Discover fine dining at Oak Harbor hideaway

OAK HARBOR — With Valentine’s Day falling on a Thursday this year, many couples celebrated the holiday on the weekend after, and many of those couples were among those filling all the seats at Frasers Gourmet Hideaway.

Frasers, named after owner-chef Scott Fraser and his co-owner wife, Josee, opened about 18 months ago on a one-way street in downtown Oak Harbor. It took us three tries before we found the right combination of streets and turns to get to this restaurant, which is on the ground floor of a corner building. The restaurant’s Web site gallery page includes an outside photo of the building, which will help you find it.

My dining companion and I visited Frasers because a number of Herald readers, including some Whidbey Island residents, sent e-mails recommending we visit. One couple who dined with friends at Frasers wrote, “We felt that we had been invited to an upscale restaurant on the Eastside or Seattle. All the dishes we had were excellent and presentations first class.”

When we made our reservations around noon for Saturday dinner, only four seats remained and all four were at the bar, which has a view of the kitchen. Eating at the counter isn’t my favorite seat in the house and the idea of watching the swinging doors as servers move from dining room to kitchen didn’t add any enchantment, but there are many times reviews require giving up personal preferences.

But sitting at this bar means is like sitting on the front row at the 50-yard line. For most of our dinner, we watched mashed potatoes being squeezed like frosting from a cone at the beginning of an order, or prawns, sea scallops and mussels lovingly placed around the angel hair pasta in garlic cream sauce. Every dish was designed and not a stray parsley flake or drop of sauce marred the edge of any dinner plate.

Even more exciting for us, when there was the slightest lull Chef Fraser spent the time chatting with those sitting nearby. For example, he explained that the Kobe-style beef he uses is bred on Whidbey Island from Kobe stock from Japan that’s cross-bred with American angus.

My friend’s Kobe steak ($38), which was one of that night’s specials, was served with mashed potatoes, asparagus spears and a scoop of crab meat and topped with a cream sauce. Beautiful to look at, and tender and flavorful enough to quickly get a few extra points.

I ordered the other special of the night — hand-made pasta in Parmesan cheese sauce, filled with Australian lobster tail pieces and baby English peas ($26). Every part of the dish was excellent and they combined to make a delicious main dish.

In addition to our great dinners, we had appetizers and dessert. I enjoyed the Dungeness crab and risotto cakes with garlic aioli ($11) and my dining companion ordered the French onion soup topped with Gruyere cheese ($9.50). Those Kobe beef bones probably flavor the onion soup, too, because it was the best. It’s served in a giant onion and my friend treated it like a taco salad and ate the “bowl.”

As we were leaving, one of the customers paying his bill said to the server, “Great service. Really great service. Thank you.”

We had the same attentive service and, just like Herald readers, our dinners were delicious, creative combinations with beautiful presentations. Chef Fraser has truly created a gourmet hideaway.

Herald restaurant reviewers accept no invitations to review, but readers’ suggestions are always welcome. Reviewers arrive unannounced, and The Herald pays their tabs.

Contact Anna Poole at features@heraldnet.com.