Bay View Seafood Restaurant

There are a few tough questions with which greasy-spoon diners must inevitably wrestle: Bacon or sausage? Home fries or grits? And would this joint be any better with five-star service and a seafood menu?

Artur Loli improbably answered that last query in the affirmative while dining one day at his buddy Kosta Vlahakis’ popular Arden breakfast spot Kosta’s Kitchen. Loli, the former a.m. dining-room manager at the Inn on Biltmore Estate, partnered with Vlahakis to reinvent the restaurant as Bay View Seafood, a terrifically endearing blend of good ol’ fried cuisine and fine-tuned service that could seem schizophrenic in less capable hands.

Full disclosure: I briefly worked as a not-very-good evening server at the Biltmore when Artur manned the morning rush there. I had the chance to watch him work, strolling from table to table and inquiring—in the polished highfalutin language endorsed by the Mobil Travel Guide, which awards the fifth star so coveted by the Inn—whether their food was correctly cooked. Diners were invariably charmed by his unplaceable European accent and school-boyishly earnest interest in their plates of poached eggs and caviar.

Weirdly, his shtick still works at Bay View, where he approaches each table with a near-bow, presses his palms together and asks, “Are you pleased with your clam strips, sir?” He’s trained his game group of servers to follow suit, drilling them in affectations—such as always clearing from the right—that must seem awfully precious when performed in exchange for a $4 tip.

Bay View bills itself as “A Taste of the Mediterranean.” That’s a fair way off the mark, unless the owners were thinking of Mediterranean, South Carolina. With the exception of a Greek salad platter and a spaghetti drenched in marinara sauce, there’s nothing on the menu to make you wonder where you left your toga. Walls painted with white columns set against blue skies and Grecian urns scattered around the room—which do brighten the otherwise standard family-restaurant decor—aren’t fooling anyone. But there’s no shame in serving well-priced platters of delectably fried sea creatures and hush puppies, especially since the untimely demise of Calabash West on Leicester Highway.

On this side of the Mason-Dixon line, folks tend to like their fish—and their shrimp, clams, scallops and oysters—deep-fried. Even restaurants that pride themselves on their fresh seafood are besieged with customer requests to let their orders spend a few moments alone with Fry Daddy.

It’s hard for some aficionados to even imagine flounders swimming around without their protective golden coats of fry. Yet it wasn’t until the 1940s that an oyster-roasting family in Calabash, N.C.—an itty-bitty port town named for a snowman-shaped gourd—moved its operation indoors and fired up the fryer. Calabash, now home to one seafood restaurant for every 10 residents, has spawned a statewide fried-fish revolution.

Bay View’s menu is firmly in the Calabash tradition: Unless you’re in the mood for chicken tenders, expect to eat a platter of seafood accompanied by your choice of coleslaw or house salad, Texas Toast or hushpuppies and a baked potato, sweet potato or fries.

At Bay View, the right choice is always the fried choice. The baked and sweet potato, served with a little container of Country Crock cinnamon spread, are perfectly passable, but they’re not reason enough to bypass anything emerging from the fryer.

The key to Calabash is what veteran cooks call the “light fry,” meaning the seafood shouldn’t spend so much time soaking in hot peanut oil that the flour becomes melded to it. Fried seafood also shouldn’t be too heavily breaded: If it takes more than one exploratory bite to uncover which animal you’re eating, you’re not eating Calabash.

Bay View hits on both counts, turning out lovingly fried seafood that could persuade even a cardiologist to order a “Captain’s Platter.” Its appetizer of calamari—recommended by our warmly helpful server—far surpasses the third-rate tomato sauce served with it. The thin cloak of breading easily flakes off the not-too-salty squid, which could be proudly served at a fancier restaurant alongside a sophisticated aioli.

Shrimp, available in popcorn and jumbo sizes, are also lip-smackingly tasty. It’s telling that the basket of essential condiments perched on every table doesn’t include extra napkins jammed between the squeeze bottles of cocktail sauce and ketchup: There isn’t all that much grease to go around. Had I been forced to do so, I believe I could have successfully eaten a plateful of popcorn shrimp—with my bare hands—and then opened a jar. (It would have looked way more impressive than it sounds.)

Scallops and oysters were less successful, with even the most careful fry unable to disguise the items’ frozen histories. The coleslaw also screamed routine, and a rare venture into turf—an overcooked 10-ounce rib eye that pops up in a few of the menu’s many combos—was a travesty. The house dessert—a creamy Key lime pie, still sporting its Christmas outfit of bright-red-and-green glazes—wasn’t much better.

Knowing what to order—a task complicated by a crowded menu Loli swears he’ll soon streamline—is crucial to the Bay View experience. It’s probably wise not too order too much broiled seafood, which is served floating in a golden liquid Loli hurries to assure diners “is not grease—it’s Chablis.” While the broiled grouper wasn’t bad with a dollop of tartar sauce, the preparation didn’t do the scallops any favors. But do order the hush puppies, made of sweet milk-saturated cornmeal formed into fat rings of flavor. And definitely have the fried fish.

Today marks the start of Lent, the 40-day period leading up to Easter, which some Catholics observe by eating fish. But even for those of us who aren’t commanded to indulge in a plate of flounder this month, Bay View offers plenty of good—and affordable—reasons to eat fish soon.