Imagine sitting at a table outside a wooden shack on a row of dingy warehouses. It’s a sea of chain link and corrugated metal that support weathered commercial fishing boats. Across the dreary waters is a busy highway and towering smokestacks.
Such blue collar surroundings suit Woodward’s, a restaurant where the kitchen finds beauty in the familiar. Think of a dip served at a gathering of friends, only it is Dungeness crab and smoked salmon – rich, with a tingle of dill and an intricate salinity brought to bear against the tempering blade of pepperoncini. Or a rustic, homestyle cobbler topped by vanilla ice cream, except that the first bite reveals the touch of a deftly skilled baker.
And this from a restaurant in transition. In June, Chuck Drake and Mike Gilson of the popular Moss Landing coffee house and bar The Power Plant took ownership of what is still currently Woodward Marine Market. They plan to simplify the name – too many people stopped by expecting to fill their pantries – and “edit” the menu.
Edit is Drake’s word. “No dramatic overhaul, just a steady improvement,” he explains.
Woodward’s had already gained a following, opening in 2022 to solid reviews thanks to a from-scratch attitude. It had a concession area at the time, but previous ownership began moving toward table service, adding an outdoors pizza oven.
That station remains, but pizzas are on hold for the moment. “We’re trying to find out what people like,” says Chef Alicia Moore, who teams in the kitchen with Raquel Bagtini, a pastry chef with experience at Big Sur Bakery and New York’s Balthazar (and who is responsible for the must-have cobbler). Gilson was a founder of Big Sur Bakery. He plans a gradual menu transition, with a focus on fresh, local seafood.
Drake highlights a few new items, including blackened fish tacos using locally-caught rock cod, a crab roll inspired by a lobster roll sampled at Eventide in Portland, Maine and house-made kettle chips.
True to the restaurant’s humble setting, the crab roll is kept basic – meat on a bun. What Moore and her team do extraordinarily well is to exalt the simple through seemingly inconsequential touches. A toss in browned butter lends a musty depth to the rich and faintly brackish shellfish. They select a bun from Ad Astra – bread being one of the few things they don’t do in house – that carries a nutty sweetness that lifts a similar sensation from the crab. And they refrain from burdening the sandwich with a weighty mayonnaise or a pile of slaw.
As compelling as the presentation might seem, the slaw – served on the side – and kettle chips are equally strong distractions. The salad is bright and refreshing, with sensations that are bitter and sweet, grassy and calm flitting over the palate, encountering pops of fruit, with all of this both sharpened and dulled by celery seed and a toss in rice wine vinegar. It’s just slaw, but it breaks into revelry.
The sides are clearly not afterthoughts. Instead, the chips call out to you – deeply golden and brazenly crisp. There is just enough heft to recognize the mellow savor of potato, yet the chips remain somehow delicate. A sheen from the kettle allows a dusting of Old Bay seasoning to prick the palate and settle the notion of seafood back into your mind.
This is staple fare prepared to an unexpected level. The bacon that flavors clam chowder leaves a notion of swirling smoke – nothing unusual, until you begin to imagine the clams and potatoes pulled from a charcoal grill.
“Honestly, it’s a lot of love,” Moore says, skirting the cliche. “We all care. We’ve been through a lot.”
Moore joined the Woodward’s team shortly after it opened as a line cook. She took the helm a year after the Vistra battery storage fires and subsequent chemical fallout threw all of Moss Landing into turmoil. But Moore, like Gilson and Drake, sees in the restaurant possibilities.
While they’ve dropped “market” from the restaurant’s identity, Drake says there are plans to open an actual marine market alongside the sit-down restaurant by the end of the year. It will offer a grab-and-go menu.
Moore anticipates bringing pizza back to the menu, too – as soon as the team has settled in.
“We’re hoping to have more action stations,” she says. “There will be a lot more to come.”