Let me be blunt: When it comes to eating out, I am a cynical curmudgeon who prefers my own or my wife’s great cooking. Frequent patronizing of restaurants is my idea of an obligatory chore. My wife is convinced that my jaded view of restaurants is grounded in the fact that I am close with the buck. That is only part of it. Not only do I wince at paying three times what most entries are worth, public eateries, I find, have a knack for taking perfectly good food and compromising it with overcooking and too many herbal doodads and over seasoning.

Where we winter over in the Florida Keys is Restaurant Central. There are almost as many dining out places as there are fishing boats and white BMWs. The local joke is, “Islamorada is a drinking town with a fishing problem.” Islamorada means village of islands. It would not be far- fetched to call it Islarestaurante, a fishing town with an eating problem.

Recently, at one of our expensive, top-shelf eateries, the Yellowtail Snapper dish, which can be one of my favorites at home, caught my attention. As it turned out the snapper was not overcooked, which is generally the case, but there was a problem: lemon overdose. The snapper had been “brined” with the squeezings of at least 12 fresh lemons. Talk about pucker factor! As we left the restaurant, my wife asked me why my lips were pursed. A few hours later I was able to move my lips enough to explain it all to her.

Wild protein, whether it is venison back strap or a filet of fresh-caught Yellowtail snapper, is a gift unto itself, delicate, taste-rich stand-alones that ought not to be subjected to culinary skullduggery or artful concoctions that mask flavor and conceal the essence of wildness.

Can you really improve upon the taste of fresh-caught whitefish or venison loin? Try this. Take two chunks of the same fish fillet. Heat up some hot oil. Roll one fish chunk in Herbie’s Super Duper Jalapeno Beer Batter and cook in the oil. Drop the other unbattered fish fillet naked into the hot oil. When they are cooked, taste test for comparison.

For test two, heat up a cast iron fry pan. Add some butter and olive oil. When it’s smoking hot, toss in a lightly-peppered venison loin and cook rare on high heat. Put it aside. Take another piece of loin and marinade it a few hours in Herbie’s Super Duper Mango Wild Meat Brine.

Remove from the brine and cook over hot heat adding generous amounts of Montreal Seasoning, red wine, and two tablespoons of Robert’s Redhot Roux. After cooking this conglomeration, garnish with a creamy goat-cheese white sauce. When this is done, conduct another comparison taste test. (This is best done in total sobriety).

The point is this, in case you missed it: In cooking, as in life, man is an incorrigible meddler, forever trying to improve on something that is already perfection. A fresh fillet of Yellowtail snapper and/or a thick cut of venison back strap (loin) is as good all by itself, as Nature can make it.

If you or your dinner guests don’t care for “the wild taste,” then forget it. Do your culinary spruce ups with a piece of domestic corn-fed beef, or one of those farm-raised, genetically-altered salmon from Brazil or Venezuela.

Or maybe just go to a local restaurant.

The author is editor of the Northwoods Sporting Journal. He is also a Maine Guide, co-host of a weekly radio program “Maine Outdoors” heard Sundays at 7 p.m. on The Voice of Maine News-Talk Network (WVOM-FM 103.9, WQVM-FM 101.3) and former information officer for the Maine Dept. of Fish and Wildlife. His e-mail address is vpaulr@tds.net . He has three books “A Maine Deer Hunter’s Logbook,” “Backtrack,” and his latest, “The Maine Angler’s Logbook.” Online purchase information is available at www.maineoutdoorpublications.com.

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