As soon as I saw the "de-constructed beef Wellington" on the menu in my pre-dining Web site research on Evenfall, I had to go.
Not only had people been yakking about this restaurant for the past few years, but look, I thought, they're also using some of my favorite avant-garde cuisine techniques.
Evenfall, 8 Knipe Road (Route 125), Bradford (Haverhill), Mass. (978) 521-7550 www.evenfallrestaurant.com
Hours: Food Monday 5 p.m.-9 p.m., Tuesday-Thursday, 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m.; Friday until midnight, Saturday 5 p.m.-midnight. Bar open later.
Food **** and a half. Creative and innovative up to a point, and always delicious. I'll go back to see Chef Pelletier push the culinary envelope some more.
Service. ****. Our server knew a great deal about the menu and was warm and efficient.
Ambience. *** and half. I like the modern look of the décor, although some details seemed "tired" and worn out.
Overall. ****. It all fits—Cool scene, good service, nice wine, and tasty, innovative cuisine all in harmony.
Five stars - Excellent
Four stars - Very Good
Three stars - Good
Two stars - Fair
One star - Poor
CHOICE TIPS
If you like creative modern cuisine try:
Arrows Restaurant, Berwick Road, Ogunquit, Maine (207) 361-1100 www.arrowsrestaurant.com. Who loves Arrows? I do! All the great seasonal and local products we value merged with delightful concepts. Worth a splurge.
Anneke Jans, 60 Wallingford Square, Kittery, Maine, (207) 439-0001 www.annekejans.net. I mention Anneke's because I was there recently and on my pan-roasted lobster was another one of those culinary innovations — foam! Very cool. Great dinner.
For those of you not familiar, deconstruction is a term borrowed from literary analysis that in the food world means to separate all the elements of a familiar dish and serve them on the plate in parts in some form, like , say, an array of romaine, anchovy, parmesan garlic in some form and egg yolk laid out as a Caesar salad instead of all mixed together as a dressing tossed on the lettuce. Sounds odd, but actually can be very interesting and fun.
So down to Massachusetts we went, Organic Farmer Andy and I, all the way to Haverhill, but it wasn't the innovative preparations that got us agog, it was the crispy baby back ribs. I still dream about them. And they were completely constructed. I'll get to that.
The building looks like someone's house along the highway, not much from the outside but the inside is quirky-mod. The lounge has tables where you can have dinner and a bar with the usual interesting cocktails including a few varieties of mojito. I didn't find our bartender all that friendly and he didn't know the origin of the name of the restaurant either but all that changed when we went into the large also mod dining room, hung throughout with large white paper orbs like stylized stars in the evening sky. Indeed, as our server Ashley told us, Evenfall means "dusk," that short period of time when day ends and the magic of the evening begins. Isn't it romantic?
There were a few people in for a dinner special, which they have on Monday-Wednesday for $25 a person for three-courses and then there is some mumbo jumbo about skipping a course and adding wine from a special list for $50 for two people. We were there for the whole magilla though and started with crispy vegetable spring rolls, crunchy and not a bit greasy outside with slivers of carrot, cabbage and spice inside ($8).
There was a great housemade sweet duck sauce to dip in as well as a fresh Asian slaw. But while that was good, next time I'll just order two or three plates of the crispy baby back ribs because they're luxuriously good. The meat seemed to fall off the bone just by looking at the four ribs with a soy orange glaze dotted with sesame seeds (I believe I detected a hint of Chinese five-spice as well). And the outside was indeed crispy, which made them even more delicious. I could get in the car right now and get some.
We also tried some of the salads. The "fork and knife" Caesar had large leaves of romaine, a Parmesan crisp, roasted olives and tomatoes and large white anchovy filets ($9). My organic local tomato was delightfully creative. On a long plate were a ceramic spoon of smooth olive oil ice cream, a stack of sliced mozzarella interspersed with ripe yellow and red tomatoes (Ashley even knew the type of tomato — Backyard Beauties — and that they are grown by Chef Scott Pelletier) and a shooter of roasted tomato puree ($10), all a fun and delicious way to enjoy a salad course.
For entrees I tried the crispy organic chicken listed as "Phoenix air-chilled," which I did a little research on. Phoenix is the company that supplies the chicken, but "air-chilled" is the key here, referring to the process of rapidly cooling the chicken in a cold room, thus keeping down the bacteria. It's believed that the process yields a more tender and juicy bird with a skin that roasts up more crisply than others and this chicken was indeed very juicy and flavorful in a preserved lemon pan jus for a little excitement and some wild mushroom and mascarpone ravioli underneath, a terrific accompaniment ($19).
And of course we tried the deconstructed beef Wellington ($29). Traditionally a Wellington is a beef tenderloin topped with pate and duxelle (a mix of sautéed mushrooms, onions, shallots and herbs) then wrapped in puff pastry and baked. Here, deconstructed, it was a filet topped with a round of puff pastry, which was in turn topped with truffle butter and surrounded by the duxelle mixture with spinach and mashed Yukon gold potatoes. One issue was that the butter was on the pastry, which prevented it from melting all over the meat as it should have, requiring some reconstruction, but the filet was tender, infused with a red wine demi and the dish as a whole was very good, if not all that earth-shattering in nouveau style.
Desserts are fun here too. A torched Alaska was the traditional meringue filled with a layer of chocolate cake and another of banana ice cream (made in house) with a few slices of bruleed bananas, the soft fruit coated with a caramelized crunch. A chocolate sauce on the plate allowed for richer flavor ($10). I only wished there was more of the banana, but the merange was fluffy and added to the mix of textures. An ice cream cookie sandwich duo had two small whoopee pie looking items, one a peanut butter cookie with mint chocolate chip ice cream and a caramel sauce and the other a lemon cookie with lavender ice cream and lemon sauce ($8). I preferred the lemon, finding the mint and peanut combo a bit odd, but the dish was creative and interesting.
I like what Chef Pelletier is doing here. In a restaurant world around here where menus get stale and hum-drum, he's experimenting with new flavors but also standard flavors and dishes in new forms with success. And all innovation aside, he still honors our need for comfort food as in those baby back ribs. I'm getting the car keys right now.
Rachel Forrest is a former restaurant owner who lives in Exeter. Her column appears Wednesdays in iT. Her restaurant review column, Dining Out, appears Thursdays in Spotlight magazine. Hear her on Wine Me Dine Me with co-host Susan Tuveson Fridays at 6 p.m. on WSCA-FM 106.1. She can be reached by e-mail at rachelforrest1@aol.com.
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