At the Table
Carol Deptolla’s look at the Fitz, in the Ambassador Hotel.
What’s this on the menu? An appetizer of chipped beef? That might conjure an image of salty shards in a heavy cream sauce, but at the Fitz, what’s on the plate is unlikely to match what’s in your mind.
At the restaurant in the Ambassador Hotel, changed over from Envoy in summer, chipped beef ($12) comes from the well-marbled Wagyu breed. Seasoned like corned beef, it’s served in a slab on toasted brioche with mushroom gravy.
It’s an infinitely more elegant version, and more delicious.
These rethought versions of classics by chef Jason Gorman might be a plus or a minus, depending on your viewpoint. It can be sheer delight to see a classic dish made modern on the plate. Or it might just yield nostalgia for an ably crafted original.
Take chicken Kiev, an old-fashioned dish with a reputation somewhat tarnished by too many middling banquets. Yet made well, it’s satisfying: chicken pounded thin, stuffed with butter, coated in breadcrumbs and browned. The crunch of the crumbs, the rivulet of molten butter that escapes when the chicken is cut — what’s not to like?
But in 2017, with diners gluten-shy and maybe even horrified by the idea of a stream of butter, it’s a dish ripe for remaking. Enter the salmon Kiev ($29) at the Fitz.
The salmon can’t be pounded, of course, but it’s seared crackling-crisp. No gush of butter, but there are dribbles of melted butter green with watercress and a golden butternut squash puree that’s almost as silken as softened butter. Served alongside, some brussels sprouts for fall.
The dish is geared much more toward modern sensibilities (although farmed salmon simply isn’t as delicious as wild, and at that price?). But it’s not as distinctive as the classic.
The Fitz’s dinner menu was updated for the season a few weeks ago, so some plates, such as blackberry venison meatballs ($12), have departed. A take on the midcentury party classic of meatballs in a sauce doctored with grape jelly, this was a good dish.
The appetizer called “rumaki” ($12, their quotes) stayed. Instead of the little bundles, it’s a composed plate of a few perfect little fried chicken livers, a soycaramel sauce enhanced with root beer and what the menu calls pork belly. But it wasn’t fresh, luscious belly, it was thick, tough strips of smoked and cured belly — bacon, after all.
Sometimes the best plates were the most straightforward, as if they relied only on Gorman’s best instincts. The plate called simple lettuce salad and baby herbs ($11) — almost as if it were an apology, a suggestion to not expect too much — was deliciousness itself, dressed in a perfect Champagne vinaigrette and dotted with ruby pomegranate seeds.
Likewise, a main dish of chicken for two ($35), with the bird spatchcocked, or butterflied, was fundamentally satisfying, browned and tender, and served with root vegetables and a Madeira sauce. A good value, too.
Shrimp Newburg ($28) didn’t stray terribly far from the classic lobster Newburg, putting three substantial shrimp and scads of small, tender shrimp in sherry cream sauce over buttered rice. But it was a lighter sauce than the traditional, better suited to letting the delicate seafood shine.
Having a few steaks on the menu is probably a necessity, especially for a restaurant in a hotel. The bonein ribeye ($44), though flavorful, likely wouldn’t dethrone a favorite steakhouse ribeye, but turning the latke with it into a waffle was genius. It multiplied crispness per square inch, a potato pancake’s best attribute.
The Fitz was still working through some small, distracting stumbles — a thick, undercooked slice of potato in a portion of scalloped potatoes — just one! — and an otherwise excellent confit duck leg that wasn’t thoroughly warmed. The flavors of each were great, though.
Desserts by pastry chef Jennifer Gorman, the chef ’s wife, also draw from classics, dressed up a little for a night out. A miniature apple Bundt cake was garnished with a dehydrated, paper-thin cross-section of apple; a substantial slice of chocolate cream pie sparkled with a sprinkle of gold dust.
Dinner ends with a gift of tiny sweets about the size of a fingertip, such as a macaron, fruit jelly, peanut butter fudge and snickerdoodle cookie. The meal starts with a little something from the kitchen, too (lately, a chunk of artisanal Wisconsin cheese with a dab of local honey) and pan rolls and butter flavored with matcha tea
Service largely was smooth and professional; courses could lag, even on nights when the dining room wasn’t particularly busy. At least twice it appeared that private parties were in full swing, and the kitchen also serves the hotel’s fairly busy bar, Gin Rickey, and the daytime counter-service Deco Cafe — something for everyone. (More on those below.)
The polished setting of the Fitz, a handsome room in tones that play off the original terrazzo floors, is really the only place like it in its near west side neighborhood. One weeknight, the dining room held what looked like four old friends out for a night on the town, some solo hotel guests, a young couple gazing at their laptop screen and a few men talking business, a laptop on their table as well.
Laptops, in a 90-yearold Art Deco restaurant named for F. Scott Fitzgerald, who found fame by way of typewriter in the 1920s. Times change, and dishes do, too.