 photo by KELLEY HAMBY |
RESTAURANT REVIEW Culinary Comfort Authentic and adventurous, Fratelli brings simplicity and seriousness to the Pearl District. BY ROGER J. PORTER |
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Fratelli 1230 NW Hoyt St., 241-8800 Dinner Tuesday-Saturday, brunch Sunday. Children welcome but unusual. Moderate. Picks: Gnocchi with rabbit sauce, fresh figs with grana padano, pork loin, halibut with roasted beets, sweet chestnut purée Nice touch: homey, casual feel despite being in the heart of the frenetic Pearl District With restaurants in the Pearl District vying to outdo one another, it is reassuring to find a new one with the quiet confidence to stake its claim on a small but intelligently crafted menu of handsome dishes at modest prices. Fratelli announces itself as "an Italian kitchen," and it might surprise some patrons that Italian doesn't always mean what we think it does. While there are several pasta dishes, we don't particularly regard pheasant on white cabbage with red-grape sauce as a quintessential Italian dish--but it's perfectly common in Tuscany. Fratelli matches pleasant culinary surprises with strong skills in Italian regional cooking, and the result is an expectation-challenging menu that delivers consistently high performance. First, a warning: After three visits I discovered that the small menu changed almost in its entirety within a week. This was largely to take advantage of winter-friendly ingredients and to present heartier offerings. Fratelli will turn over its list altogether on a six-week cycle, so by the time you read this, most of the dishes discussed will not be available. Yet I am confident that the restaurant's style and address to Italian cuisine will remain. So pleased am I with Fratelli that I'll be back less to reassure myself than to enjoy the food without having to take mental notes. Fratelli bodes well to be a favorite hangout. The entrance is, for the moment, the only dismal feature. It's a long corridor seemingly to nowhere, but several notices inform us that neighborhood artists will soon turn the tunnel-like space into an aesthetically attractive adventure. The restaurant itself is also long and narrow (it appears to have once been a garage), but the ceiling is so lofty that despite the concrete floor and stone walls it is never noisy, even when full. Fratelli issues an implicit challenge to Oba and Paragon: People will come here for the cooking, not for the scene. There's a stark but attractive feel to the place, with an open kitchen, sturdy wooden tables bathed in the glow of candlelight, wine bottles placed on many shelves and some decent art to soften the severe look. The ambience is very "downtown," with a straightforward, unadorned touch that puts the emphasis just where it should be: on the food. On an early autumn evening last month, fresh figs served on baby lettuces and arugula with shaved grana padano (a slightly less aged and less biting cheese than Parmigiano-Reggiano) matched the day--smoky, pungent and crisp. The best starter was a plate of gnocchi in rabbit sauce, the potato dumplings meaty-rich with just a hint of lemon for tartness. The gnocchi benefited by the sauce, for while this dish is often served with little more than butter and cheese, the rabbit lent depth and was the perfect sop to the homemade bread, which on one day had a hint of cumin and on another came laden with figs. Fratelli serves an unusual risotto with squid, the ink virtually blackening the perfectly cooked rice, while chunks of the mollusk shine through in pink. Even tagliatelle receives an unusual treatment, laced with quail filets and a light cream sauce with fennel and pine nuts. The main dishes are prepared with admirable simplicity but always with a special touch. An underdone seared halibut, properly flaky and enlivened with nothing but olive oil and cilantro, comes with a handful of roasted beets--a knockout combination. A hefty grilled loin of pork, tender and with a good crust, is surrounded by a deep orange sauce made from sweet peppers, imparting a pimento-like taste to the meat. Monkfish, which has become almost ubiquitous in Portland, is wrapped in bacon, giving the thick flesh of this prized fish a pungent and smoky aroma that can carry the cream sauce spiked with Vin Santo. Though entrée portions are substantial, the price ($1.75) and quality of the several side dishes make them a virtual necessity. Sautéed spinach is the perfect accompaniment, but when did you last have celeriac, the slightly bitter, knobby root that tastes like a cross between celery and parsley? Desserts are worth lingering for because you won't easily find their like in town--no death-dealing chocolate cakes, no vertical spun sugar as if the pastry chef were an architect manqué. I was pleased to see panna cotta, a silky egg custard that is firmer and more delectable than crème caramel, which it resembles; the Italian brandy in the custard made it more interesting than the usual blander version. Everyone touts Oregon pears and blue cheese this time of year; Fratelli serves up a wonderful take on this combination by filling the holes in poached pear slices with gorgonzola and then pooling a luscious honey sauce around them, with bits of fresh thyme scattered about providing an interesting touch. It takes a strong espresso to wash this down. Finally, there is the mound of chestnut purée topped with whipped cream, called Monte Bianco in honor of the perpetually snow-clad peak in the Italian Alps, which it resembles in miniature. The chestnut has a strong, heady taste, and because the purée is driven through a food mill, it looks a bit like a pile of spaghetti. But once you put a spoon into it, the strands meld into a mass of pure sweetness and heavenly richness. This is a great winter dessert, and I'd consider braving an avalanche to keep it on the menu. The oversized plates at Fratelli are trattoria-white, and they show off the food nicely. Sometimes the wine (a well-selected, all-Italian list) comes in small tumblers--a kind of chic reverse-chic. All this adds up to an experience that can be earthy, even rustic, yet with attention to the rich possibilities of a few carefully chosen dishes. At first I thought of Fratelli as an Italian counterpoint to the nearby French bistro Le Bouchon, but it's not quite. Le Bouchon is as classically French as they come, and it will confirm every preconception one has about neighborhood bistros. Fratelli is equally authentic, but its cooking is more innovative, and you can come here with a guarantee of both surprise and genuine culinary comfort.
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