I think merely about the seafood dishes I loved at Blue - forget the best take, ever, including Indian restaurants, on tandoori chicken; ignore, for a minute, the sensuous foie gras set against the humble grape, in various stages of life; leave out the wild ride taken with huitlacoche in crepe form, pressed against tripe, and heretofore shunned at the Shore - it's clear the top three plates of 2007 were chef Steven Cameron's pan-roasted wild Alaskan sable, grilled Barnegat Light scallops and ever-so-simply fried Portuguese sardines.
But if I do factor in the tandoori chicken, the foie gras and the crepe shot through with the funky, fabulous corn fungus, the seasonal restaurant in Surf City would take the prize for the six top dishes of 2007. And I'd be aching about not including everything else I ate at Blue (especially the bread-and-chocolate sandwich) and wanting to list its peerless, seamless, intelligent service as the blue-plate special performance of the night.
As I re-lived the hundreds of meals I ate in 2007, not just here at the Jersey Shore, but the places I traveled, Blue reminded me of something I'd read in the mid-/late-1960s about The Beatles. It was in a magazine, and a writer was polling his audience about their favorite rock group. Favorite, he said, after The Beatles, for The Beatles are just so far ahead of everyone else that they don't count any more in anyone's list of favorites.
That's kind of how I felt about the food at Blue in 2007: Cameron's pitch-perfect takes on "American food, but not as we know it" (his words), didn't borrow from any other chef I know, but rather riffed on fundamentals with focusedflavor accents in an original, unique style. Those sardines, for example, were brought down to earth by a veil of cornmeal, a hint of mustard in a vinaigrette and the earthy-herbiness of plain parsley. No plate was overwrought; no plate suffered from extremes of fussing. In mid-summer, in an island community, with a minimal kitchen staff and seasonal floor crew, this chef was turning out food edgier and more enlightening than any I'd had in New York, in Chicago, in Philadelphia, not to mention major cities down South and up in New England.
It can be done. I know: I ate it, I lapped up the entire experience.
So while I refrain every year from naming the top restaurant of the year, Blue's extraordinary food backed by tuned-in, spot-on service, shot it light years ahead of the competition. I don't know whether chef Cameron will return to the stoves at Blue when it re-opens this spring (he's a peripatetic fellow, touching down in maybe Barcelona or Philly or some other port in his off-seasons, bent on learning and further experimentation), but I'll not forget what I learned from his food. I promise to keep you posted on whatever I hear about this supremely talented chef.