Shellfish heaven

On your next visit to San Francisco you must not miss Swan Oyster Depot, a delightfully old-fashioned lunch spot in the Nob Hill neighborhood. The watchword is amazingly fresh seafood, and it's served at a counter with only about a dozen and a half stools. We arrived at 2:30 on a Tuesday and had to wait a few minutes to sit.

We ordered a dozen oysters, which our friendly young waiter shucked right in front of us. The oysters were delicious with cocktail sauce, and also without. (I think eating an oyster on the halfshell is like tasting the ocean itself.) I had a bowl of fine, creamy clam chowder and then the combination seafood cocktail, which was a sundae bowl filled with fresh shrimp, prawns, clams and crab, all of it slathered with yet more cocktail sauce (next time I'll ask for the sauce on the side). Ereck had a combination salad, with roughly the same meats. It looked glorious.

Despite Swan's ramshackle interior, the food is not particularly cheap. With tip we paid about $50 for all of the above, plus half a loaf of sourdough bread and a cup of coffee. The prices made me think of Doe's Eat Place in Greenville, Miss., a tumbledown shack of a joint that charges an arm and a leg for the best steak I've ever eaten.

Seafood cocktails, salads and chowder make up most of Swan's menu, which is a charming, hand-lettered affair that hangs over the counter. You can also get a whole lobster to eat, and the smoked salmon platter looks tasty. We can, in fact, vouch for the salmon--a man was slicing a huge salmon right in front of us as we ate, and he wordlessly tossed us each a sample. Delicious.