Mark’s Score 9.5
Mogan’s Oyster House is a joint project of Brad Mogan and Allison Porter (Chef). Located in the former lobby of the old Wicomico Hotel Building in downtown Salisbury, the restaurant offers a sophisticated modern and warm dining atmosphere. It is worth visiting the restaurant just to see the custom-milled oak bar. The cuisine is locally inspired seafood from both the Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic Ocean. Chesapeake Bay is famous for both its oysters and crabs and both are central features of the menu. The owners claim that their goal is to pay homage to the seafood culture of the Eastern Shore. Their menu is seasonal and reflects their close relationships with local farmers and watermen.
In my view, this restaurant would rate in the top 10 of restaurants on the entire Delmarva. It is the perfect combination of atmosphere, service, selection and food quality. I have many preferred restaurants, but it is rare for even my favorite restaurants to achieve consistently high scores in all five of my rating criteria. I don’t think I have ever had a bad dish or poor service at this restaurant. The menu selection is always innovative, and I love the atmosphere. I could spend all day just checking out the detail of their oak bar. It is an impressive piece of architectural design.
I am not a big fan of oysters, but they call themselves an Oyster House, and given this is the land of oysters, fair enough. Currently they serve six different oyster dishes plus their oyster raw bar. If you love oysters, this restaurant should be on your short list. This is the Delmarva so you will also find the other two seafood stars on the menu, rockfish (the local name for sea bass), and Maryland’s famous blue crab.
Neither crabs nor oysters being my thing, I ordered the mussels cooked in a saffron broth with onions and toasted ciabatta bread, a simple dish that is hard to get wrong and equally hard to make memorable. Mogan’s mussels in saffron is one of the more memorable dishes I have had this year. Even though I gave them a hard test, they passed and then some.
To accompany the mussels and saffron I ordered a glass of Grüner Veltliner (a dry Austrian white). I became a fan of this wine while working in Vienna, many years ago. You don’t see it often here in the US, and that is a shame, because it is an excellent wine. I do not know if this is a new trend, I certainly haven’t seen it before, but instead of a cork, this particular winery seals its bottles with a beer bottle cap. The wine was excellent, so if a bottle cap works, then why not? Oh and by the way, Grüner Veltliner pares perfectly with mussels. Yes, I know this is an oyster house, but you really should try the mussel in saffron, you won’t regret it.
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