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jmcquillen@wweek.com
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Bella Coola presents little dishes amid high style.Shortly after chef Fernando Divina's latest experiment in Native-American cuisine opened for business last month, a friend told me that it had already made a name for itself among local Italian speakers: She'd been dining next door with someone who informed her that "Bella Coola" was a homonym of the Italian for "nice ass." Despite the unfortunate linguistic coincidence (which has a precedent in the House of Malaka, a now-defunct Malaysian restaurant on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard whose name meant roughly "House of Masturbation" to Greeks), Bella Coola's attractions are not callipygian but rather culinary, as they should be. The name comes from a Coast Salish tribe of west-central British Columbia who, as a note on the menu relates, greeted the early 19th-century Scottish explorer Alexander Mackenzie with great hospitality. The accent is on the "cool," especially here. In an airy space that used to house a neighborhood pharmacy, the restaurant's designers have hung long strips of brushed metal in sweeping curves that echo the arc of the building's facade; lacy, curvaceous constructions hang among them, like curtains of white papier-mâche. Facing the door, in a painted section of the polished pressboard floor, is the host's station, a slick construction of glass, metal and blond wood. However pointedly the high-style interior symbolizes the changes happening in stodgy old Westmoreland, it's a bit much. The space would be great without all the augmentation, especially the random assemblages of wood beams that flank the door. Combined with bright, even harsh lighting and background music that is often vapid and too loud, the effect overall is distracting. The design seems to be trying too hard to impress, which is a pity; the food stands on its own quite nicely. Bella Coola is the sister restaurant to Fiddleheads, which is just three doors down the street, and the Native-American culinary theme underlies both. The difference here is mostly one of scale; Divina has effectively translated his take on indigenous cuisine into the popular tapas genre. "Cool small plates" and "Hot little dishes of the Americas" dominate the menu, which proclaims that its inspiration comes "from North America's Arctic tundra to the pristine waters of Tierra del Fuego." The influences may indeed be that far-ranging, but pan-Latin cuisine carries most of the weight. Among the cool plates are a quinoa salad with mint and tomato, essentially a native tabbouleh--simple, cool and refreshing. Both the pineapple and jicama salad and the xuxu salad (with orange and chayote) are unusual, simple, sweet and refreshing. One of the more successful hot dishes is the little feijão, a soupy variation on the traditional black bean and sausage dish (a sort of Brazilian cassoulet); it has great depth of flavor balanced by a healthy dose of chili heat. Roast pumpkin soup with toasted hazelnuts has an intriguing mix of textures and flavors with just the right bite, and wild woodland mushrooms make for a tamale with an earthy twist. Not everything falls together as it should. The vegetable empanada--filled with a pleasant if innocuous mixture of eggplant, zucchini and onion--is compromised by its doughy pastry. The red mole sauce on chicken is great, but the fowl itself is uninteresting; it wants browning, braising or some other treatment to bring it up to the level of the rest of the dish. But these are rare lapses. Most of the menu is well worth exploring, and the prices are excellent. The vast majority of items are priced under $5, and one or two can make a meal. Native Americans didn't traditionally eat like this, with margaritas and bottles of hot sauce on the side--at least, not as far as we know. The idea behind Bella Coola, as Divina frankly spells out, is a "cutting edge experience presented in the spirit of ancient wisdom." As he continues his explorations of ingredients and influences, there are some native recipes that he will do well to avoid. In his book Great Plains, Ian Frazier mentions some of them: "The Comanche liked to kill young buffalo calves and eat the curdled, partially digested milk from the stomach. The Assiniboin made a dish of buffalo blood boiled with brains, rosebuds and hide scrapings. The Arikara retrieved from the Missouri drowned buffalo so putrefied they could be eaten with a spoon." Bella Coola is not a food museum; one doesn't eat here for authentic recreations of indigenous dishes. But for all that native culture suffered from contact with the Old World, the tradition of American cooking--North, Central and South--is still a viable one, and Fernando Divina brings elements of it alive with creativity and flair.
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