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Sounds better than it tastes
[Times photo: Jamie Franis]
At Mattison’s, the latest restaurant to occupy a space in St. Petersburg’s Plaza downtown, New Zealand rack of lamb is served with garlic and rosemary and accompanied by ratatouille. |
By CHRIS SHERMAN, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published February 14, 2002
Mattison's has new decor, a new menu and a new staff. But the fresh ideas don't always translate to the plate.
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ST. PETERSBURG -- If you've had lunch at Mattison's, try to forget it.
Trust me, dinner is better, and closer to what Sarasota chef Paul Mattison wants to do with this restaurant in the Plaza shopping area near BayWalk.
It's at night that he rolls out better presentation, more professional service and a little imagination. He needs to pump it much higher.
Mattison and his partners have refreshed the decor of the former Ollie's with walls of linen and Chinese red, installed a new bar, added black tablecloths and called it "an American bistro." The new ownership is drawing a fairly lively crowd.
The Plaza's restaurant, with its bronzed columns, mirrored ceilings and more dated Continental cooking, has known many names since first opening in 1977 -- Courtyard Cafe, Domani, Cafe Regio, Atene, La Petite Marie -- but rarely has it known success.
Only when Ollie's brought its super-sized burgers, tuna sandwiches and fruit salads up from the demolished Soreno did it draw a crowd. But at dinner, it had a hard time competing with the nearby Yacht Club.
In short, it's a tough room.
It will take everything Mattison and crew have to blow out the cobwebs. He may be the guy to do it: In Sarasota, he presided over the Summerhouse, a perennial Most Romantic on condo-cluttered Siesta Key, hosted a cooking show, led culinary tours and opened the Sarasota Bread Company (in which he's still a partner).
When Mattison and his partners took over Ollie's they stayed open during the renovation. Too bad; a clean break from a dull past would have been better.
Now that the place is firmly Mattison's, you can get some solid tastes of his best, like a moist smoky quail with an Asian glaze on wilted spinach and bacon or trout sauteed with pesto seasoning. Among the entrees, Chilean sea bass was properly cooked with a crisp golden crust. A portobello stack with roast tomato and brie lets vegetarians have a rich indulgence.
There are also pretty good breads with boursin spread, crisp salads of mixed greens and some sharp desserts. If you're tired of tiramisu (and I am long over it), you'll still smile at Mattison's version, served in a coffee cup fashioned from silky dark chocolate.
More often the meals showed timid style, poor execution, few specials and little saucing, heavy or light. Sashimi tuna was rare but lifeless, served on tired cucumbers without a hint of green on the plate. Chicken mushroom soup tasted more like chicken a la king. Salmon was overcooked, "blackening" only bronzing it. Veal batiato, crusted with pine nuts and topped with prosciutto and fontinella, was little improvement over chicken cordon bleu.
Fried capers, a touch I usually love and one that shows courage in such a timid market, were dull and almost burned. They taste so much better fresh from the skillet.
At lunch the 10-ounce burger was surely a monster, but the Herkimer cheddar was undistinguished. Pecan-crusted chicken is already a high-fat treat, but this carried the extra weight of a heavy, greasy crust.
Details need attending to on almost all sides. Rice pilaf had a little crunch, but asparagus was limp, and most meals came with mushy julienned vegetables, mashed potatoes and a rosemary sprig. The wine list is pretty smart, but the bar stock is much too shallow; there's no martini list, rums top out at Bacardi and Scotch musters only the two Glens.
And although "bistro" is nearly meaningless, if you call yourself that, shouldn't you have espresso?
A few servers delivered attention and knowledge (if not pronunciation), and owners and greeters were omnipresent. But other staff would be overemployed in a diner.
Is that black grouper? "It's Florida gulf grouper, it's a white fish." What kind of tomatoes are in the heirloom tomato salad? "They're called heirloom tomatoes." Even the kitchen had that wrong: although there were yellow pears on one plate, most that day and a second time were grape tomatoes, Roma plums and plain old mushy ones. The menu was ahead of the kitchen on a creme brulee, promised in a fancy tuile, a macadamia cone, but delivered in a standard-issue ramekin (at the same price).
Such modern touches on the menu hint that Mattison's will dust off the old-hat style of dining. But not much of interest translates to the plate.
I'd like to see Mattison's give us fresher flavors, creative cooking and polished dining -- and maybe win some of that booming business less than a block away at BayWalk. I can't promise that downtown St. Petersburg has the appetite for sophisticated food, although it needs more. Mattison's could provide it. I hope it will take that chance.
Mattison's
The Plaza
111 2nd Ave. NE
St. Petersburg
(727) 895-2200
- Hours: 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday
- 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Saturday, Sunday
- Reservations: Suggested
- Details: Full bar, smoking section provided.
- Prices: Lunch, $5.95 to $9.95; dinner, $12.95 to $18.95
- Special features: Outdoor dining, cooking classes, culinary tours, live entertainment on weekends.
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