RESTAURANT REVIEW : Fishing at the 22nd Street Landing Seafood Bar, Grill

Early in the afternoon on a beautiful, crisp, clear Sunday three of us drove down to San Pedro to eat at the 22nd St. Landing Seafood Bar and Grill. It’s an attractive restaurant next to the Cabrillo yacht club and overlooks the pretty marina. We were given a nice table by the window, from which we saw pelicans and sea gulls swoop and soar and well-tanned marinarians go about their lives.

Inside the bar and grill, there is much handsome dark woodwork--also, plush booths, glass etched with leaping marlins.

A young, pretty waitress brandishing a champagne bottle approached our table “Lunch or brunch?” she asked.

Lunch could be ordered off the menu. Brunch was a buffet spread out along the counters by the kitchen. The buffet, she assured us, had a lot of seafood on it, including oysters, crab, shrimp, mahi mahi skewers, and other grilled fish. There were also waffles, build-your-own omelets, salads, soups, desserts. Uncertain, we appealed to her, “Which do you recommend?”

Without hesitation, she replied, “Brunch,” and began pouring us champagne.

Thus, we unanimously chose brunch, a major disappointment.

The oysters were small and not very good. The crab was in a thick mayonnaise dressing. The shrimp was boiled to rubberiness. There was some thresher shark stewing in a broth but the mahi-mahi skewers, a manager said were all gone. “The next time you come up, there will be a new batch,” he said. The omelets were good but the waffles tasted like batter. We picked disconsolately at our plates, bird-watched, decided which boat we each wanted to own, and otherwise killed time waiting for mahi-mahi skewers.

After a quarter of an hour, I returned to the buffet line. No skewers yet, I was told, but they were coming. I had some red clam chowder, which was supremely ordinary and again went looking for that darn mahi-mahi. This time, a cook asked what I wanted. When I told him, he exclaimed, “We haven’t had mahi mahi skewers for months!” He took pity on me, though and gave me a half a chunk of mahi mahi that had been sitting under the warming lights. I took it to the table where the three of us fell upon it like starving sea gulls: dense, juicy, cooked just right, the one paltry piece of respectability prepared fish disappeared in a blink of the eye. Oh, how we wished we’d ordered lunch.

Our next visit to the 22nd St. Landing was for dinner on a cold, blustery night. The marina’s lights sparkled on the black shiny water. The boats rocked, doors to cabins swung open, we glimpsed people inside the boats looking cozy and peaceful as could be. Inside the restaurant, a couple of sunburned fishermen leaned on the bar and most of the tables were occupied by parents out to dinner with their grown children.

We were not inspired by the basket of bread plunked on our table, it held miniature oily hot dog buns coated with cheese and herbs. Our spirits rose a little, however, when a shrimp appetizer with aioli proved tastier than anything we had on the buffet. A scallop pasta, however, was just plain weird, with its brown brothy sauce full of broccoli, sun-dried tomatoes and an occasional scallop. The dinners themselves were large and well-endowed with starch. Each nice-sized entree came with red potatoes or fettuccine, a skewer of vegetable, and a mound of gloppy brown rice that tasted like bouillon. I loved a generous, delicious serving of yellowtail, while a good-sized lobster tail was strong-tasting rather than sweet.

We were plenty full by the time the waitress brought by the dessert tray. I gazed stuporously at the cakes and ice creams until, suddenly I realized there was something awfully strange about what I was seeing. “Are those desserts plastics?” I asked. “That’s not real ice cream is it?”

“Lard,” said our waitress. “We make the displays with chilled lard. One day, I put my finger in one and tasted it and I had a real experience.”

We did not order dessert.

22nd St. Landing Seafood Bar and Grill, 141A West 22nd St., San Pedro; (213) 548-4400. Lunch Monday-Saturday 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., Sunday until 2 p.m.; dinner Monday-Thursday 4 to 10 p.m., Friday-Saturday until 11 p.m., Sunday 3 to 9 p.m.; brunch Sunday 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Full bar. All major credit cards. Parking in lot. Dinner for two, food only, $25-$60.