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EVERY WINTER upon retrieving my overcoat from the closet, I find squirreled-away surprises in its pockets: ticket stubs from a movie the winter before, a tattered leaf I stuffed away to press but never got to, maybe even a $20 bill.

Souvenirs held from the year before, they are delightful in their unexpectedness.

Becky Stein/SPECIAL (ENLARGE)
C & S Seafood and Oyster Bar's big-boy portions of raw oysters offer quite a change from landlocked Atlanta's usual steak-and-sushi fare.
Becky Stein/SPECIAL (ENLARGE)
Steamed snapper is served Marseille-style in a bouillabaisse.
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I'm not sure what I was expecting from Clark & Schwenk's Seafood & Oyster House, but what I got was very much like one of my winter souvenirs — a delight, right down to the bottom of my pocket.

Owners Rich Clark and Jon Schwenk have created a brasserie-style restaurant that's a little lower Manhattan and a little Boca Raton — designed by Z-Space Inc. The interior has a lush-life look to it, even though it's small, narrow and planted in the corner of a strip mall off Cobb Parkway. The décor is brooding in spots, brassy in others; a luxurious window banquette ever-so-cleverly sweeps toward the ceiling, preventing the otherwise inevitable view of the Kroger parking lot. It, along with a fresh fish case and brasserie bar serving classic cocktails like Pimm's cup and Tom Collins, help suspend the belief of being somewhere other than the posh suburbs surrounding the Chattahoochee River.

For a landlocked city like Atlanta, a classic fish house is a refreshing change from the usual steak-and-sushi gig. And this is classic: Big-boy portions of raw oysters and cherrystone clams, classic cocktails such as pisco sours, a variety of fish from arctic char to rainbow trout flown in fresh daily, steaks and sides of spinach with olive oil and garlic. The grand steak and fish houses of the early 20th century are American gastronomic icons, and C & S proves its mettle when it comes to making simple preparations — broiled or chargrilled fish, elegant but simply prepared with sides of roasted fingerling potatoes and haricot verts — into big, bold plates of beauty.

Schwenk, who worked at Brasserie le Coze, has some experience cooking fish, and the attitude of this kitchen is to let flavors speak for themselves — rarely are their inventions of grandeur. One exception that works extremely well, but I imagine proves a hard sell for servers, is an appetizer of scallops with a caper-raisin sauce. The menu note actually made me do a double-take. But three plump scallops, seared and crowned with a thin slice of caramelized cauliflower and mated perfectly with a pithy, almost surly sauce of sweet and salt are hard to argue with.

Salmon in dill sauce with layers of pan-fried potatoes, pretty-in-pink shrimp in a cognac and tarragon sauce laced with black pepper and fat slices of heirloom tomatoes layered with Vidalia onions won't cause any face-offs, either.

Snapper served Marseille-style (think bouillabaisse with saffron) is a little overbearing, the flavor of the fish stacked up against too much fennel until it is a memory.

Gazpacho with lump crab is mostly forgettable, too. Steaks might seem a menu must-have (the way fish and chicken are at a steakhouse), but I'd much rather chomp down on a ladies' cut of Wagyu New York strip elsewhere and stick to things that swim, like broiled halibut with mushrooms, sunchokes and sultry truffled corn sauce. And desserts here are acceptable, but rarely rise to the level of the rest of the menu — an apple tart served warm with rich caramel ice cream was the only real standout.

C & S offers A-list service, the kind you'd expect at a much larger, deeper-pocketed venue. Many of the servers are veterans of Brasserie le Coze, and while their steward-jacketed approach to service is partly haute French, much of the attitude here finds its roots in the informalities of what's best about American service — relaxed, informative, but properly distanced.

The same could be said for C & S. Sitting at the bar sipping a pisco sour, it's easy to forget the Kroger parking lot and imagine for a moment a fanciful world of Dorothy Parkers and Dashiell Hammetts meeting for drinks and staying for dinner. Nick and Nora Charles are stopping in for a bite. And like Ms. Parker, I, too, will never be a millionaire, but C & S makes me feel like I might be just darling at it.

Overall rating:

Food: Seafood

Service: Excellent, from front door to kitchen door, the staff knows its way around a dining room

Address, telephone: 3300 Cobb Parkway, Suite 3240, 770-272-0999

Price range: $$$

Credit cards: Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Diners Club

Hours of operation: Open for lunch and dinner Monday through Thursday from 11:30 a.m. to 11 p.m., Friday 11:30 to midnight, Saturday from 5 p.m. to midnight and Sunday 5 to 10 p.m.

Best dishes: Seared scallops with caper-raisin sauce, shrimp in cognac sauce, halibut, raw oysters, spinach with garlic and olive oil, salmon with dill sauce

Vegetarian selections: Sides of Vichy carrots, heirloom tomato salad, chopped salad (without bacon), Parmesan truffled potato chips

Children: Certainly, during lunch or early evening hours

Parking: Adjacent lot

Reservations: Accepted

Wheelchair access: Yes

Smoking: No smoking

Noise level: High

Patio: No

Takeout: Yes

Website: www.candsoysterbar.com

KEY TO RATINGS
Outstanding: Sets the standard for fine dining in the region.
Excellent: One of the best in the Atlanta area.
Very good: Merits a drive if you're looking for this kind of dining.
Good: A worthy addition to its neighborhood, but food may be hit or miss.
Fair: The food is more miss than hit.
Restaurants that do not meet these criteria may be rated Poor.

Pricing code: $$$$$ means more than $75; $$$$ means $75 and less; $$$ means $50 and less; $$ means $25 and less; $ means $15 and less. (The price code represents a meal for one that includes appetizer, entree and dessert without including tax, tip and cocktails.)