Bluewater Grill in Newport Beach is celebrating 30 years in 2026, and what better way to mark the milestone than to release a cookbook by Bluewater Grill co-founders Jimmy Ulcickas and Richard Staunton.
“We’ve been fortunate to be able to share our love for fish and the sea with our Bluewater Grill customers for 30 years, so this book is our thank-you to everyone who has been part of our journey,” said Ulcickas.
“Flavors from the Shore: Nostalgic Seafood Recipes Celebrating Our Coasts & Waterways” from Skyhorse Publishing contains classic and new recipes inspired by the owners’ own travels, passion for the ocean and three decades growing Bluewater Grill into a leading family of sustainable seafood restaurants.
Available April 28 on Amazon and at Barnes & Noble as well as Bluewater Grill restaurants, the 300-page book features delicious dishes showcasing seafood and shellfish from America’s coasts and waterways.
The book’s 100 recipes are arranged geographically. From Blackened Pacific Swordfish and California Spiny Lobster “Puerto Nuevo Style” in the California Shores chapter to Roasted Oysters and Orange and Walnut-Crusted Halibut for the Pacific Northwest and Trout Amandine and Lake Superior Whitefish for Midwest Lakes and Riverbanks.
Recipes include the Atlantic and Mid-Atlantic Seaboard for Maryland-Style Crab Cakes as well as Maine and Connecticut Style Lobster Rolls. You can also tour the Southern Waterfront and the Gulf to sample spicy oyster, shrimp, and blackened fish dishes.
More than just recipes, the book is packed with gorgeous photos of the seafood dishes as well as dazzling images of the locations from which the recipes came. There’s even a photo of longtime Newport Beach resident and actor John Wayne posing with his catch of the day.
“Flavors from the Shore” is a beautiful cookbook that’s perfect for the kitchen as well as a coffee table.
So what made Ulcickas want to tackle a cookbook, especially one that is so comprehensive?
“It’s our 30th, anniversary, and I was thinking of legacy and memorializing our philosophy that there are certain things you eat that you identify with,” he said. “There is an emotional connection to comfort foods. I like to call it the taste of your memory, your taste of your childhood, the taste of summers with friends and family. That’s why the book titled ‘Flavors from the Shore.’ It could be the shore of a lake, the shore of an ocean, the shore of a river.”
One aspect of the book that makes reading it so much fun are the stories that accompany the recipes and insights on selecting and purchasing fish.
A 300-page recipe book can be an intimidating task for any author, but Ulcickas said the book flowed from his memory.
“I don’t want to say it was easy, but it didn’t take a ton of work,” said Ulcickas. “We had a lot of the recipes from Bluewater, but we had to edit those down into portions for two to four people, which my executive chef helped with. And the stories just sort of set themselves up. And then the photos. We hired a really good photographer, and over the course of three days we captured images for many of the recipes.”
The photos alone will make readers hungry just by looking at them, and the recipes are provided in a way that makes each dish easily accessible for home cooks. Of course, the key to making these dishes is to start with a quality product.
“I think the best recipes start with the highest quality protein,” explained Ulcickas. “The ingredients are paramount. And then don’t try and get too complicated. If you want a really fancy, complicated meal, go out to a restaurant.”
Among the many overviews of various seafoods is a section on oysters. It includes descriptions of different types of oysters, how to eat oysters, how to tell the freshness of an oyster, and even the history of oysters.
“The key to oysters is you want to go somewhere where they’re selling a lot of them,” said Ulcickas. “Oysters are sold by the case, which is 144 oysters. They are taken out of the water and shipped with a tag that tells you the date they came out of the water. They can live for a month out of the water if they’re properly stored. They have their own little ecosystem. They clamp closed. They think it’s low tide. They don’t want to open up and drain out the liquid which keeps them alive. So they just stay closed if they’re held at a constant temperature. They’re basically alive when you shuck them.”
With so many recipes, does Ulcickas have a favorite?
“I love steamed mussels, either the French classical way with shallots and butter and wine and garlic, or the way we do it at Bluewater with chorizo, which is a hearty broth, but with a nice hunk of crusty bread you have a very flavorful and not too filling dish,” said Ulcickas. “You’re satisfied by the flavors and the liquid, not by the weight of what you’re eating. Where I grew up, we would go harvest mussels and clean them and dig clams and steam them. It reminds me of my childhood and fun on the cape or fun in Maine.”
Ultimately, said Ulcickas, the book is “all about making new seafood fans.” Or maybe reminding Bluewater Grill devotees how delicious those seafood dishes really are.
“Flavors from the Shore” retails for $38 and is available in hardcover, e-book and audiobook at Amazon.
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