ELV remembers when the Dome of the Sea in the Dunes Hotel was the ne plus ultra of seafood restaurants in the High Mojave Desert. Actually, for about thirty years it was the only seafood restaurant around here. We remember with fondness the harpist who traveled around the restaurant on a moving track, playing melodically mediocre light classical tunes to distract the diners from the time-worn, tired and tepid recipes being served up (frozen sole almandine anyone?)
Now we have two seafood restaurants (RM Seafood and Bartolotta Ristorante di Mare) that compete with the best in the country. Le Bernadin in NYC is generally considered the best seafood restaurant in America, but nothing Eric Ripert served us in January (at a highly disappointing lunch there) competes with our last two meals at RM. Click here to hear my first review of RM Seafood, shortly after it opened in 2005. (FYI: The service flaws I complained of at the time were corrected long ago.)