Kokopelli Grill is owned by Texans Chef Michael and Candy McQuay who opened it in Dec. 2009.   He produces a Southwest style cuisine using local seafoods, steaks and produce for this, the more upscale side of their two places.  (The other half is Hook & Line Pub nextdoor, serving lots of fish and chips.) It’s a large 2-story place with the entry room having a high ceiling, some booths along the walls and a staircase at the back wall.   Upstairs the two rooms had lower ceilings and bare wood tables and chairs with a bar counter in one of them.  A couple lucky tables had a view of the harbor in the bar room but most had a view of the downtown street.  Music was throughout and older wood made up the floors. A television screen was behind the bar but it was muted. The place felt jumbled and service matched the feel, but in the server’s defense he was new.  However apologies can only work on one snafu, after several it starts to affect your experience.  We had to wait a good 20 minutes for our drink order to be taken.  When we ordered I asked to please not bring it all out at once but sure enough our salads came before the raw oyster and then the entreé came before I even had a forkful of salad.  Rolls never appeared.  The food was probably better than I write it up but it was such a mess it was hard to look beyond.

Set-Up

Food

Dinners come with a soup or salad and we chose the salad and the server recommended their house specialty, Prickly pear salad dressing which we tried.   It came in a cup on the side and the salad included a number of ingredients like nuts and dried fruit, but not sure what all.  I had time to pour the dressing on when the oysters arrived.  At which point I reiterated to the server that I’d like a bit of time to catch up before the fish arrived which it promptly did with another apology.

We ordered a dozen local Hama Hama oysters served with a champagne mignonette.  These are oysters farmed on the Olympic Peninsula  in some of the coldest and least developed rivers in Washington state, however these oysters were not nicely shucked and so bits of shell and such were with the flesh.  The mignonette was tasty but there was no small spoon or device with which to dab a bit onto the oyster and no fork if you wanted to dip.

Dungeness Crab stuffed Halibut has been on the menu since they opened.  It is pan roasted and served with jalapeño poblano cream sauce.  Plates come with a choice of starch and fresh vegetables, which were French fries and asparagus for us.  The fries were crisp and tasty but due to the coating didn’t seem to be the housemade ones the server said they were.  We had a nice white wine to go with the fish but I never got a photo as it needed to be twirled in the ice bucket since it was served room temperature.  There was a good pile of thin asparagus under the fish but the knife we had could not cut them.  The halibut was way overcooked and the crab was too.  It was a delicious sauce though.