Revisit Ocean 302

Sometimes, you just have to go back to a place to dine, that you like. My nephew Brandon had a visitor from Vermont down for a few days of fishing. Rob Fenn, a chef at a wonderful restaurant called Jessica's in my hometown of Middlebury, was that friend. They had spent the whole day in Melbourne Beach surf fishing, and they were hot, thirsty and hungry. It was just nearing 5 PM so I asked them if they wanted to meet me at Ocean 302. I knew both of them had never been there, so I drove down to meet them.

The place opens at 4 PM on Wednesdays so when we entered we basically had our choice of tables. I think there were maybe four other people dining, but it was early. We choose a hightop table for three near the bar and ordered a craft beer for each of us. I saw they had Brussels Kale Blossoms as a sharable. One of my other new favorite restaurants is Rising Tide at Port Canaveral, and they also have this appetizer on their menu. I ordered it before but they were out. So Brandon and Rob agreed, and our server Alex put in our order. This is what came out...

Here is the menu description:

Wow, talk about something I have never had before. We asked Alex what it was exactly and he said they had combined kale with Brussel sprouts. I guess the brussel sprout opens like a kale flower. I looked it up on Wikipedia and found that they have brand names like kalettes, kale sprouts, and lollipops. They almost disintegrate as you eat them. I would recommend drizzling the aioli over them before picking them up because they are almost too brittle to dip. They definitely had the taste of Brussel sprouts. I liked them.

My entree order was one of the personal brick-oven pizzas. The one I got was called "Havana Nights" and looked like this:

Here is the menu description:

Rob decided to go with one of the burgers. Here is a photo of the "Praise the Lard":

Here is the menu description:

You really can't see the burger but the egg and fried green tomato are prominent. He upped the order to get the truffle fries. I know Robe enjoyed it very much.

Brandon went with one of the specials on the daily menu. It was called

"One fish, two fish,  red fish, blue crab"

I took two photos of the beautiful presentation:

It was a very large piece of redfish, covered by a blue crab cake, served with cheesy grits and a swiss chard and mushroom side vegetable. I am not sure what the sauces were but I did like the differing size dollops of the white stuff. The fish piece alone was bigger than what normally would come with a meal.

Sadly, all three of us were full and could not eat dessert. But one of the specials was bread pudding with forgotten sauces and accompaniments. I am sure it would have been wonderful.

I only ate half my pizza and let the boys take the rest to try at home later. My final thought is "Great people make great food taste even greater. It is nice to share."