Spoonbar's former chef, Rudy Mihal, did some creative cooking at Healdsburg's h2hotel. But with the advent of a new chef, the culinary innovations have been kicked up a notch or two - far enough that some of the dishes have lost two important qualities of all restaurant food: pleasure and satisfaction.
What are we to make of the vegetable appetizer listed as Asparagus, Dill, Walnut, Sumac ($10
?)? The plate holds four asparagus tips and as many strips of curls shaved from asparagus spears. These are a luscious spring treat all by themselves, but they are dusted with dry salt, crumbled sumac heads and crushed walnuts. Because the sumac and nuts are also dry, they don't yield their flavors easily. The asparagus is finished with the pickle-y taste of dill weed. Is this an achievement or a mish-mash? I'm voting for the latter.
The new chef is Louis Maldonado, formerly of Aziza, the Moroccan eatery in San Francisco, and considered among the hottest chefs in the Bay Area. While his innovations are welcome - it's great to see chefs trying something different - they still have to function as food.
The menu is completely revamped and lists five categories: snacks, vegetable appetizers, cured fish, pasta and main dishes. Among the snacks, all priced at $6, you can choose chicken cracklin's with a deviled egg, sweet onion yogurt with a fennel seed matzoh, or
Walnuts, Saffron, Aleppo Pepper (
). This last is a small cast-iron pot filled with walnut halves that have been coated with ground aleppo pepper paste made with saffron, then dried. The pepper has just a mild bite and a delicate fruitiness, while the saffron adds an additional taste rather than making a synthesis with the pepper. The problem with these nuts is that they are neither sweet nor savory, crunchy or soft, but somewhere in between all of these. It's hard to say they're positively yummy; easier to say they're OK.
The vegetable appetizers are all $10 and include the asparagus mentioned above. But there are also potato and buttermilk soup paired with English peas and pea shoots; and a m?ange of beets, Tokyo Cross turnip, yogurt and baby lettuces.
Cured fish seems an interesting category. Each dish is $13 and you can choose from sardines with country bread; branzino with horseradish, apple, and barley; scallops with fennel, mushrooms, and cilantro; or cobia (which gets a "Best Choice" rating by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch when it's farmed domestically) with avocado, mussel, and red onion.
Steelhead Roe (
) arrives in a small white ceramic tagine filled with cr?e fraiche. Each of the little amber eggs delivers a miniscule burst of salt when popped against the roof of the mouth, and the salt mingles nicely with the tangy fermented cream. In homage to caviar, the tagine is accompanied by three half-rounds of wafer-thin green onion crepes to spread the roe on. I wished there were more of the delicate crepes because they ran out before the roe did.
Each of the pasta courses costs $15 and includes caramelized onion with bone marrow ravioli and ricotta; spaghettini with black pepper and parmesan, and
Squid Ink Cavatelli with Shrimp and Manila Clams (
). These cavatelli are made from thin dough rolled up to about the thickness of a pencil, then cut into pieces about ? of an inch long. The chef then boils them in squid ink that turns them black, mixes them with three clams and five chunks of shrimp, and sauces the dish with spicy lemon, butter, and white wine.
Each main dish is priced at $23. Choose among chicken with brassicas (cabbage-family greens), olive and potato; rack of pork with mustard, radish and romaine lettuce, and
Short Rib with Quinoa, Mint, Ripe Jalape? and Preserved Orange (
?). Here, chef Maldonado hits his stride; the short-rib plate's separate ingredients come together in a pleasing and satisfying rainbow of flavors. The idea of the dish takes its cue from North African cooking, a style that's been refined over a millennium or two into one of the world's great cuisines. The short rib is a solid block of braised, tender beef over which all these lovely flavors show their colors.
For dessert, a single scoop of luscious, caramelized,
white-chocolate ice cream ($3
) hits the spot.
To sum up: While the impetus to experiment is admirable, the dishes work best when they are tethered to recognizable cuisines we know and love.
Jeff Cox writes a weekly restaurant review column for the Sonoma Living section. You can reach him at jeffcox@sonic.net.
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