Erizo is a really fantastic restaurant. They do a 20-ish-course tasting menu that’s focused on sustainable seafood from the Oregon and Washington coast. They have foraging and fishing licenses, so at the beginning of every week, the two owners go out to the coast and forage limpets, different kinds of barnacles, and other things you can’t actually buy. So they have this great, ever-changing cast of weird sea creatures that they prepare for you. A lot of it’s raw, but there’s also a lot of fermentation. They make a lot of different garums, which are basically fish sauces, with all these different ingredients.
They bring some really cool local produce into play, but overall, it’s very shellfish- and seafood-heavy. The atmosphere there is very, very clean. It has a cork floor, a lot of clean white and wood, and it’s just this lovely, quiet, calm atmosphere for you to devour delicious sea creatures and drink amazing wines. It’s really rad. They’re doing something that I’ve never seen anywhere before. The closest thing that I could compare it to would be Willows Inn up in Washington. It’s just really fascinating stuff.
