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Dinner Review: Watercolor Café

(September 8, 2002) Good food and music: two of the things that make life worth living, and you can find both at Larchmont's Watercolor Café. Chef Giovanni Flores serves up an eclectic mix of contemporary American, creative Italian and Pacific Rim-influenced dishes in a cozy, cheerfully funky Post Road storefront.

Owner Bruce Carroll is proud of recent renovations, including a new sound system installed to enhance Watercolor's regular musical offerings. Jazz ensemble or solo piano performers entertain diners Wednesday through Saturday nights, and contemporary folk artists appear twice a month, on Tuesdays. "We're getting some amazing national acts," said Carroll, including Steve Forbert, Sloan Wainwright, Chris Smither and Ellis Paul. Coming up September 17 is local singer Alistair Moock, and on October 1, "folk legend" Bill Morrisey.

As if good food and music weren't enough, the restaurant turns into a comedy club on the third Sunday of each month. If you want to see any of the shows, it's best to reserve a table for dinner between 6:30 and 7:00, with the show starting around 8:00. "But you can book a table later in the evening too, if we have room," says Carroll. Most Friday evenings starting at 9:00, you'll be able to catch local saxophonist David Brandom and his quartet. To sample Brandom's jazz from Watercolor: if you have a high-speed connection, click here, or for a dial-up connection, click here.

On a recent weekend evening, our party of four sampled dishes from the regular and special menus. Asparagus spears bathed in a creamy Gorgonzola sauce were tender-crisp, the cheese sauce ripe and tart. Roasted sea scallops in a lobster and white wine reduction tasted "nutty," according to one diner. There were pecans in the broth, along with shitake mushrooms and spinach, making for a complex mix of flavors and textures.

Filet mignon and shrimp, a special, arrived perfectly cooked. The steak, ordered medium rare, was lightly charred on the surface and deeply pink inside, and the shrimp, which often suffer from over-cooking in this type of presentation, were crispy on the outside and pleasingly chewy inside. A side dish of mashed potatoes got raves from two of us. Instead of new-fangled wasabi or garlic infusions, this was plain old mashed potatoes like Mamma used to make, tasting intensely of potato, yet still creamy and non-lumpy. OK, so it wasn't quite like Mamma used to make.

Pasta is a personal thing. Some like it chewy and some like it melt-in-your mouth tender. So it's not surprising that the porcini ravioli with scallops received a mixed review at our table. One person thought the ravioli were a bit too al dente, while another liked their resistance to the teeth. All agreed the reduction broth they were in was tasty and rich, although one person thought it a tad too sweet. Also a bit sweet was the mélange of roasted vegetables swimming in the broth.

The swordfish steak, a special, tasted "moist and buttery," with a tart-sweet barbeque sauce and fruit salsa. Anyone who has tried to cook swordfish at home knows how leathery and dry it can be if not cooked perfectly. "This is possibly the best swordfish I've ever had," said one member of our party. Chef Flores has a light, sure hand with seafood.

Chicken sauté, from the regular menu, combined boneless breasts with a port-wine and sundried cranberry reduction, served over spinach and Montrachet cheese. As with swordfish, chicken cutlets can so easily become dry and tough with over-cooking, but these were tender and flavorful.

Watercolor's signature Tollhouse Pie, studded with chocolate chips in a brownie-like matrix, could easily serve two. A pallid cheesecake was neither cheesy nor lemony. Better was the key lime pie, with its tart citrus bite ambushing the tongue from within the creamy custard.

Service was friendly and efficient, and the piano music provided just the right background accompaniment, without requiring us to raise our voices above it.

Main dishes are priced in the $16-$24 range. There are some good, reasonably priced wines available by the bottle or by the glass. The house pinot noir was especially fine.