By Gloria Glyer

There’s nothing fishy about this popular Sacramento restaurant.

Scott’s Seafood Grill & Bar at Loehmann’s Plaza is steeped in traditional ambiance, but its menu has enough trendy items for the adventurous, while offering a shrimp or crab Louis for the less daring diner. Here, the key word is fresh.

Scott’s is comfortably designed, with a dining room that is nicely divided to keep the noise level well below a roar, and an attractive lattice-enclosed patio.

To get us started, Diva Joan Leineke chose Ferrari-Carano 2003 Fume Blanc for the white, Renwood Fiddletown 2000 Zinfandel for the red.

Scott’s has an ambitious menu, but we skipped many items, including oysters on the half shell; prawn, shrimp and crab cocktails; and most nonfish dishes, except for the burger. Highlights of our meal included the barbecued wild sturgeon, served with a crispy polenta cake. The best part of the dish was the roasted white corn salsa, a colorful and crunchy addition.

One of Scott’s signature dishes is the macadamia nut-crusted Alaskan halibut with brown butter; it needed a sprinkling of salt. Scott’s version of salmon is seared with Moroccan spices and is served with a pancetta-leek rosti, which seemed muggy and heavy. (Perhaps it should have been sautéed a bit longer.) The saffron-caper beurre blanc was a tasty addition. Each entrée had something different going for it, as evidenced by the char-grilled swordfish, which was accompanied by a Creole rice cake, grilled avocado and Caribbean plantain sauce with a slice of crispy grilled plantain.

The Hawaiian ahi-poki butter-lettuce wraps can be ordered seared or raw—we chose seared. The ahi was cubed and easy to encase in a leaf of butter lettuce.

Crab-and-asparagus ravioli had a Manchego cheese sauce. The dish seemed heavy and the ravioli overcooked. The menu included something for vegans: “prawns” made of soy protein. The star of the dish was a grilled half avocado filled with a saucy Caribbean plantain mixture.

The crispy calamari salad came with a papaya-avocado relish and wonton strips, macadamias and sweet Thai chile lime vinaigrette. It was a generous salad with a wide range of flavors and textures. Actually, all of the dishes were generously sized, but not overwhelming.

The best part of the crab cakes was the deep-fried julienned leeks, which were crispy, crunchy and addictive.

Scott’s offers a traditional seafood salad with prawns, scallops and bay shrimp, its Louis dressing served on the side. The salad is pedestrian at best, especially when there are so many other choices.

From the dessert list, we picked everything but the guilt-free sundae: Who needs reduced fat and no sugar on a party day? Topping my choices was the “raspberry Jack,” made with vanilla ice cream, raspberries and a splash of triple sec. The flavors melded into one delicious, cooling delight, with just a dash—not much—of triple sec. The crème brûlée, gelato and sorbet change daily; we had the tangy blood-orange sorbet; an intensely flavored Knob Creek butter-pecan gelato; and white-chocolate blueberry brûlée. Of the regular desserts, the warm chocolate lava cake filled our need for chocolate, and the caramel macadamia nut apple cobbler was a nice, old-fashioned touch. Maybe next time we’ll try the intriguing dessert martinis: One, the Key Lime pie martini, is made with Smirnoff vanilla vodka, Parrot Bay rum and fresh lime, and the rim of the glass is dipped in crushed graham crackers.

Laynia Stuckey, a Scott’s employee for two years and a student at California State University, Sacramento, served us with a calm demeanor.

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This article appears in the August 2004 issue of Sacramento Magazine.