|
Good Eating Any Night of the Week
By: Brian Freedman - February 2008
People who make their living in and around the restaurant business—chefs, waiters, and, yes, even dreaded critics—tend to work some pretty strange hours. Fourteen-hour days are not the slightest bit unusual, sleeping ‘til 10 a.m. is common, and staying up late enough to catch all the latest infomercials on TV once the real programming has run its course is pretty much de rigueur.
And for most of us, Monday is actually Sunday: a day of rest, a day to ourselves. But lately I’d been thinking: What are the options if you do want to have a restaurant meal on a Monday? If a certain establishment is open, after all, then shouldn’t a potential guest have the right to expect a meal every bit as good as it would be on any other night? What, I asked myself, was I missing by staying home with my wife and General Tso every Monday evening?
With that in mind, I headed on out to the almost eerily quiet wilds of Monday-night New Hope to find out. The Landing, right in the heart of Main Street, seemed like a logical choice. It’s open seven days a week and serves its full menu every one of them, from 11 a.m. until the last guest pushes back his chair from the table and heads on back to the old homestead.
And as is the case with so many (perhaps) illogical experiments, the results were surprising and not a little bit unexpected. The service kept things light, the food was mostly very good, and the experience as a whole, which I had feared would be marred by a vague air of empty-dining-room depression, was actually quite pleasant. Fried calamari ($8.95) was one of the best versions of the pubby standard I’ve had all year. Tender rings and crispy tentacles were lavished with the kind of TLC they usually never receive. Bathed in buttermilk to tenderize and lend them a whisper of lactic sweetness, they were then battered and deep-fried in a crust so light—yet almost paradoxically hearty—that I actually began to wonder why so few other versions of this dish lived up to these standards.
The accompanying spicy tomato sauce and cilantro-lime mayo—the latter better than the former but both unarguable successes—were nice touches, but these delicate slices of cephalopod were perfectly fine on their own, a minor deep-fried miracle.
Mussels steamed in Corona ($10.95) broke the cardinal rule of restaurant dining, and it was for that very reason that I ordered them. On a night of living dangerously, I was prepared to revel in my restaurant-critic rebelliousness. So, yes, I ordered the seafood on a Monday.
And wonder of wonder, miracles of miracles, the dish was good. Really good. The mussels themselves were tender and moist, and completely counter to common urban-legend logic, they did not taste as if they’d been delivered early Friday morning and had spent the intervening three days in a vat of botulism.
To make matters even more shocking, the broth in which they had been cooked, and in which they arrived at my table, was as well-balanced and expertly seasoned as at any of Center City’s temples of mollusk cookery. The chorizo brought a sense of tangy smokiness to the dish, the corn a bright, sweet snap, and the cilantro a vague South of the Border sensibility—perfect alongside the Corona base of it all.
Entrees were a step down, unfortunately, but not as a result of any sloppy preparation or some sort of culinary-school intern manning the stoves. They were simply flaws of conceptualization, which would strike any night of the week, assuming the same recipe is being used Thursday, say, as on the dreaded Monday.
The menu proclaims that the chili ($8.95) is award-winning, though I was underwhelmed. There was no sense of flavor delineation, no detail, to set apart one component in the dish from another. And the cheese melted on top possessed a disturbingly generic flavor when it should have been the linchpin of the dish. Still, the accompanying cornbread was notable, a sort of prelude to dessert in its subtle sweetness and cakey texture. Seared scallops ($18.95), while well caramelized and pleasantly nutty as a result, were undermined by ho-hum saffron rice and a tomato coulis that looked and tasted like the leftover water at the bottom of a can of tomatoes. Oddly enough, the three-pea stir-fry was fabulous. A bit oily, perhaps, but the flavors of those peas were allowed to sing in a way they do far too infrequently.
As far as dessert went, they perfectly matched the space itself. What else should you eat in a smart, consciously rustic dining room replete with a lit fireplace, other than bread pudding and a brownie? The bread pudding, like so much else that worked here, was notable for its execution and sense of balance. But the brownie was undermined by an overbearing sense of sweetness. It also arrived cold, which made no sense as it was topped with ice cream. Better to heat it up next time and provide some sort of temperature differentiation, and a more dynamic dish.
Still, Monday night at The Landing managed to disprove the prevailing dining logic. And while it was not a flawless meal—I’ve had exactly one this year—it was absolutely good enough to stand as a more than viable option for any night of the week. Man, after all, cannot live on General Tso’s chicken alone. Not every Monday. Especially not when there are options like The Landing.
The Landing is located at 22 North Main St. in New Hope, and can be reached by phone at (215) 862-5711, or visited online at www.landingrestaurant.com.
|
