Restaurant at Market hits, misses
In the Heights, the restaurants come and go, talking of Michelangelo …
With apologies to T.S. Eliot and J. Alfred Prufrock, there’s a new chapter in the continuing saga of the restaurant space at 5018 Kavanaugh Blvd. in Little Rock’s Pulaski Heights.
When the high-end grocer on the block was Terry’s Finer Foods, owners Lex and Ellen Golden operated various editions of the Restaurant at Terry’s in various spaces, going back and forth between the semi-penthouse on the southeast side of the building (originally Sue’s Pie Shop, and which also housed The Pizzeria at Terry’s before that hived off into its own space and identity a few doors down) and the storefront on
the northeast side that used to house a retail outlet.
Eric Herget has acquired the grocery store, which he has renamed the Heights Corner Market, and has created a restaurant in that former storefront restaurant space, calling it the Restaurant at the Market. It has an eclectic, somewhat Southern-focused menu and a white, bright ambience.
It’s a pleasant place to eat, with white tablecloths spread over composite-topped tables and handsome wood-andmetal chairs. Along the far wall are some attractive glass artwork and framed photos, which we would like to think are of the owner’s family, plus stacked books with practical and philosophical messages, one line per book, on the spines (the broad range of sages includes John Lennon and Napoleon Dynamite).
On the opposite wall, a chalk board carries changing philosophical messages (including a wise Frank Sinatra lyric) and current information — forthcoming performances, changes in hours, and so forth. Even more philosophy appears on cards framing the salt and pepper shakers (inspiring messages from Augustine of Hippo and some Greek named Anonymous graced our most recent dinner visit).
On each table is a reagent bottle of water, which the server pours into glassware with indentations on each side for easier grasping. Diners also get a hunk of cold focaccia bread — not, we gather, baked on the premises, but sold in the grocery, as is the tiny bottle of organic olive oil for dipping.
We’re hoping that as the Restaurant at the Market continues to settle in, they’ll find the right “recipe” for success. Right now, they haven’t yet. A bit more than a month into operation, it’s still finding its culinary feet. Between our first and second dinner visits, the menu had turned over and expanded, adding some more ambitious dishes — at least judging by the number of described ingredients in each.
With a sizable number of competing restaurants in this market with this price point (entrees range from $18 to $45, with starters starting at $10 and a couple of appetizers priced not that far below entrees), level of cuisine and even this style of menu, this has to provide a genuinely exciting dining experience to stand out. Our dining experience ranged from a couple of “mmmms,” a few “maybes” and several “mehs.”
Two of the new appetizers were definite hits, though at a rather hefty price. We basically inhaled the four dessert-like, honey-infused, goatcheese-filled puff pastry cups ($11), topped with rosemary roasted grapes and crushed Marcona almonds, then sopping up and scraping off the plate the generous remainder of the honey-and-nuts mixture. Perhaps in retrospect (more about that later), our brie and pear crostini ($14), dressed with fig jam, a sweet and pungent honey-balsamic reduction and toasted walnuts, was probably the best thing we had during that night’s meal.
On a previous visit, we enjoyed the now-gone Arkansas Tomato Caprese Salad ($13), thick slices of heirloom tomatoes in various colors layered with fresh mozzarella that the menu said would be
pistachio-crusted, though we found little evidence of it.
We’re still shaking our heads over the soup of that day ($6), cream of sun-dried tomato “with rice.” The server’s description sounded pretty good, but bore little resemblance to what hit the table: soup “with rice” was actually a small bowl of rice, with a something slightly soupy occupying the space between grains.
Intrepid Companion, a noted scallops fan, headed right for the Scallops with Arugula Pesto ($18), served with mixed greens and a ginger-scallion “hay.” However, the pesto was more of a hint than a sauce, and the scallops were — not rubbery, exactly, but there was something she found off-putting about the texture. The greens and “hay” added nothing of interest. The new menu, by the way, also offers scallops, now with a matcha green tea emulsion on a bed of wilted arugula and spinach with fried sunchokes ($24).
We enjoyed our tenderloin ($28) with rosemary mashed potatoes and seasonal vegetable (haricot verts), still on the new menu. The steak was just a shade rarer than the medium-rare we ordered, but not significantly, and the mashed potatoes were delicious.
We would have enjoyed the enormous thick-cut, bonein pork chop ($25) with roasted Vidalia onion and Meyer lemon, except that there was far too much of the citric-onion sauce (with actual lemon rinds in it, one of which we ate before we realized what it was), and it overwhelmed the chop. We initially liked, but quickly also found overwhelming,
the side cannellini beans braised in Lost 40 Pale Ale with peppered bacon. After a few bites it was just too much and we gave up.
We just couldn’t work up much enthusiasm for our seared salmon with ginger Dijon white wine sauce ($19), served with ruby red jasmine rice and asparagus. The sauce added very little, not even much moisture, to the salmon, and the rice looked gorgeous but tasted blah.
Our two $6 desserts were excellent. The fudgy Chocolate Mud Pie, drizzled with an unusually un-sweet but delicious chocolate syrup, on a grainy graham-cracker crust, was a real find, though we found ourselves wishing it had come with, instead of the overgenerous dollop of whipped cream, a scoop of vanilla ice cream to moderate its exceeding richness. The excellent cheesecake, dressed with seasonal strawberries and garnished with a spearmint leaf, isn’t cream-cheese based (our best guess is mascarpone). It was less sweet than many cheesecakes, which is a plus.
On a recent lunch visit, the kitchen was out of all three soups on the menu, including the gazpacho we would have ordered, so we opted for the substitute soup of the day, a delightful bright-green pineapple-cucumber gazpacho ($4 cup), well balanced, sweet but not cloying, and as we got closer to the bottom, surprisingly spicy.
Our huge Caesar salad ($12; add shrimp or chicken for $5, no additional charge for anchovies on request) looked marvelous when it arrived but quickly disappointed.
The thin dressing clung well to the Romaine lettuce, tossed well enough so nothing pooled at the bottom of the bowl, and it did provide a binder for the grated parmesan, but pretty much the only flavor came from the surprisingly generous number of on-request anchovies.
We generally had good service, even after the restaurant started filling up (which it did around 7 p.m. on both dinner visits). But our second-visit server missed our crostini appetizer order, and left out the cheesecake when she listed the dessert options (the chef — thanks, chef! — stepped up to the plate, so to speak, and made sure we tried some). She then brought us the appetizer at the end of the meal, which meant we ended up with three desserts when we really only had enough room left for one.