Reel Contender

Catch 52 Tests New Waters

By Warren Rojas / Photography by Kate Bohler

It’s been a wild ride getting Vintage Restaurant Group’s latest outpost, Catch 52, under way. But opening chef Aaron McCloud is used to such nuttiness.

“This is the 20th restaurant I’ve been a part of opening,” McCloud says, hinting that every new project ushers in its own fresh hell.

By the time you read this, McCloud will have traded the bedlam associated with nurturing the trio of Virginia restaurants he helped rear—flagship brewery-lounge Vintage 50, meat-and-potatoes hangout Vintage 51 and freshly minted Catch 52—for the exquisite anxiety of leading the kitchen at a luxury resort (Inn at Perry’s Cabin) on the idyllic Eastern Shore.

McCloud passed the Catch 52 torch to Vintage 50 alumnus Dan Bruce, who stepped behind the burners this past winter.

Catch 52, which celebrated its first dinner service this past New Year’s Eve, marks a significant shift in the evolution of the Vintage family of restaurants—not the least of which is its predominantly marine-centric dining program.

“It’s different for the area,” McCloud admits. “[But] little by little, people are appreciating that it’s here in their neighborhood.”

He confesses to overreaching a bit when they first opened, experimenting with whole sardines and other from-the-deep delicacies which might have been apropos if served along the D.C. waterfront but were apparently lost on the South Riding audience. “Seafood can be challenging in that respect,” he says of the constant struggle to lure patrons in with something new, maintain unimpeachably fresh inventory and keep costs down.

Their ace-in-the-hole so far? Well-sourced shellfish.

Catch’s raw bar offerings focus on a handful of easily slurpable and highly seductive oysters, including: Chincoteague (harvested in Virginia), Choptank Sweets (aquacultured on the Eastern Shore), Malpeques (plucked from the waters surrounding Prince Edward Island), Old Salts (farmed in the Chesapeake Bay) and Blue Points (available up and down the Eastern Seaboard). The kitchen also does mussels over a half-dozen different ways, bouncing from your basic marinere to invigoratingly Thai (steeped in curry paste and coconut milk) to vibrantly Mediterranean (punched up by garlic, black olives and capers) and beyond.

Then, of course, there’s the lobster. Big, bountiful specimens shuttled from the icy waters around New England—“mostly Maine,” McCloud assures me—to your plate, quite often with respectable flourish.

Their other not-so-secret weapon?

A Wood Stone hearth—don’t let the name fool you; it’s a strictly gas-powered brick oven—the kitchen crew depends on for flash firing.

“The skin on a roasted rockfish, at 900 degrees, is just awesome,” McCloud says of the acute crispiness imparted by the extremely high heat. “It’s a nice tool to have.”

Still, a tool like the potentially order-finishing brick oven is only as useful in the proper hands. Unfortunately, some of the hands at Catch 52 remain terribly idle.

I’ve never been particularly dazzled by the servers at Vintage 50 or Vintage 51. But they, for the most part, keep the meal on schedule and seem to appreciate the value of your patronage. Not so at Catch 52, where a contingent of the service corps has been infiltrated by, at best, lackadaisical slackers or, at worst, total misanthropes, with no discernible interest in doing their jobs.

During one particularly disheartening exchange, a clearly exasperated bartender summoned over a server busily chatting away with fellow staff. The barkeep pointed to a furiously perspiring beverage that had been stranded atop the bar for over 10 minutes, strongly urging the easily distracted server to hightail the cocktail out to the drinkless guest ASAFP. Instead of profusely thanking the dutiful co-worker for angling to save whatever semblance of a tip might still be salvageable, the server actually gave an eye roll and indignantly “harrumph”-ed. The stunned barkeep threw in the towel then, foolishly asking—albeit rhetorically in my opinion—“Would you like me to run it out for you?” The server pounced on the offer and sauntered back into the main dining room, still having never so much as laid a finger on the beverage that had been so naively entrusted to their care.

The carelessness spilled over onto myself and a neighboring patron another night, as I watched the fellow beg for updates on his MIA oysters (he waited over half an hour for raw oysters), only to be sidelined by a flubbed flatbread order (another 30-minute delay) myself.

Which is really too bad—given that many of the dishes that actually made it out in a timely manner had their moments.

French-style mussels summon a sea of plump, wine-soaked moules invaded by now-molten crumbles of pungent blue cheese. The broth was populated with thinly sliced shallots and sunken cheese crumbles, which made for sumptuous scooping with the broad slices of grilled baguette lain to rest across the steaming bowl.

The only way I was able to rouse the rock shrimp flatbread from its cocoon of complacency—middling barbecue glaze, bland shrimp, feeble cilantro cream sauce—was to crack open handfuls of the cutesy Tabasco bottles and loose their vinegary fury upon the crisped dough.

Not the type to splurge on a whole Maine lobster? Get your lobster fix via a gourmet grilled cheese featuring nuggets of semi-sweet claw meat doused in very basil-y pesto (veneer of olive oil lubricates and luxuriates the entire sandwich) and embedded in rounds of slightly melted brie, all pressed between slices of fluffy ciabatta.

Need a break from seafood? The double dose of Ayrshire Farm chicken, carried over from the Vintage 50 carte, usually hits the spot—unless the kitchen drops the ball and forgets to stuff the chicken breast with the advertised goat cheese. Kudos to the braised chicken leg, which delivered lightly spiced skin stretched across succulent flesh, and a supporting cast including the punchy blast provided by pruny, slow-cooked grapes and extra onion-y gravy for returning the incomplete order to the “win” column.

The crab cake Napoleon was, hands down, their best effort. The leaning tower of please-ya is built upon alternating layers of loosely packed crab meat and potato-butternut squash latkes bound by whole grain mustard (wish it had been horseradish) and topped with feisty pickled fennel.

The wine list is short but refreshingly daring, showcasing syrah from Idaho, cabernet sauvignon from neighboring Vint Hill Craft Winery and Piemontese moscat d’asti. And roughly 90 percent of their wines are available by-the-glass (all under $8).

Before leaving, McCloud mapped out plans to offer crab picking packages on the Catch 52 patio come summertime.

But that’s all up in the air now.

“There are a lot of new plans for the restaurants after I’m gone,” McCloud volunteers. “I’m not sure what they entail, but it will be different.”

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Catch 52
24995 Riding Plaza Blvd., Suite 100, South Riding; 703-327-4774; www.catch52sr.com

Hours: Open for lunch Saturday and Sunday, dinner Tuesday through Sunday.
Prices: $13 to $20 ($$).

(June 2011)

Tags: Asron McCloud, Catch 52, raw bar, South Riding, Vintage Restaurant Group