Neptune's Net
The Los Angeles Letter
Los Angeles contains multitudes. It has glamour and grit, fame and anonymity, and mountains that meet the ocean. She is a microcosm of American diversity and complexity. And for all of its iconic locales, perhaps none captures its ethos more perfectly than driving on PCH, slinking through Malibu, and pulling over near the Ventura County line. Its late summer days have you dreaming of running away here, throwing your cell phone out the window, and disappearing—at least for a while. It is the sort of drive where you find grown men in convertibles without irony and one where Italian sports cars mix comfortably with a beat-up Westfalia stacked with longboards. Don’t be in a hurry because you’re already there. But you may get hungry along the way, and you will find options there. If you do, you should consider eating oysters near the ocean because what better thing can you imagine? In A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway (published after his death) wrote:
"As I eat the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washes away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drink their cold liquid from each shell and wash it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lose the empty feeling and begin to be happy and to make plans."
I definitely cannot write this better, and yet I understand that eating raw oysters may require bravery and is saddled with some small risk. I recently ate a raw oyster, fresh out of the sea, which was less than stellar. It was too large for my liking and had a heavy mineral taste. But I will always remember it and where I was when I ate it. Certain foods hit all of your senses and plaster your memories with sun and salt and the desire to be there again.
Fortunately, in this part of the world, you can find well-sourced oysters and seafood to make your memories with. On the roughly 23 miles of Pacific Coast Highway between Topanga Canyon and Yerba Buena Road, you’ll find seafood shacks where you can get your fill of oysters and seafood and have late summer vibes. The Reel Inn in the south, Malibu Seafood roughly in the middle (just past Pepperdine University), and you can stop north into Neptune’s Net, which opened in 1956 as the Panorama Pacific, then as Jake’s Diner, with its final name change after being sold to the Seay family in 1974 (now owned by the Lee family since 1991).
It is difficult to imagine a more perfect day than starting at the Reel Inn for crab cakes, having clam chowder in a bread bowl at Malibu Seafood, and finishing at Neptune’s Net with a dozen oysters, followed by peel-and-eat shrimp or king crab—sold by the pound. There are also the inevitable fish fry baskets, which are always reliable and satisfying.
Neptune’s Net is a walk-up window with picnic tables to share with bikers, B-movie actors, surfers, and perhaps explorers just like you.
The "Jake" of the original Diner is a NASA aerodynamicist (I looked this up—it’s a brilliant dude who studies the motion of air) named Eastman Jacobs. After helping in World War II, he bought a ranch that ran down to Pacific Coast Highway, across the street from County Line Beach. In 1956, Jacobs built a gas station, real estate office, and restaurant called Panorama Pacific at Solimar. In the '60s, Jacobs leased the restaurant to the Leech family of Venice, and the spot became popular with surfers, many of whom work in exchange for breakfast.
If you’ve read the excellent and fun 2021 novel Malibu Rising, you’ll remember Riva’s Seafood, a beach shack much like Neptune’s Net run by protagonist Nina Riva’s grandparents. I don’t know which place, if any, Ms. Taylor Jenkins Reid bases her story on. But I prefer to imagine it is this one.
The last holiday of summer is here. You should drive to Neptune’s Net, order oysters and wine, be happy, and make plans for the Fall.
You sure get around Ante ! Thanks love you ! 🥰 See