East End Eats: Blue Canoe Tips Toward Fun
Blue Canoe
104 Third Street
Greenport
477-6888
Daily, noon-9 p.m.,
Friday and Saturday, noon-10 p.m.
Blue Canoe in Greenport is just plain fun. It’s on the water, has an expansive outdoor dining area, an eclectic menu with an Asian slant, great oysters in several guises, and a friendly staff. It is casual, but the food is pretty spiffy.
On a recent visit, we had to opt for indoor dining as the wind was just too blustery outside, even with the heaters. The interior is just as cozy as the outside is pretty. It is small with plain, white walls, a canoe hanging upside down from the ceiling, basil plants on the windowsills, a diminutive bar area, and minimal decor.
One of the more appealing aspects of the menu is the number of small offerings. Even what it calls “smaller plates” can be halved, so you can sample a good variety.
We began our meal with a cucumber avocado roll, shishito peppers, firecracker shrimp, and the onion ring boat. The cucumber avocado roll was fine, not much can go wrong there. We did note that there was a generous helping of pickled ginger, which we liked.
The shishitos were great. These are long, little, green peppers that are the Russian roulette of the capsicum annuum world. You can blithely gobble 8 or 9 or 10 but then you’ll get a super hot one. These shishitos were grilled on wooden skewers, then sprinkled with shichimi togarashi, a Japanese spice mixture, and served with a yuzu ranch dip that was absolutely delicious — citrusy and slightly salty. The firecracker shrimp are excellent, one of my favorite dishes here.
The shrimp are halved, fried, then sauced in a chili lime glaze and topped with sesame seeds and slivered scallions. They are crunchy, a bit chewy, the sauce spicy and sweet. The onion ring boat is presented in a humorous way. The rings are stacked on the mast of a metal boat basket and served with canoe sauce, another somewhat Asian-style tangy sauce. The onion rings may be a frozen brand, but they are tasty with a supercrunchy cornmeal coating.
For entrees we tried the Thai steak and noodle salad (sans beef for my vegetarian guest), barbecue ribs, vegan pasta Bolognese, and . . . french fries.
Sadly, the noodle salad was a dud, the rice noodles perhaps having spent too much time under refrigeration and tasting like it. The barbecue ribs were good, very tender with a good sauce and served with great pickles and a light coleslaw. I just prefer more smoky flavor permeating the meat, and this the ribs lacked.
The vegan Bolognese was excellent, a mixture of ground crimini mushrooms and other vegetables. You have the option to “make it creamy” with the addition of cream and Parmesan cheese, which we did and it was delicious. I was unaware until this visit that the folks who own Vine Street Cafe on Shelter Island also own Blue Canoe. Vine Street Cafe is renowned for its Bolognese sauce, so it’s no surprise this vegan version was so good. The french fries were also very good, thin and crisp, served in a paper cone.
The service was very good. Our waitress was friendly and knowledgeable. The staff did notice that the Thai rice noodle salad had been set aside barely touched and they took it off our bill, which was the right thing to do and much appreciated. Prices at Blue Canoe are moderate. Oyster prices vary; the oyster preparations are $12 to $18. Sushi is $9 to $16, smaller dishes (single to double orders) are $5 to $29, entrees are $14 to $44, sides are $3 to $9, desserts $7 to $9. The wine and beer list is short and reasonable.
There are no desserts made in-house but there are three quirky sweets offered at the end of the meal — grown-up chocolate bars, Bubbie’s mochi balls, and Kickshaw’s caramel corn in several flavors, pumpkin or gingerbread spice. We tried the mochi balls, three to an order. They were mango, blueberry, and lychee. Mochi is a chewy, glutinous rice cake molded around ice cream or red bean paste, a popular Japanese dessert or snack. The mango and lychee were delicious, but it was hard to detect blueberry flavor in the third mochi ball. The Kickshaw’s caramel corn (we tried the gingerbread spice) was insanely good, big fluffy kernels with a well-balanced spicy caramel coating and a teeny bit of white chocolate.
There are plenty of other dishes we wish we could have tried at Blue Canoe. I’ve had the oyster po’ boy before and it was equal to a New Orleans version. It also has nightly specials that sound fun, from a Japanese noodle night to chicken and waffles to sushi night and more. Blue Canoe is fun and young, original and casual, an alluring combination that makes for a wonderful experience, whether you dine inside or out.