Clayton — Have you visited downtown Clayton lately?
It’s a lovely little waterfront community that has experienced a glorious rebirth in the last decade. Quaint shops and trendy bistros have popped up around town, intermingling with family businesses that have been around for years.
The beautifully restored historic Opera House sets the tone on Riverside Drive, right next to the 200-year-old Thousand Islands Inn, a restaurant that holds claim to the original Thousand Island salad dressing recipe. Reinman’s department store is just down the street, serving the community with furniture, hardware and housewares for more than half a century.
Roughly opposite Reinman’s is The Riverside Café. It’s been in town only about 20 years, but could easily be credited with raising the bar on dining in downtown Clayton.
It’s a seasonal restaurant run by the Wakeel family with a menu guaranteed to please. The evening dining experience begins with homemade soups, healthy salads, specialty sandwiches and appetizers from scratch.
Flip the page and you’re into entrée specialties like chicken and riggies (chicken, peppers, marinara and sherry over rigatoni noodles), a 10-ounce filet of beef served with mushrooms and veggies, and chicken portofino (garlic, lemon, white wine, artichokes, mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes)
There are entire categories of Greek specialties, pasta specialties and seafood specialties — things like chicken souvlaki, stuffed shells and shrimp scampi.
We began our evening by sharing some appetizers.
Deep-fried calamari ($9.95) certainly appeared and tasted like it was hand-breaded, definitely more squid than bread, tender and tasty, served with safe, not-too-hot cocktail sauce. It was an ample portion, enough for the four of us to enjoy.
Mussels steamed in wine and garlic ($9.95) started with New Zealand “green” mussels, a frozen product you can pick up at most major supermarkets. The Riverside did a nice job with the sauce, wine and mellow garlic. Characteristic of N.Z. greens (referring to the color of the shells), some of the mussel meat is flesh colored; some is apricot orange. The orange ones had a dry, grainy taste.
A basketful of very tasty garlic bread ($4.95) featured mellow garlic that looked as if it had come from a jar.
Salads were included with the price of the entrées and consisted of quality fresh greens — romaine and spring mix — accompanied by red onion slices, olives, grape tomatoes and the usual choice of dressings.
Rather than a salad, I substituted a cup of Riverside clam chowder at a slight additional charge. There’s no charge if you go with soup of the day.
We were all surprised to see Manhattan clam chowder arrive (that’s the tomato-based one) rather than creamy New England chowder, seemingly the norm these days. It was flavorful, for sure, lots of clams and celery but with less tomato than we’re accustomed to.
We were surprised that there were no place mats or tablecloths on the wood-look plastic tables, leaving us a bit hesitant at times to set our silverware down on the bare table. But we were enjoying the outdoors, someone else was cooking and we didn’t have to do the dishes. Life is good.
Chicken portofino ($18.50) tantalized us earlier, so it was at the top of our list of entrées to try.
It was an ample portion of tender chicken, lots of artichoke hearts and visible minced yet mellow garlic, light on the mushrooms and sun-dried tomatoes. A soup cup of probably not fresh broccoli came with it, but the taste was quite fine due to attention from the kitchen.
Shrimp à la Grecian ($18.50) — two skewers of shrimp with peppers, onions and mushrooms over a bed of saffron rice — was surrounded by a Greek salad, pita triangles, yogurt dip (tzatziki) and feta cheese. A very attractive and tasty platter.
Baked lasagna with meatballs ($13.75) was a decent, rather firmly molded portion with a well-balanced, tangy tomato sauce draped over the top. Pieces of fresh basil were evident in the sauce, alluding to homemade quality. An oversized meatball was quite yummy.
Haddock oreganato ($19) was simple and effective, featuring a sensible portion of flaky haddock topped with sherry-laced, paprika-colored bread crumb topping sprinkled with oregano. Roasted red-skinned potatoes and a drizzle of garlic butter were an unexpected bonus, perfectly prepared and delightfully enjoyed.
Here we go again — appetizers and entrées created in-house capped off with thaw-and-serve desserts right off the tailgate of the restaurant supply truck.
I can understand why restaurants do that. Desserts are just too labor-intensive, and just a small fraction of guests indulge in the dessert course. But after all, dessert is the final course, and for those who partake, it’s the final memory of a night out.
Baklava was the winner of the dessert selections, plenty flaky and fully packed with delicious nut and honey filling.
Circular chocolate decadence cake, with its pinwheel design, was presented warm and was chocolaty rich with enough sugar to make your teeth buzz.
White chocolate macadamia nut cheesecake was short on cream cheese and tall on sugar. There’s that buzz again.
Dinner for four came in at $127. Gratuity and cocktails added to that total.
We enjoyed a cloud-free evening on the Riverside’s back deck overlooking the St. Lawrence River. There’s an enclosed porch that bridges the gap between the long, narrow dining room and the deck, perfect for those chilly evenings, still affording a perfect view of the massive cargo ships gliding by within shouting distance.
Our waitress was a pleasant young lady who delighted us with her smile and eager-to-please attitude. We assume that she, along with the rest of the wait staff and the owners, must have the circling seagulls well trained. We were very protective of our meals, but the gulls left us alone.
Riverside Café is a nice find in downtown Clayton. We suggest you plan a trip there, perhaps in conjunction with one of the many events at the opera house (there’s an “early bird” menu served 4 to 5:30 p.m. daily) or just a spur-of-the-moment visit the next beautiful summery day that comes along.
You can contact Walter E. Siebel via e-mail: wsiebel@wdt.net.
