Serratto
2112
NW Kearney St.
221-1195
Picks:
Grilled sardines with red pepper sauce, risotto con
funghi porcini, petrale sole with lemon sauce,
cremino.
Nice touch:
Vineria or casual area for drinking, furnished in a
clubby, comfortable manner. And if you're waiting for
a table at busy Caffe Mingo a few doors away, you can
have a drink at Serratto's bar and be summoned to Mingo
via intercom.
Serratto, Michael Cronin's new restaurant that replaced
his erstwhile Delphina's, opened several months ago as
the flagship of Portland's "Little Italy" row. (Cronin's
lively Caffe Mingo is just a couple of doors away, next
to Tuscany Grill.) Visually, Serratto is not just an improvement
over Delphina's but a stunner, at once rustic and sophisticated,
with Italian country-style wrought-iron fixtures, a 70-year-old
fir floor made of planks rescued from a warehouse on the
Oregon coast, huge wooden ceiling beams, hand-painted
benches and a folksy painting of Tuscan vineyards.
Serratto has been slow coming into its own, however.
If you choose very carefully you can have a nice meal,
but for the moment the menu is rather inconsistent.
Though the list is well thought out, the execution does
not always match expectations. Some dishes arrive undercooked,
some overcooked, and a number of them seem barely distinguishable
from one another. In addition, the service had serious
lapses on my three visits. On one occasion we waited
a full 45 minutes between courses; on another the next
course came to the table the instant the previous one
was whisked away. And while our waiter (the same one
on all three occasions) tried to be helpful, his frequent
returns to the table to ask if everything was OK bordered
on obsequiousness.
I first dropped in alone to have lunch, a way I like
to orient myself to a new restaurant without any distraction.
It was indeed a fine meal, raising my hopes. I began
with an antipasto of fresh grilled sardines, a welcome
dish seen all too seldom in town. Four sardines are
served in a peppery, chunked tomato sauce along with
perfectly cooked pencil-thin asparagus spears. Then
followed a wonderfully steamy wild-mushroom risotto,
earthy and pungent with a complex and slightly sweet
taste, and made with carnaroli rice, better even than
arborio. I wish I could say my first impressions endured.
Serratto has been jammed in the evenings, and that
fact may contribute to the unevenness of some preparations.
The dinner menu contains roughly a half-dozen each of
appetizers, pastas and entrees, and the house is well-disposed
to divide a full order of pasta for two if you wish.
The mushroom risotto is marvelous, but one made with
asparagus and corn struck me as gimmicky and mediocre
to boot: The asparagus was not integrated into the rice
but simply rested on top, while the corn imparted an
excess of sweetness that made you want to cover it with
a deluge of Parmesan. The most interesting starter is
ravioli nudi: the stuffing of ravioli (here ricotta
and chard) is baked like flattened dumplings but without
the surrounding pillows of noodle dough. The stuffing
is succulent, and a delicate, slightly tart sauce with
a biting pecorino bathes the dumplings.
The kitchen's aesthetic imagination surfaces in the
clams roasted in parchment, the paper shaped like a
fish that has swallowed a cluster of steamers. Though
the portion seemed a bit skimpy, I am partial to the
clean, slightly iodine taste of shellfish, which these
clams have in abundance. But a plate of roasted vegetables
was quite mundane, and a salad of green beans was devoid
of flavor, while the beans were much too al dente.
Insalata di Panzanella, the famous bread salad of Tuscany,
is a welcome dish, but here it lacks the onions and
basil that commonly tie the tomatoes and bread together,
melding everything into a harmony of flavors.
The outstanding main course is petrale sole (not a
true sole but a flounder, and perhaps the most flavorful
of West Coast flatfish). It's served with a light sauce
of lemon and capers, beautifully cooked spinach and
a grilled tomato--I'd happily return for this dish.
One of the great Tuscan preparations is what is called
simply a Fiorentina--grilled steak cooked with nothing
but kosher salt and lemon. But Serratto's version is
a bit too thin, and consequently the meat quickly toughens
up even when done medium rare. Other dishes are generously
portioned but lack finesse; thus loin of lamb is over-salted,
and a heavy sauce unnecessarily masks the meat, while
the pork shank, a hearty trattoria classic, is quite
bland.
There's a range of Italian desserts, several quite
nice in their simplicity. I am partial to the cremino,
nothing more than ricotta cheese that's been whipped
to an airy cumuluslike cloud, sweetened and then topped
with slightly bitter Amarena cherries for a startling
contrast. But something I looked forward to--bignets
filled with gianduja (a silken hazelnut-flavored Swiss
chocolate) and almond liqueur cream--disappointed because
the pastry crust is much too hard.
Michael Cronin has shown he's a man of vision: His
Caffe Mingo buzzes with excitement and sizzles with
terrific, simple dishes. It has soul. I sincerely hope
things will improve at Serratto, because one senses
that abundant energy and thought have gone into its
making; but for the moment the restaurant appears to
be searching for its identity. In spirit it is more
like Il Fornaio than like its smaller, older sibling
down the street. If Il Fornaio is a good chain that
seems like a decent individual restaurant, Serratto
is a decent individual restaurant that seems like a
good chain. But I will come back because I trust that
things will get better. For the time being at least,
Serratto has sole.
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Willamette Week | originally
published July 21, 1999
