Lunch At The Ocean, From The Ocean

A special-occasion lunch calls for a special view, and that's what The Lobster offers in addition to the various ocean-going delights on the menu. Nearly all the tables are good ones from which to enjoy the beautiful Pacific Ocean as it churns toward the Santa Monica Pier.  Look past the Ferris Wheel and the roller coaster - the Sigalert, as it's called - and you can commune with the waves while you dine.

The wine list at The Lobster is not as inventive as I would like, but there's always something there that jumps off the page at me.  This time it was the Drouhin Vaudon Chablis which caught my eye.

Joseph Drouhin owns about 15 acres of Chardonnay grapes in the Valley of Vauvillien, nestled between the Mont de Milieu and Montée de Tonnerre Premier Cru vineyards.  In other words, he keeps good company.  An old watermill sits in the Serein River and serves as the headquarters of the Drouhin Domaine in Chablis.  The winery says that Drouhin was a pioneer in the region 40 years ago, revitalizing the region in the 1960s, a hundred years after phylloxera ravaged it and millennia after it was an ancient seabed.  The site is the northernmost in Burgundy, sitting in a circle of hills where vines have grown for hundreds of years

The wine paired beautifully with my lobster and corn chowder with smoked bacon, and even better with the charred octopus, one of the best eight-legged appetizers I've ever had.  The smell of wet pavement opens the experience, with citrus notes following.  The palate offers the full set of flavors expected from the limestone-drenched origin of the grapes.  A chalky, flinty sensibility carries the fruit and minerals along over a fine acidity which seems born for seafood.


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