Ama Amas Nuevo-Tiki Food Doesnt Quite Pass the Clean-Plate
Test  The more the chef let bar food be bar food, the more
enjoyable it was.  Is it a bad sign when the lamb sliders are
your favorite dish at an oyster bar?  Clearly, a rhetorical
question. But it was the one I asked my tablemate as we looked
over the remains of my first meal at Ama Ama Oyster Bar & Grill
in West Seattle. I was noting the fact that we had left intact a
bowl of mushroom mac 'n' cheese, as well as one of the three
deep-fried oysters that had arrived sticking out of the murk
like a Colonel's extra-crispy Stonehenge. We'd finished perhaps
a third of a mahi-mahi entrée, and much of our first-course
salad was left beside it. Too much food, perhaps. Except there
was no sign left of the palm-sized burgers.  Above the debris of
our meal, the view was a triumph of West Elm tiki. To understand
the meaning of the global oyster bar's name, as well as its
aesthetic, you have to triangulate etymologies: In Hawaiian, ama
ama means "mullet." "Hama