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Nicki Pendleton
The Eat Beat
Nashville Banner
1100 Broadway
Nashville, TN 37203
| "Cafe 123: Ingredient overload mars new menu"
By Nicki Pendleton,
Banner Food Writer(pub. May 9, 1997, Nashville Banner)
One of the kindergarten lessons you're supposed to learn is not to pile on. So I apologize in advance, but I'm going to trash Cafe 123's new menu as thoroughly as another local reviewer did recently.
Normally I would just drop my review, but my publisher has magnanimously spent $230 on visits to the restaurant, and I feel obliged to write the review.
To pilfer a lead from Gourmet magazine, composer Camille Saint-Saens once said a colleague's music contained much that was good and new, although what is good isn't new, and what is new isn't good. That, unfortunately, is the case with the new menu at Cafe 123. The new chef, Vito Randazzo, son of Caesar, owner of Caesar's in Lion's Head has brought along a new menu that abandons contemporary Southern eats for a more international set of flavors. Lots of trendy Asian ingredients appear, but they are clumsily handled, and a lot of the high-concept food fails, plainly because it doesn't taste good.
The vanilla-papaya sauce on the sea bass ($18.95) tastes like unsweetened vanilla pudding over steamed fish.
Over-tinkering transforms potentially great dishes into merely tolerable ones. A seafood ravioli ($13.95) has way too much cilantro. Woodsmoke and green onions are the dominant flavors in Zuppa 123, a gorgeous plate of grilled lobsters, scallops, fish, shrimp, and mussels in a tomato broth over capellini ($21.95). I had no desire to sop up the broth, or even finish the thing.
We also had no desire to sop up the sauce around elk ($22.95), the day's wild game special. Though this challenging meat was nicely cooked, too many peppercorns in the cream sauce lent an astringent taste.
A salad of Asian greens ($4.50 for a half order) in a mango lime vinaigrette didn't live up to its billing. The dressing was the selling point, for me, and it turned out to be just spicy, not really flavored of lime or mango.
Really our only successful dishes were a day's catch of grouper in a creamy sauce over angel hair ($18.95), a veal chop cut off the bone ($21.95), and a couple of appetizers.
Cafe 123 is a handsome, relaxing restaurant space, with that signature Jody Faison ambience that keeps them coming back. The place is crowded with beautiful people who apparently like the food just fine. On one visit, we didn't sit down to dinner until nearly 11 p.m., and the tables were full.
The genius of Jody Faison is that he's hyper-competent, and when one of his places takes a dive, all he needs to do is show up for a while and it gets better. I'm sure he'll do that, and I'm sure it'll be fine.
location:
Cafe 123
123 12th Ave South. 255-2233.
Nicki Pendleton's "Eat Beat" is a regular feature of the Nashville Banner's Friday Backbeat section. All reviews are based on two or more visits. The Banner pays for all meals. We welcome your comments.
Copyright 1997, Nashville Banner |
