can. This is Oregon's own, ocean-caught filet, grilled and served on a sundried tomato sauce. Sauce and fish made smiles all around the table, but the side of red spuds was really tasty -- lightly sautéed with capers, artichoke hearts, onions and kalamata olives, it jumped into the mouth. For grog, we had chosen St. Supery 1998 Napa Chardonnay, creamy, buttery tropical fruits with vanilla top-notes; the $15.99 ticket is straight retail pricing, very nice, and the crew'll yank the cork and provide funky plastic "glasses." Keel haul me if this ain't a shipshape mess. Big Tips from frequent sailors: * FREE parking across the street at Hollywood Video. * Friday/Saturday nights Crab or Lobster dinners ($12.99/15.99) whole crustacean served with salad and baked potato. Lotsa lovers call ahead and order these to go. * Flexible -- see something in the case that looks tasty? Ask, they'll probably cook it up for you. Call ahead, if you want anything special, they'll try to accommodate you. * Fried Fancies -- including cod, salmon, halibut, clams, oysters, shrimp, catfish ($5.75-$6.25) served with chips, coleslaw (three flavors) and choice of eight wildly different tartar sauces. * Flagons of beer on tap (OK, plastic glasses) ($2.75/pt) * Fun -- bring family/friends. Always good to see two-legged shrimps enjoying the fruits of the sea. So avast me hearties. Stop swabbing your own decks. Put on your heavy sailing sweater, load up the dinghy and set sail for Full Boat at 830 W 7th Street in Eugene, 484-2722. Hours: Sunday/Monday -- noon till 6 pm, Tuesday-Saturday -- 11am till 8 pm. Turkey Triage The experts tell on how to get out of Thanksgiving pickles. By The Wide-Eyed Gourmet During this festive season, you might fantasize about a chat with the experts. It would be more of a confrontation than a conversation. Waving a half-cooked turkey and an impossible guest list in their faces, you'd ask, "OK, wise guy, what would you do?" Well, here's as close as you can get in print: a celebrity panel with a surprisingly down-to-earth attitude about holiday entertaining. Katie Brown, TV personality and author of Katie Brown Entertains (HarperCollins), stocks Diet Coke, mixed nuts, and Valium (hey, she made the joke, not me). Rick Rodgers, author of Thanksgiving 101 and Christmas 101 (Broadway Books) has been around the country and on TV teaching his holiday basics, but he has the same problems as everybody else, including parents who wouldn't listen to his grilling advice (nothing larger that 14 pounds on the grill) and ended up lighting on fire a turkey the size of a Volkswagen bug. And Barbara Kafka, who recently released Roasting (HarperCollins), brings years of experience to the table, but still found herself temporarily flummoxed with the dinner party from hell, which included one guest who kept kosher, one who couldn't eat anything with seeds, and one recovering alcoholic. So pull up a chair and let's get a taste of how the pros might handle some common holiday emergencies. Your significant other's parents are meeting you for the first time, and you're hosting the dinner. What do you prepare? Rick Rodgers: Call your mother-in-law and say, "Mom, will you please give me your favorite recipe for stuffing? I don't know what kind to make, and Jimmy loves your stuffing." Even better, have her teach you how to make their stuffing. Make it the family thing it's supposed to be. Barbara Kafka: I think you have to know how good a cook you are. In other words, if you're a good cook, you might go ahead and be a little more ambitious. If you're not such a good cook, do the safe thing. I wouldn't be extravagant for the first time, either. I think that sets a bad tone, like gee, she's going to bankrupt our son. Katie Brown: First of all, don't do anything out of the ordinary. This is not the time to show off your skills. This is the time to go with classics. If you want to pop in one thing extraordinary, make sure it's a side dish, and that it still has traditional components. I made turkey lasagna for my dad, and it didn't work. Dinner hour has arrived, everybody's hungry, and you realize that you put the turkey in too late. It has at least two more hours to go. What do you do to keep everyone happy until then? Kafka: I turn that oven up to 500 degrees. In about half to three-quarters of an hour, it'll be ready. This isn't a real disaster. Rodgers: One solution is to cut the turkey in half through the rib cage, separating breast and wings from drumsticks and thighs, crosswise through back, separating dark from light. Roast them separately and they'll cook faster. Then just prop them together and decorate with parsley. Brown: I've been there, and it's miserable. Sometimes you can substitute side dishes, or make them longer. Put your soup course out, put out salad as second course, go into third course with a vegetable plate, and then just serve turkey with stuffing. Do anything, add more courses, get naked, light yourself on fire. The key is to never admit defeat. It's your turn to host the family dinner. What with other social obligations, you'll have about three hours to get ready on the day of the dinner. How would you make this happen with as little stress as possible? Rodgers: There are three ways of doing it. One is to be super organized and start way ahead of time, with three shopping lists and a visit to the express lane the day before the dinner. Another way is to have a potluck. But they get out of control, because people never bring what they say they're going to bring. So I clip recipes, send that to the guests, and ask them to make two batches. Finally, this is what the gourmet department is for. Buy everything you can from them, and concentrate just on the turkey and stuffing. Brown: First of all, I might order the turkey online or from the grocery store, so that the only thing I had to worry about were side dishes. Keep it simple. For bread, I'd go right to the frozen food section and get parker house rolls, put them out on cookie sheet, slice them on side, squirt in something like honey butter, pumpkin butter, and bake those. Buy premixed greens, toast some pecans, add dried cherries or cranberries, and maybe even some orange slices and red onions, and store-bought ginger-soy dressing. Get pre-made pie crusts, canned pumpkin. You can do it all in three hours. Kafka: It only takes 45 minutes to make a boned and rolled loin of pork or leg of lamb, takes about the same time to make the potatoes, if you cut them in half. And anyway, remember that even if you want to make the turkey, by the time they sit and eat, if you give people enough first courses, you'll have enough time to get that turkey done. We tend to forget that these things take time to get done. Guests don't have to eat the instant they walk in. The Wide-Eyed Gourmet is Marina Wolfe, a self-syndicated food columnist who writes for the alternative press. Back to Top Table of Contents | News & Views | Arts & Entertainment Classifieds | Personals | EW Archive