Olive
Stick
150 NE 82nd Ave.,
253-6481
Open 4 pm-10 pm Tuesdays-Saturdays. Children welcome. $5 corkage
fee (no alcohol sold on premises). Moderately priced.
Picks: Quail egg, chicken in spicy peanut sauce, potato
and crab croquet.
Nice touches: Artistic presentation, vertical salad.
When you see the name Olive Stick on the side of a restaurant,
you're probably overcome with images of garlic or pita bread.
The last thing you'd think is, "Japanese restaurant." But
Japanese it is. In fact, Olive Stick's culinary premise is
based on a single concept from the southern region of Japan
called kushikatsu.
Check many Japanese cookbooks and if you find kushikatsu
at all, it's described as a kebab of deep-fried pork. Olive
Stick takes that narrow definition and bases an entire menu
on it, creating a restaurant hybrid unfamiliar to most Portland
palates. The use of non-Japanese ingredients and the fact
that everything is fried in olive, rather than vegetable,
oil makes Olive Stick a departure from kushikatsu
restaurants in Japan. At Portland's Olive Stick there are
220-odd kushikatsu in rotation: About 30 appear on
the menu at a given time, and the selection changes every
two weeks or so. But instead of ordering individual items,
diners open themelves up, in the words of the menu, "to
the glorious banquet of food the cook is preparing that
evening." The server will ask if there's anything you don't
or can't eat--after that, you're in the hands of the chef.
Each diner pays $6 for salad, rice, an appetizer and dessert.
Once they've been primed with an appetizer and salad, the
bamboo skewers or "sticks" ($1 each) start to arrive.
Everything is artfully presented and served in pretty Japanese
bowls or on plates and platforms. An array of dips and seasonings--dry
salt and pepper, a wedge of lemon, secret house sauce and
soy sauce--accompanies each dinner. Though they won't reveal
exactly what's in the house sauce, it resembles an opaque,
gingery French dressing and complements everything that
comes to the table. The salad is a lovely vertical presentation
of raw vegetables and lettuce in a glass tumbler. The Japanese
rice is molded into a perfect oval cake and can be sprinkled
with one of four seasoning mixes--finely sieved hard-boiled
egg and black sesame seed, and minced nori and dried fish
were two I tried. The appetizer choices are cold vermicelli
in thinned soy; a few bites of seared, rare takanaki
beef bedded on raw onion slivers and dressed in soy and
mirin; and cold cucumber and calamari in aurora sauce (similar
to Russian salad dressing). The job of both the salad and
the appetizer--raw, seared or steamed--is to counteract
the oil of the fried kushikatsu.
Kushikatsu can be something as simple as an oyster
or a spear of asparagus that is breaded, croquette-style,
and deep-fried. Meat, seafood and distinctly un-Japanese
foods like cheese happen to fare the best. Brie topped with
habañero jam is heavenly, like a peppery cheese cake.
But a thick slice of lotus root stuffed with hot mustard
remained hard despite its oil bath. A little marinade would
have eased the clash between the hot, fried exterior and
the uncooked center. The pork slice, rolled in far too much
pickled ginger, was tough and simply inedible. Some kushikatsu
would have been better without the croquette-like coating
altogether. In some instances, I would recommend that you
peel it away and eat just the cooked crab or rolled beef
and onion within. But save your stomach for the kushikatsu
that are really worth it--quail egg, the chicken in spicy
peanut sauce, the potato and crab croquette, ham and pineapple,
or anything combined with cheese, which melts and blends
perfectly in almost any combination.
Owner Namiko Takazawa's interior design background is evident
from the thoughtful attention to detail. A burnished linen
ceremonial kimono the exact same shade of gray as the exterior
hangs on one wall and a huge Wassily Ting elephant watercolor
on another. It's all pretty, but the Olive Stick has no
tables, just two tall L-shaped counters with stools, making
conversation for groups larger than three awkward. The counter
seating does allow the servers to pass course after course
to you as soon as they're fried, yet the overall pace is
leisurely, so expect the entire meal to take some time.
Whether Olive Stick can make its kushikatsu concept
work remains to be seen. Even if clean, light olive oil
is used, how much fried food can a person take, and how
often? Will the Olive Stick be able to lure people to its
fashionable restaurant for a fine dining experience while
beckoning from such an unfashionable address? With a seating
capacity of a mere 14 at the counter and a dining concept
that eschews speedy eating, Olive Stick had better be angling
for a liquor license but quick (for now, bring your own
beer and sake). Adding some soba and sukiyaki to the menu
would be a nice concession to those unable or unwilling
to make a meal of fried food. The Olive Stick staff is necessarily
vigilant, so they know when to sizzle the next tidbit, but
on a slow night the watchful eyes of chef, owner and server
can be unnerving. Until Olive Stick catches on, they had
better work on watching without overwhelming.
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Willamette Week | originally
published August 11,
1999
|
