MENU WOOS, FOOD SO-SO
About two months ago, the veteran Vanier restaurant El Meson shut and was replaced by the Clarkstown Kitchen & Bar.
For more than 25 years, El Meson had served Spanish and Portuguese food in the stately red brick house on Beechwood Avenue that’s now Clarkstown.
El Meson’s chef, Tom Moore, remains, but has been tasked, according to Clarkstown’s website, to create dishes based on owner Andre Cloutier’s “globetrotting travels.”
So, Clarkstown signature items are four made-in-house sausage dishes — Asian-themed pork and chicken links, a lamb sausage plate that’s somewhat Mediterranean, and a stubby, flavoured-with-orange beef offering that comes with spaetzle.
We’re not in Iberia anymore, Toto.
That lamb sausage dish ($16), served with smoked wheat berry, golden raisin tabbouleh and beet tzatziki, was the most enjoyable item during my three visits to Clarkstown.
The sausage was lean but flavourful, and its light, interesting components, while scattered a little haphazardly, rounded out the dish nicely.
I wish that all of Clarkstown’s food had been as pleasing. For every dish that hit the mark and lived up to an enticing menu description, one or two stumbled.
Simple dishes worked best, while others too often fell short. Some items hit certain notes too hard (think overly smoked potatoes or otherwise tasty and tender octopus that was oddly gritty).
Others dishes lacked the promised punch (a jerked pork chop that had no jerk flavour or heat, a smoked beef tongue appetizer that wasn’t smoky).
Some of my best bites at Clarkstown were at my first lunch there. In addition to that lamb sausage, there was a thick slab of chicken schnitzel ($15), a little more densely breaded than expected, but otherwise fine.
House-made desserts ($8) that afternoon — chocolate mousse with candied walnuts and berry compote, a lemon semifreddo — were OK.
But at later visits, there were dishes that, while appealing on paper, underwhelmed, and the presentation seemed sloppier.
At dinner, there was the flavour-deprived beef tongue ($13) and the octopus ($15) that was nicely sauced and would have been very good had there not been that feeling of bits of grit on the meat. (We were told that this was part of the harissa seasoning. To Clarkstown’s credit, we weren’t charged for the dish.)
Striploin steak ($26) was thick and properly cooked, but other items on the plate dragged the dish down. Yucca fries were very bland, slices of king oyster mushrooms were thin and too oily, and the assertive scattering of shallots on top of the meat obscured the marrow butter we had looked forward to savouring.
The pork chop ($25) was tender, but over-seared, and it needed, if not the promised jerk seasoning, simply some salt. Its potatoes were too smoky.
Clarkstown’s paella ($25) is a carry-over from El Meson. It was chock full of seafood, but the flabby skin on the whole chicken thigh was a turnoff, and the rice, while briny, needed more saffron.
A berry crumble was more like a tart with a crumble topping. The refrigerated slice had none of the pleasure of a warm crumble and its pastry was mushy.
At my last visit, the fish special of seared ling cod for lunch ($17) lacked a skin-side sear and would have made me happier if it had flaked a little more. Its risotto was underseasoned and overcooked. The beef sausage was quite citrusy, and at $16, it struck us as over-priced.
Best that visit was some butternut squash gnocchi with a grilled tomato sauce and a strikingly large mound of arugula ($12).
Service has been friendly and folksy, with male staff in golf shirts and jeans lending a sports-bar feel to the otherwise prim, Victorian room.
There are good ideas and ambition at Clarkstown, but it will take some more tweaks to dishes and more precise execution to make meals as appealing at the table as they sound on the menu.