Providence, Part I: Agony and Ecstasy.
For the long President's Day weekend, I made my way up to Providence, Rhode Island, to visit a close friend. It was my first time really exploring the city, and I found it quite charming and friendly - a decidedly relaxing atmosphere after months in New York. My friend and I had planned to eat at Rhode Island's top-rated restaurant, Al Forno, on the Saturday night of my visit. So with two more friends in tow, we took the advice of the very polite host on the phone who assured us we would have a short wait - an hour at most - and set out for an early 6PM dinner, hoping to beat the crowds. The crowds, instead, beat us. Upon arrival, we were told to expect a three hour wait.
We later found out there was some sort of football game that weekend, which, coupled with the long weekend revelries, caused a storm surge of a crowd that crashed over culinary Providence and washed away any available tables. We spent the next three and a bit hours mostly standing at the upstairs bar, talking over our grumbling stomachs and the voices of the massive crowd that had washed in.
Needless to say, I had time to explore the restaurant thoroughly, inside and out. It is actually quite lovely. There are several seating areas upstairs and down, both with their own take on a comfortable, relaxed Italian dining style and reminiscent of many neighborhood restaurants I have visited in Italy. It is these restaurants, in fact, that awoke in me the eager gourmet, and the connection did arouse some nostalgia. To complement these references, the owners have decorated with a refined personal taste that hints at their fine arts backgrounds - interesting lighting fixtures and wall treatments - and makes the image of the restaurant their own.
From the outside, the restaurant is homely and inviting. Its warm brick facade is covered to the second floor in a lush green ivy, and from the ubiquitous and unfortunate parking lot that the building opens into one can look through large windows and view families and friends laughing, eating and drinking at their tables. This romantic scene is enhanced by white christmas lights strung on the trees outside and by individual lamps at the upstairs tables that draw the eye up and flatter the faces upon which they shed light.
To pass the wait, a short nighttime walk along the waterfront proved equally romantic. Across the river is an old factory that is given a new life in the evening, ablaze with orange light that reflects off of the icy river.
When a seat eventually opened up at the bar around hour two we beat back all comers and ordered as a shared hors-d'oeuvre what we had time to peruse several times on the menu - the famous Grilled Pizza Margarita from the 'wood-burning oven' that gives the restaurant its name (from the oven.) By that point, in fact, I believe we had all selected of what the entire meal would consist, which sadly came back to haunt me later. But back to the pizza.
The pizza arrived in a timely fashion, beautifully presented and with a very fresh yet subtle aroma. Perhaps my hunger commanded me to bypass taste and go for straight for ingestion, but I found little to savor in the pizza. The bread was crisp and slightly chewy, yet without the pungent wood-fire character I had anticipated. The sauce was very light, almost watery, and while I could taste it was made from fresh tomatoes, I felt the chefs hadn't allowed it to reduce enough to concentrate the flavor. The mozzarella was standard fare and added little, not even some badly needed salt to perk things up. The herbs managed to taste indistinguishable. Their unusual flavor had us all guessing since in the dim bar light they appeared only as a vague green. It wasn't until later, reviewing the photograph at right, that I was able to work out that they consisted of chopped basil and shaved spring onions. In my opinion the pizza was a miss. And for $19, it was a mighty pricey miss of a pizza, especially since I had to cut the damn thing into pieces on an elbow-to-elbow bar top with a blunt knife.
Hour three, the predicted hour of our seating, came and passed. Fifteen minutes later, we were escorted to our table downstairs. Elation ensued.
We were seated and briefly greeted. Our waitress was not unfriendly and not unhelpful; she just had to be prodded in the general direction of hospitality. Granted, I was severely hungry, which might have distorted my perception of her. But all was lost when she informed me the kitchen was out of salmon, the dish I had chosen over three hours earlier and for which I had been steadily forming a terribly clear taste in my mouth. This left very few options for my kosher palate. There was the plain but assumedly well-made tomato pesto pasta, a menu veteran at Al Forno and a simple dish that can be exceptionally satisfying. Or there was the grilled and roasted vegetable platter with seasonal veggies and mashed potatoes. This had the general aura of satisfaction, but if I am to eat at the very best restaurant in all of Rhode Island I am not getting the blasted vegetable platter, fire-grilled or no. So pasta it was, which was an unfortunately large compromise. My friends, free of kosher constraints and late-term menu withdrawals, ordered their first choices. For the table we chose a medium-priced Pinot Grigio from Alsace after our first choice was unavailable, a distressing theme to the evening.
We were nicely into the second bread basket, savoring the quality of the olive oil (not so much the bread itself), when our main courses arrived. Good presentation, the expected stalwart of those with fine arts backgrounds, proved a mixed bag. The duck dish looked delicious. Darker thigh meat with skin attached was perched on some sort of a grain vegetable and accompanied by a green salad, pearl onions and polenta in the inexplicable shape and color of a stick of butter.
The grilled chicken breast dish was parted over a different vegetable, and looked rather like a grilled chicken breast. No signs of sauce nor source of flavor, just a clean, honest presentation. The baked pasta dish - four cheeses and prosciutto - came in a dark ovenproof dish with a little parmigiana and the same shaved spring onion garnish. It reminded me of frozen macaroni that had been baked a little too long, though I dared not say anything.
Then there was my dish. I got precisely what I had ordered. Pasta mixed with tomato pesto. No imagination, no presentation, just some shavings of admittedly good Parmigiana and some chopped basil on top. The penne pasta was somewhere in the near reaches of beyond al dente, which in a dish this simple is somewhat sinful, since this one ingredient accounts for the majority of all texture and flavour. The pesto sauce made no statements; no one ingredient asserted itself beyond the pale acidity of the tomato. Halfway through, I was bored. Keeping this mostly to myself, I polled the table. The duck was juicy, tender, and its eater liked that it was a darker cut. The chicken was tasty and expertly grilled, but not mind-blowing.
The baked pasta, I was told, was excellent. Once I got past the presentation, or lack thereof, I had to admit that the mix of cheeses smelled and looked divine. My friend enjoyed herself immensely, but the dish was so rich that she could not finish. Already she was excited about lunch the next day.
One unique thing about Al Forno is that you are required to order any dessert you may want to have together with the main course. This is simply because each offering takes that long to cook. Al Forno's pastry chef makes each dessert to order and allows it to bake while you eat your main course. This is clever since I imagine people are more likely to order too much food than too little, especially if they've been waiting for three hours. But the dessert we ordered does not deserve such cynicism. It was simply superb.
It arrived, this magnificent morsel, hot out the oven and wafting pear, pastry and rich deliciousness. Suddenly, we were all hungry again. From a pool of creme anglaise, this otherworldly thing stared up at us wantonly and demanded: "Eat me." It was one of the most phenomenal desserts I have ever had. It was a perfect balance of textures - the soft, warm smoothness of the ground, roasted pear; the flaky, melt-in your mouth, buttery crunch of the pastry crust; the cool, delicate, rich velvet of an excellent creme anglaise. We spoke in moans for a precious few minutes.
This final course was so good, it almost made up for the rest of the evening. We wandered home in a pear afterglow, contemplating the evening. Al Forno, I decided, is an above-average Italian restaurant with an exceptional pastry chef. Next time I visit Providence I am curious to give it another whirl and see if we just went on a bad night - if its list of accolades from several years ago are still relevant. But in all likelihood, I'll just pop in for dessert.
