Restaurants
Serving Fresh
ABALONE
64 South Bay Accent
ERIC WOLFINGER
Abalone isn’t an inexpensive ingredient,
but fortunately, it’s not nearly as dear
as other rarities you’ll never find in the
supermarket—say, Italian white truffles,
which cost upward of $2,000 per pound,
or a super-scarce black-skinned watermelon
from Hokkaido, Japan, fetching about
$200 each. In some seafood departments,
there’s Almas caviar from Iran, costing
$1,250 per ounce and coming from an
unusual albino species of sturgeon. By
contrast, fresh abalone can be had for as
low as $20 per serving.
The best news for South Bay abalone
lovers is that this wonderful ingredient
doesn’t have the extreme rarity in our area
that is the case in most other parts of the
nation. California’s wild populations have
been banned from commercial harvesting
for many years, but red abalone is
being farmed at two coastal aquaculture
operations on Monterey Bay that not only
supply restaurants and some retailers but
also sell to the public. Those who want to
leave the searching and cooking to others
can find exquisite abalone dishes on the
menus of a handful of chefs in the region.
Quite unlovely in its natural state, this
tasty mollusk has long been considered a
delicacy by Asians, who also believe it may
have aphrodisiac qualities. Sport divers
are other big fans of abalone, even though
the allowable catch keeps getting whittled
down by the California Department of
Fish and Wildlife, which now allows divers
to pry out no more than 12 abs per
diver annually.
EXOTIC APPEAL F OR CHEFS
Its taste and scarcity coupled with ongoing
demand and simple greed have given
abalone a backstory worthy of cinema
treatments involving frequent accidental
deaths, larceny and skulking government
agents running sting operations. While
all of this is surely part of abalone lore,
we won’t get into that quite yet because
the first requirement of ab lovers is to
know where they can consume this delicious
gastropod.
One source is elegant Chez TJ in Mountain
View, where chef Jarad Gallagher has
put fresh abalone on his contemporary
French menu as a regular item. “It’s a very
unusual product so that makes it exotic,
which is consistent with my restaurant’s
purpose,” he remarks. The fact that it’s a
local sustainable ingredient and has such
broad appeal among customers also contributed
to its selection for his menu.
“It has this cross-cultural, worldly feel
to it,” says Gallagher. “It’s one of those ingredients
that a lot of people have an emotional
connection to but that they don’t
have very often, so that makes it really, really
cool for us to serve it.” Gallagher adds
that abalone’s natural sweetness pairs well
with items like corn, while it’s also quite
compatible with rich ingredients such as
bacon and pork belly.
His own unique take involves a quick
sear on a Japanese grill burning binchotan
charcoal, after which, “it’s so tender, you
don’t need to cut it with a knife,” he says.
Gallagher also uses the abalone’s liver to
create an umami-rich sauce for his preparations.
The other ingredients he uses with
his abalone treatments rotate along with
the seasons.
Fellow South Bay chef Yu Min Lin from
The Sea in Palo Alto, which is part of the
posh Alexander’s Steakhouse mini-chain,
views abalone through the lens of his training
in preparing Japanese and French cui-
• Chez TJ, 938 Villa St., Mountain
View, 650/964-7466; cheztj.com
• Doni Don BBQ, 3393 El Camino
Real, Santa Clara, 408/984-8005;
facebook.com/Doni-Don
• Duarte’s Tavern, 202 Stage Road,
Pescadero, 650/879-0464;
duartestavern.com
• Firefish Grill, 25 Municipal Wharf,
Santa Cruz, 831/423-5200;
firefishgrill.net
• Home, 3101 N. Main St., Soquel,
831/431-6131; homesoquel.com
• Le Papillon, 410 Saratoga Ave.,
San Jose, 408/296-3730;
lepapillon.com
• Manresa, 320 Village Lane, Los
Gatos, 408/54-4330;
manresarestaurant.com
• Navio (Ritz-Carlton), 1 Miramontes
Point Road, Half Moon Bay, 650/712-
7000; ritzcarlton.com
• Nick’s Next Door, 11 College Ave.,
Los Gatos, 408/402-5053;
nicksnextdoor.com
• Plumed Horse, 14555 Big Basin
Way, Saratoga, 408/867-4711;
plumedhorse.com
• TGI Sushi, 100 W. Hamilton Ave.,
Campbell, 408/871-0123;
tgisushi.com
• The Sea by Alexander’s Steakhouse,
4269 El Camino Real, Palo
Alto, 650/213-1111; theseausa.com
The best news for SOUTH
BAY abalone lovers is that this
WONDERFUL INGREDIENT doesn’t
have the EXTREME RARITY in our
area that is the case in most other
parts of the nation.
Manresa’s Winter Tidal Pool
