To understand what's going right at Rue, a minimalist French small-plates "neo-bistro" that quietly opened in one of those big, new buildings on East Burnside, look to the carrots and bananas.
The miniature carrots ($11) are served like something out of celebrity chef Dan Barber's Blue Hill farm—a produce-happy showcase of irregular roots with wild greens piled atop them, so flavorful you feel like you can almost see sugar crystals surfacing from within. Cooked in brown butter and covered in manchego cheese, the carrots were herbed up on two visits with lavender, a subtle but overpowering ingredient that can smack of soap. But only a few bites tripped over the line. The plate was a high-wire act marrying sweet and earthy vegetable to bitter field leaf, with those floral notes of lavender coming onto the palate like perfume to a cartoon Frenchman, buoying it into ecstasy.
Similarly, the Sharknana cocktail ($11) uses banana to surprisingly subtle effect in a drink that contains no subtle ingredients. The fruit flavor comes through loud and clear, but rather than take over your mouth with cloying sweetness, it's counterbalanced by nutty cognac and sweetly herbal Cocchi rosa aperitif, and cut with acidic lemon to form one of my favorite cocktails this year.
Both the carrots and cocktail are unlikely but expertly balanced, cloaking risk with poise like a gymnast sticking a backflip on the beam. The cavernous 55-seat restaurant, opened by New York-trained chef-owner Jason Roberts, is decorated with a similar high-risk minimalism that plays off as tasteful—despite including multiple wall squares covered in quiltings of moss, a blow-up photograph of turn-of-the-century France and an entire hallway devoted, perplexingly, to the first page of The Great Gatsby. It's like a design-firm lobby or a cool-kid loft in SoHo, but somehow still pleasant—crisp but not chilly.
But subtlety can also be Rue's biggest foil.
Sure, in vegetable dishes like zucchini ribbons ($10) covered in a pistachio-and-feta crumble, or an elegant plate of heirloom beans ($9) sauced up with eggplant puree and lightly cooked to just the right side of tender, it's easy to see Roberts' organic-farm background. He buys ingredients from up to 10 farms each week, reshaping the menu to suit what's freshest. That lavender dropped from the carrots the second it started to taste like Irish Spring.
But those discreetly elegant veggie plates aren't filling—and in the meat entrees, delicacy can be another word for a lack of salt. A rockfish-and-chanterelle plate ($16) receded tepidly over thin potato and olive-oil puree; it's now served with smoky freekeh wheat. A rare-cooked duck ($21)—now made with chicory, almond and prune—formed an ungainly foursome with charred eggplant, wilted kale and wedges of fresh peach, garnished by daubs of nectarine puree. It was less an exercise in balance than a dish at loose ends, with perfect bites difficult to construct. A more successful smoked-trout-and-green-bean small plate ($12), on the other hand, was a fun play on holiday green-bean casserole, with a fennel crumble and Dijon-spiked, hard-boiled-egg vinaigrette taking the place of onions and cream of mushroom.
As filler, you're better off with the generous burrata ($12). The mound of soft cheese came once with wilted kale and anchovy, once with a cornucopia of fiorello peppers and peaches, but both times with a heaping bowl of bread.
So much of Rue is commendable. Vegetables are rarely treated with such care, even at spots that don't serve meat. But without a singular standout dish, the emphasis on the balanced and understated leaves the overall experience a bit diffuse. The cocktails, from a bitter-smoky, rye-fernet Flip Flops n Socks ($9) to an exuberant mezcal-amaro-pineapple take on the margarita ($12), can often seem more ambitious than the food.
Rue performs amazingly well on the balance beam, but you sometimes wish you could also see it on the vault.
Rue, 1005 SE Ankeny St., 503-231-3748, ruepdx.com. 5-11 pm Wednesday-Sunday.
Willamette Week