Salinas Surf and Turf Dinner at Pub’s in Salinas, California by Ruth Paget
My husband Laurent, daughter Florence Paget, and I went out for a Salinas surf and turf meal at Pub’s in Salinas, California that was reliably great. I love eating at the oldest bar in Salinas.
We began our meal with an order of deep-fried Monterey Bay calamari. The squid was lightly coated and came with a creamy, chipotle-mayonnaise dipping sauce. This was the delicious surf part of my meal.
We all ordered steaks for the turf part of our meal. Florence and I ordered the flatiron steaks while Laurent had the filet mignon with shrimp scampi special.
All the steaks came with an appetizer salad. The salad was crisp romaine lettuce like you would expect to eat in a top-notch steak house. I ate Thousand Island dressing with my salad made with ketchup-mayonnaise and pleasantly sour, house-made pickles. That was a refreshing break after eating the delicious calamari.
I ordered my steak medium rare and it came out perfectly cooked and a little salty, the way I like steak.
I chose to eat tiled, scalloped potatoes made with sharp cheddar cheese as my potato option. This tasty side is something I would eat as a vegetarian meal during the week.
Steamed vegetables coated in butter rounded out the steak platter. Carrots, celery, and zucchini made up the vegetable selection when we went, but they can change with the seasons. The vegetables had a slight, sugary flavor letting you know they were fresh and at their peak ripeness.
We brought our own bottle of wine to go with the steaks – a Mayard Châteauneuf-du-Pape La Crau de ma Mère produced in the Rhône River Valley by Avignon, France. The wine was six years old and excellent with steak. (The corkage fee at Pub’s is $20 – very reasonable, if you drink your entire bottle.)
For a really great seafood and steak dinner in a country town, Pub’s in Salinas, California has been a number one option since its opening in 1901.
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France and developer of the Novgorod and Bento War Games
