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Bluehour
250
NW 13th Ave., 226-3394
Lunch
Monday-Friday, Dinner Monday-Saturday. Closed Sundays. Expensive.
Bluehour
is pricey, but not excessively so. Economize with an appetizer
and pasta (about $20); celebrate with an ounce of Russian
osetra caviar ($65).
The
unisex bathrooms are big and beautiful and come with an
extra chair so you can bring a friend.
Can't
wait for a reservation? Bundle up and eat at one of the
tables outside.
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The man wore a suit, and it was a nice enough suit, the same
conservative cut you see pouring from office buildings every
day at 5 o'clock. He said, "This is my second time here today."
And he said, "I was talking to Bruce earlier." And he said,
"The Caesar salad is just like at Zefiro."
He still didn't get in.
It was 8 on a Friday night at Bluehour. If you've been
under a rock for the past six months, you might have missed
some of the press about Bluehour. You might not know that
it's Bruce Carey's new restaurant, the one he's worked on
since he shocked local diners by closing Zefiro last spring,
or that it's in Wieden & Kennedy's new Pearl District
headquarters, or that the sleek modern interior cost a
million bucks.
But everyone else knows it, and they all want in. Carey,
who has said he wants Bluehour to be a "swank dining room,"
is wisely limiting the number of people allowed inside.
Those with reservations, natch, and a few more in the bar.
But fun-loving citizens of Cocktail Nation, no matter how
well-dressed and primed with new-economy dollars, won't
find a party here.
You really do want to get in, though. Because the
important thing about Bluehour is not the Italian fabric
in the space-defining curtains or the ambient house music
or the modern cool of the leather Bellini chairs or the
house martini, flavored with homemade plum liqueur. It's
the food.
Barely six weeks since opening, the kitchen is putting
out plate after plate of incredible food. Meltingly perfect
scallops, a crisp golden sear across their tops and bottoms
but opalescent and nearly raw inside, appear with a smoky
wrapper of bacon and a creamy dab of puréed celery
root dotted with capers. Fresh strozzapretti, the twisted,
ropelike "priest strangler" pasta, mingle with dark filaments
of sautéed radicchio and creamy Gorgonzola, just
enough to let the strong flavors share the spotlight with
the semolina noodles. Peppery arugula and shards of Parmigiano
Reggiano top a plate of carpaccio, the thin slices of raw
beef overlapping like deep red shingles and drizzled with
a bit of lemon aioli. I like the New York steak, dry-aged
for 72 days and served with crispy, garlic-spiked French
fries, better than anything I've eaten in Portland's red-meat
palaces. The fork-tender grilled meat is like sex on a plate.
Kenny Giambalvo, Carey's partner and chef, ups the ante
with the offerings at Bluehour. The menu's roots spring
from southern France and Italy, but calling the food "Mediterranean"
is too limiting. Giambalvo's training and experience are
evident in Continental touches like the oysters poached
in a dry vermouth nage, a classic French stock flavored
with aromatic vegetables and herbs. Rigatoni al'amatriciana,
with pancetta, onions and tomato "angered" with a healthy
dose of red pepper, comes from his Italian heritage.
The salmon tartar, however, is strictly West Coast. Deeply
orange fish and creamy green avocado, flavored with shallots,
capers, Dijon mustard and olive oil, are diced and formed
into discs that look like hockey pucks made from bright
little gems. They're served icebox cold, with a tangle of
chive salad and crispy deep-fried
potato wafers.
Salmon isn't the only fish that's treated so well. Halibut,
too often dry and flavorless, arrives perfectly moist under
a light blanket of golden breadcrumbs. If you're particularly
fortunate, you'll come into Bluehour on the same day that
a load of fresh Oregon sardines makes the journey across
the Coast Range in the back seat of a fisherman's Cadillac.
The chubby little fish, normally tossed back into the ocean
by the salmon trawlers, were boned, butterflied, grilled
and delicious.
Of course, there are things you could quibble over. The
paillard of chicken--skinned and boned, pounded thin, perfectly
grilled, and served with fried sage leaves, roasted shiitake
caps and rounds of polenta--comes with a quantity of lemon-sage
butter that the fat-phobic might find excessive. A club
sandwich served at lunch contains lobster, roasted tomatoes
and bacon between thin slices of toasted, house-baked brioche,
and the lobster seems to get lost behind the smoky bacon
(here's a suggestion: Just make a simple lobster salad sandwich
instead). Risotto nero, black as night, with slices of tenderly
chewy cuttlefish and the indescribably subtle flavor of
squid ink heightened by the sharp tang of lemon, lacks the
quality they call all'onda in the Veneto, the wave
that shimmers across a plate of not-too-dry, not-too-wet
risotto. But it was still one of the best things I've ever
eaten.
And then there's dessert. Carey brought Mandy Groom from
Zefiro, and she's making such sweet finishers as Granny
Smith apple pie, French chocolate pudding, and Bergamot
crème brûlée. I loved a dense, moist
almond poundcake with a ginger-flavored poached pear, sliced
Black Mission figs and a dollop of mascarpone cream. One
night pedestals of housemade petit fours went by in an endless
parade, and I was tempted, but I couldn't resist sensuously
rich Explorateur cheese, an ivory-colored triple cream served
with toasted walnuts and small, dark Champagne grapes that
were like sweet caviar on a stem.
Ten years ago, Zefiro changed Portlanders' dining experience.
Bluehour takes the same impeccable sense of design and uncompromising
drive for excellence in the kitchen to another level, but
the eventual impact on the city's restaurant culture doesn't
matter. This is what does: Bluehour is for people who want
something really good to eat.
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