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Owners Mark and Barbara Matera were determined that The Passport Cafe would stand out from other Pine-area restaurants. Their restaurant's motto, "Global Cuisine, Local Harvest," encompasses their support for local farms and businesses, as well as the wide-ranging inspirations for their menu. Dividing walls imitate a deconstructed house; whimsical upside-down window boxes, gleaming chandeliers and shiny wood tables evoke the ambience of a French country inn.
The dinner menu is impressive, although written with the opaque simplicity typical of ingredient-driven restaurants. And at the helm are serious professionals: Maitre D' David Cesaro spent four years at the landmark New York restaurant Le Bernardin, and Chef Shawn Carlson, a native of Greene County, worked as executive chef at Toni Pais' beloved Baum Vivant and opened Isoldi's in the Strip District.
With all this effort, I expected to be impressed. Instead, I found myself perplexed and disappointed.
- Hours: Tuesday-Thursday 11 a.m.-9 p.m., Friday-Saturday 11a.m.-10 p.m., Sunday brunch 10 a.m.-3 p.m., closed Mondays.
- Basics: Despite a well-written menu and knowledgeable staff, service is spotty and dishes are often undermined by poor execution.
- Recommended dishes: Wild Boar Sausage, Mussels, Pepper Salad, Les Pates Muchoirs, "Pittsburgh Cheesesteak," Lemon Tart, Chocolate Truffles.
- Prices: Appetizers, $8-$12; Salads, $5-$6; entrees, $14-$32; desserts, $5-$7; wine by the glass starts at $6, bottles start at $27.
- Summary: Handicapped accessible; non-smoking; ample lot parking; major credit cards accepted; reservations recommended on weekends; corkage fee $20-$25.
- Noise level: medium-loud
A restaurant's bread may seem to be an innocuous offering, but it is generally the first impression a diner receives of a restaurant. The bread at Passport was terrible. Not actually stale, but tough, with a slightly musty flavor. Not even a generous soak in the olive oil provided in beakers at each table could make this bread palatable.
"Beet The Goat" ($11) was a still-life of a salad. A large square of goat cheese resembled a pile of whipped marshmallow. A dark purple tower of beet coins and streaks of mahogany-colored, reduced balsamic offset both color and shape. Unfortunately, this dish was more suitable as a decoration than an appetizer. The goat cheese "souffle" was both wet and grainy with very little flavor. The beets were unremarkable.
The Passport Cafe's version of the ubiquitous crab cake ($10) stands out, but for all the wrong reasons. This tower of lump crab meat was room-temperature and unpleasantly firm. The bits of crab were so stuck together that it became difficult to eat, and an intense flavor of celery, as well as the overpowering sweetness of the sauce, diluted the natural sweetness of the crab.
The lemon creme "pillows" that function as a sauce were made using a technique of molecular gastronomy. A little cream is added to reduced limoncello; this mixture is combined with sodium alginate dissolved in water, and dipped in calcium chloride to create a thin skin. While I believe that chefs should expose themselves to new and modern techniques, their use is not always beneficial. As I poked the "pillows" with a fork to release the sauce, the plastic-like shell oozed bright yellow liquid, as if I had just cut into some strange new animal.
Despite a paltry serving, mussels ($8) would have been quite good, absent the "beer foam." On two occasions the foam tasted strongly and unpleasantly of alcohol, and left me puzzled as to why a delicate and flavorful broth of white wine thickened with a little cream wasn't sufficient.
The Pepper Salad ($6) was well-conceived, but slightly wilted lettuce could have used a little attention. The roasted shallot vinaigrette was potent yet balanced, though perhaps a bit abundant, and the sweetness of the manouri cheese played well against the piquant taste of the pepper and olives.
House-made Wild Boar Sausage ($9) was palatable, but not quite warm enough. The "parsnip fettuccini" created such a successful visual effect that I forgot the strands of "pasta" were made from parsnips until I bit into them.
Many of the entrees were mediocre, and none was exceptional. All were served with a few roasted potatoes and selection of vegetables, usually green beans, baby carrots and bell pepper. The miniature carrot and roasted potatoes were consistently undercooked. All of the vegetables were served almost devoid of butter, oil or salt.
Beef Wellington ($28) was a disappointing play on a classic dish. Pate de fois gras was reinterpreted as a triangle of pheasant pate, a very poor substitute. Instead of being wrapped in puff pastry, the filet-- which was moist and rich -- was topped with a pale, flat "puff pastry" cracker. A pasty, plain bechamel sauce had formed an unpleasant skin.
The Beef Wellington has subsequently been replaced with a far superior "Pittsburgh Cheesesteak" ($28). A mix of goat cheese, spinach and pine nuts provided a bright contrast to a wonderfully juicy cut of meat. The beauty of this dish lies in the way that Chef Carlson highlighted the filet's superior texture while building on its milder flavor. This dish was playful yet sophisticated, but potatoes carved in the shape of mushrooms added a forced and unnecessary note of whimsy.
The tomato base of the American Bouillabaisse ($32) hadn't been cooked long enough to come together, yet somehow much of the seafood was rubbery and overcooked, especially the crayfish. If the crayfish had been worth eating, I would still have had some trouble, since the server had accidentally delivered the seafood cracker with the mussels appetizer, cleared it, and then disappeared for 20 minutes after serving our entrees.
Repeat ordering suggested that the kitchen was more capable of turning out dishes that were properly seasoned and cooked when business was slow. On a busy Friday night, the Pork Osso Bucco ($19) was unforgivably underseasoned. It was served with a red cabbage "slaw" that contained some inedible portions of the core hidden among the bright purple pile. Most disturbingly, I learned that it is possible to make meat extremely dry and yet so tender that it falls off of the bone, presumably the result of braising a piece of meat and then letting it sit outside of its sauce, which had mysteriously gone missing.
On a later visit, the pork still lacked a sauce, but black pepper spaetzle and cabbage and fennel slaw (green cabbage this time) had been executed much more carefully and successfully.
Desserts will certainly change in the near future as a pastry chef has just been hired, but those that I tried were fairly good. The lemon tart ($5) was intensely but pleasantly sour, and the top had been browned just a bit, creating a creme brulee-like effect. The densely sweet chocolate truffles ($7) were just the thing to go with a good cup of coffee. Sadly, the coffee ($1.75) was much too weak, but they're working with a good supplier (La Prima) and one hopes it will improve. The Crepe with Nutella and Bananas ($7) suffered from a crepe that was hard and dry. It was served on a long thin plate that looked adorable, but made it quite difficult to eat.
The wine list is varied and interesting, and changes frequently under the direction of Mr. Cesaro. The restaurant offers frequently changing flights of red or white wine -- three tasting pours of wines that are interesting to compare side by side. But I was annoyed to notice that if I had ordered three individual glasses of the wines presented in one flight, I would have paid only a dollar or two more. I would also like to see some suggested pairings listed on the menu.
Unfortunately, Mr. Cesaro seems to have focused on the wine program to the detriment of his other responsibilities as maitre d' -- training and supervising servers. Servers were generally incapable of deftly handling many of the basic aspects of service. Every single time a dish was brought to the table, we had to indicate who had ordered it. Even when there were only two of us, and we were splitting the Pepper Salad, a server held our two identical plates aloft and asked 'Pepper Salad?', clearly uncertain as to whether she was at the right table.
Weaknesses of service and food seem to stem from the same fundamental place. The owners and chef alike have embraced the idea of using local ingredients and preparing food from scratch, but all the good intentions in the world will not make up for trying to do too much, too soon. The Materas have no previous experience in the hospitality industry, and Chef Carlson has only been working as an executive chef for a few years. So many of these dishes were based on good ideas, and a few simple changes would be transformative. Service would certainly improve with a bit more training and the removal of some unnecessary flourishes.
For example, not every restaurant needs to serve an amuse bouche, especially when they range so widely in quality. A puff pastry shell filled with warm pepper cheese was scrumptious, but a demitasse cup of sparkling mango and pineapple juice garnished with a grape was merely strange.
Good ingredients are extremely important, but in the end, food really needs to be taste-driven. Appearance also matters, but when flavor is sacrificed to ingenious or attractive presentations, I have to ask, is anyone in the kitchen tasting the food?
