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[COMFY CONTINENTAL] Inside the open kitchen at Davenport, longtime Portland chef Kevin Gibson presides over the restaurant with a civilized calm, dressed in a homey Mr. Rogers button-down shirt and sweater. This restaurant does not shock with spice but rather offers elegant medium-plate showcases for a small number of ingredients, subtle twists on Continental classics. Some dishes, such as the hazelnut-vinaigrette beets ($12), have carried over from Gibson's former restaurant Evoe, and a red-breasted duck salad has remained a menu stalwart since opening. Most dishes, however, are new from week to week. A heartbreakingly soft agnolotti ($16) balanced the zings of celery root and Meyer lemon, bound together by gluten and Parmesan. A cuttlefish and kohlrabi ($16) salad resembled an Asian-spiced Mediterranean drinking dish, an elevated cicchetto best taken with the bar's sterling Dolin-Boodles Negroni ($10). Look out for the occasional goulash ($18), which old fans of Gibson's might remember from the first incarnation of Castagna: slow-cooked, paprika-sauced pork that's less fork-tender than it was spoon-tender. Gibson's Davenport ties together with fellow Genoa alum John Taboada's nearby Luce and Navarre restaurants to create something of a neighborhood food philosophy: wine-happy Continental fare served in nearly domestic comfort, with a meticulous dedication to bringing out the flavor of a dish's basic ingredients without baths of salt, garlic or spice. MATTHEW KORFHAGE.
While the Belgian-inflected beer menu is fine and the cocktails better, always take advantage of the wine advice of co-owner Kurt Heilemann.
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WWeek 2015
