Had dinner at Perla’s Seafood and Oyster Bar last night.

Austin folk, if you like fresh seafood, especially raw oysters, you must check out Perla’s.

Atmosphere is relaxed, casual, but neat and trim. If you showed up in your summer shirt and shorts you’d be fine, or if you’re in a suit you wouldn’t be out of place. We dined inside, but they have an ample outdoor patio under the oak trees right on South Congress Avenue.

I had a half dozen oysters. I forget exactly which I had… they have about 20 different varieties. But they were quite good. I appreciated the freshly grated horseradish. Wife and I also shared their salt and jalapeño pepper fried calamari… quite good, not overdone at all (very easy to overdo it). For entrées, Wife had an angel-hair pasta with some Gulf prawns, watercress, capers, olives, and I forget what else was in the sauce… paired well with a pino grigio Manu Sauvignon Blanc (wife corrected me). I had a pan roasted grouper with morel mushrooms in a fantastic lemony buttery sauce; very delicate, well executed. We also shared a side of their lobster stock, cheddar & green onion grits — folks, you’ve never had grits taste so good. Finished off with a strawberry rhubarb tart, which on the plate looked like it was going to be a load of pastry but wound up being quite well balanced and not heavy at all.

Service was excellent. This isn’t a hoity-toity fine-dining establishment, but you can tell they care about service and providing not just quality food but a quality experience as well. I appreciated how the waiter knew what was going on, what the restaurant did and didn’t have. The waiter didn’t interfere too much in our meal, but you could tell he was always keeping tabs on things. Just very well executed.

Prices are on the expensive side, but I’ve come to expect that whenever you go to a seafood place that doesn’t consider seafood to be “catfish”. 🙂  I like catfish, but I hope you understand the differentiator here.

Thing is, as I look at the Yelp reviews, Perla’s seems to be a mixed-bag. We had no problems with service, but that seems to be their biggest problem. Maybe it was because we had a special night there (and making prior reservations sure helped). Maybe it was because we came on a Tuesday night a little earlier than later and they certainly were not full (not empty, but certainly no one was waiting for a table). Who knows. But the end result was we had a good experience. Maybe the lesson is to make reservations and go at off times?

Anyway, I’ll certainly go back. Hopefully it will be another home run when I do.