I Am the Walrus, Part 1

The coldest part of the winter is the best time to eat oysters, for a number of reasons. As the water gets colder, oysters put on a layer of insulation called glycogen, which is an animal starch containing a sugar compound. That's why winter oysters taste so much sweeter. As the water warms up, they convert that sugar into reproductive material and the flavor gets fishier. They are thin and taste like nothing in the summer, after they spawn.

But there's an even better reason to eat Gulf Coast oysters in the winter, as I learned from my friends at the Texas Seafood Safety Desk. Vibrio vulnificus, the warm-water bacteria that kills around 40 oyster eaters every year and makes a few hundred sick, is most abundant in the summer when the water is warmest. When the water temperature falls below 65 degrees Fahrenheit, there are hardly any of the bacteria to be found.

I love raw oysters but have come to consider them a seasonal treat. So on the morning of my birthday, with the marine forecast at www.weatherunderground.com showing the water temperature in Galveston Bay at 62 degrees Fahrenheit, I celebrated at Willie G's.

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The oyster bar at Willie G's is top-notch, but as this is a restaurant review, I feel somewhat obliged to discuss the rest of the menu. The seafood gumbo, crab bisque and crawfish bisque, all of which I also sampled on my birthday, were bland, floury-tasting soups with gummy, overcooked seafood.

A redfish topped with Pontchartrain sauce was awful. The fish was gloppy, and the mushroom wine sauce with crab served on top only made matters worse. I suspect the awful texture was due to the fish's being past its prime.

The only items on Willie G's regular menu that I ended up enjoying were those made with lump crabmeat. These are priced according to the market and can be quite expensive. The items that involve the least cooking are your best bet. The jumbo lump crab salad, for instance, is a whole lot of fresh jumbo crabmeat heaped on a very average salad. The last time I ordered one, it was $24 and quite tasty.

The jumbo lump crab sauté, an oval serving dish full of jumbo lump crab sautéed in butter with green onions and mushrooms, was also $24. The problem with this dish is the starch. You're offered a baked potato, fettuccine in Alfredo sauce or angel hair with marinara, none of which makes any sense with crab in butter sauce. I solved the dilemma by asking for angel hair with no sauce at all. Then I dunked forkfuls of pasta into the crabby butter. There is also a crabmeat fettuccine on the menu, but I wouldn't chance it.

My oyster-eating buddy had the "snapper Charlie," Gulf red snapper topped with lump crabmeat in butter. I have to say that this dish was quite good. The fish wasn't the freshest, but the kitchen left the tail on to prove that it was indeed a Gulf red snapper. And it's hard to mess up snapper, crab and butter. The fettuccine Alfredo that he got on the side was a gloppy mess of overcooked noodles in lame cheese sauce.

Willie G's does to Cajun food what Kenny G does to jazz: It takes the spicy kick out of an edgy American genre and turns it into something innocuous enough for mass consumption. The next time we get a cold snap, I recommend you stop by Willie G's oyster bar for some fabulous Galveston Bay oysters -- and then go eat the rest of your dinner somewhere else.