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Ithaca Madeline's The main floor of the old Rothschild’s department store is unrecognizable in its latest transformation. The manager of the family-owned Thai Cuisine restaurant, Sunit ("call me Lex") Chutintaranond, started with a patisserie named for a favorite character from French children’s literature. The establishment has since expanded into the city’s handsomest restaurant. Slick and urbane, it would appear to be more at home in Manhattan than in upstate Ithaca. The look is modern-minimalist Asian, colorful and vaguely art deco, with a bar and tables spaced well apart on several levels. Gregarious Lex, the head chef, oversees Pacific Rim fusion fare that dazzles in flavor and execution. Changing the menu every couple of months, he and his staff might pair French and Japanese or Italian and Asian. For dinner, he could serve shrimp in a roasted chile and coconut milk sauce over green tea rice or sear sea bass with a black bean sauce and Korean chile butter. He might roast his pork shank with a black tea citrus crust, and finish the New York sirloin with a port and three-peppercorn sauce. Accompaniments could be Asian soybeans, steamed baby bok choy, garlic-sesame bean sprouts, spinach ohitashi and chilled steamed napa cabbage. Starters are as simple as chilled Asian soybeans in the pod and as complex as poke, the Hawaiian seafood preparation, served sashimi-style and seasoned with seaweed, chiles, onions and such. Crisp lobster rolls are served with a roasted chile, carrot and tarragon aioli. The house-baked focaccia with caramelized onions and kalamata olives is to die for. Ditto for the desserts, which fill sixteen feet of display cases in the restaurant. The pastry chef prepares up to twenty patisserie-style treats a night from a repertoire of more than 50. We’ve heard their praises sung across the city. The bar features more than 80 single-malt scotches as well as rare cognacs, grappas and small-batch bourbons. (607) 277-2253. www.madelinesrestaurant.com. Entrées,
$17 to $24. Dinner nightly, 5 to 10 or 11.
Ensconced next to Talbots
in the Community Corners shopping plaza in tony Cayuga Heights, this
storefront operation has matured with age, vaulting into the ranks of
best in Ithaca. Starting small and with a decor that was plainer than
plain, it has expanded to offer three dining rooms seating a total of
100 and now sports crisp, chic decor in white and brown. Each table is
topped with fresh flowers and a votive candle, and fresh flowers sprout
in wall-mounted vases. Chef-owners James and
Heidi Larounis, who moved here from the Four Seasons Hotel in
Philadelphia, are known for imaginative American fare with Mediterranean
flair. The early bargain prices have given way to an upscaling of the
menu with more expensive ingredients, and the output is beautifully
presented. The dinner menu ranges
widely, from bacon-crusted monkfish with a red wine sauce and
bayou-style roast swordfish and scallops with a cilantro-saffron fish
broth to Mongolian flame-roasted pork loin with tamarind-lemongrass
sauce and Mediterranean char-grilled rack of lamb with a lemon-mint demi-glace.
Don’t be surprised to find a teriyaki tofu steak and duck à
l’orange on the same page. Also available are inventive brick-oven
pizzas (one of duck, lingonberry and sweet potato) and assertive pastas
and noodles, including the Heights macaroni and cheese. Everything comes
with choice of Greek or caesar salad. Starters could be
portobello mushroom, honey coconut tempura shrimp, caramelized sea
scallops Greek style and sautéed crab cake served on a bed of shredded
barbecue pork shoulder with a pineapple-roasted red pepper salsa. Highly
rated desserts range from baklava to crème brûlée. The Wine Spectator
award-winning wine list is deep and varied. So is the roster of
single-malt scotches. (607) 257-4144. www.heightscafe.com. Entrées, $22.95 to $28.95. Lunch, Monday-Friday 11:30 to 2:30. Dinner, Monday-Saturday 5 to 9 or 10.
Her coterie of fans are happy that Renée Senne is back in the restaurant business – lower profile, perhaps, but on a first-name basis. After running her vaunted Renée’s Bistro in The new restaurant is about the size of her
original, but adds a large covered porch for outdoor dining in season.
Although her former restaurant was first called an American bistro, the
new Renee’s is less of a bistro and more refined, like the building in
which it resides. Stressing local ingredients, Renee applies classical
techniques honed in Given her pastry background, you might be tempted to eat dessert first. Don’t, but be sure to save room. Start instead with the likes of a chèvre flan with smoked salmon, escargots with tomato and garlic butter sauce or the superb four-mushroom vol-au-vent, the puff pastry layered in our case with morels, champignons de Paris, portobello and porcini mushrooms. We also loved her salad of new potatoes served warm with chèvre on baby greens, a menu fixture from the original. For main courses, Renée might pair diver sea scallops with crab in a tarragon beurre blanc, and serve confit and grilled breast of duck with a fig and red wine sauce. You might find swordfish seared with garlic and olive oil resting on spinach linguini or grilled and served with shrimp-filled ravioli. Other seasonal options could be steak and mushroom pie, venison osso buco with saffron risotto, rack of lamb with green peppercorn sauce, and grilled delmonico steak with caramelized onion, garlic and scallion cream. And now the dessert trolley rolls to the table. It might hold tarte tatin, lemon soufflé cheesecake, a passion fruit-truffle cake or a fabulous vacherin with lemon curd and raspberries. How about the “petit diable?” The little devil spills forth dark chocolate cake with coffee buttercream, hazelnut succès, chocolate mousse and meringue mushrooms. (607) 277-4047. Entrées, $21.50 to $29.50.
www.reneesfeast.com. Dinner, Tuesday-Saturday
Peripatetic Ithaca restaurateur Lex Chutintaranond spent $800,000 to transform a video store into a showplace Italian restaurant that opened with great buzz at the turn of the new year 2003. Four designers spent four months readying a space that a fellow restaurateur called “very dramatic – not what you expect to find in Ithaca.” The 160-seat restaurant is quite a sight, Lex agreed – “people think it belongs in Manhattan or San Francisco or Florida.” He said the building lent itself to being a replica of an Italian house, with a sunken seating area evoking a Roman bathhouse surrounded by columns in the front, a large fireplace and bar, and a remarkable ceiling mural at the end near the open kitchen. Lex took his chef to Italy to prepare a menu of regional Italian cuisine. To start, how about semolina-crusted fried calamari, rosemary-lemon shrimp with a lima bean salad, beef carpaccio with shaved parmigiano-reggiano and truffle oil or grilled wild boar sausage over sautéed bitter greens? Pasta choices could be mushroom ravioli with walnut sauce, taglierini with tuna sauce, and fettuccine with duck ragoût. Among secondi are poached red snapper in a wine-tomato sauce, Liugurian shellfish stew, balsamic-roasted half chicken with eggplant relish and herbed polenta, braised veal shank with saffron risotto and T-bone steak florentine. Only the seriously hungry have room for the evening’s sweets. (607) 273-9292. Entrées, $15 to $24. Dinner
nightly, 4:30 to 11 or midnight.
The late Renee’s Bistro is now Willow, the work of Sean O’Brien, a Johnson & Wales-trained chef, and his young wife Amy, a ballerina who looks the part. The two Ithaca natives refined the decor in the dining room to epitomize clean and classic, the prevailing gray of the walls accented by black metallic chairs at white-clothed tables, each topped with a beaded-glass lamp. The martini bar at the rear features “designer martinis.” A wall of windows stretches along the front, and the roar of nearby Ithaca Falls may be heard outside. The willow trees in the park inspired the name. Sean’s contemporary American menu is short but varied, meaning global. You might start with Pacific Rim tartare -- tuna, ginger, cilanto, sesame aioli, siracha, sesame crisps and pea shoots – or a bruschetta tasting. Or how about a baked brick of brie, Belgian-style littlenecks in a garlicky beer broth, puree of asparagus soup with roasted mushroom croutons, or a salad of smoked salmon and cucumber with frisée, red onions and lemon-caper crème fraîche? There is a trio of wonderful-sounding pastas, including trenette of lobster, mushrooms and sugar snap peas in a shallot-brandy sauce. But the entrées entice: perhaps herbed halibut with white peach crema, roasted sea bass with garlicky fumé, grilled lamb loin with shallot-balsamic demi-glace or grilled veal porterhouse with lobster coral sauce. Sorbets and gelatos highlight the dessert list, which might yield chocolate mousse cake or peanut butter terrine. A surprise at a recent visit was “coffee and doughnuts” – coffee crème brûlée with cinnamon-sugar coated doughnut muffins (607)
272-0656. Entrées, $16 to $26. Dinner, Tuesday-Saturday 5 to 10.
A kitchen fire closed L’Auberge du Cochon Rouge, a French restaurant of renown, in 1994. When owner Walter Wiggins rebuilt, he surprised almost everyone by turning the hilltop farmhouse overlooking the Cayuga Lake valley into a New York-style steakhouse. He also surprised local skeptics, some of whom were persuaded that this was even better than its predecessor. The restaurant’s traditionally masculine decor lent itself to the steakhouse concept. L’Auberge sous chef William Peterson stayed on as chef, presenting a predictable menu ranging from roasted half chicken with mashed potatoes to T-bone steak. Prime beef is featured and the house specialty is porterhouse steak, $59.90 for two. There are grilled or blackened tuna, broiled swordfish, broiled salmon, shrimp scampi, a vegetarian platter and a couple of chicken dishes for non-beef eaters. Although all entrées come with a fresh vegetable, the usual salads and side orders cost extra. Appetizers include smoked trout, baked deviled crab, shrimp cocktail and clams casino. Desserts range from old-fashioned bread pudding and assorted ice creams to triple berry strudel.. (607) 273-3464. Entrées, $16.95 to $32.95.
Dinner nightly, 5:30 to 10 or 11.
Talented young chef Paul Andrews took over the striking Italian trattoria known as Tre Stelle, did some refurbishing and changed the theme to modern American. The sleek dining room, with a mix of art and artifacts on the walls, is light and airy. Canvas tabletops hand-painted by a local artist provide interior color. A wraparound terrace offers sylvan courtyard dining beside vine-covered walls on three sides. The seasonal menu favors local products with a vegetarian/organic orientation and is categorized under the elements (earth, water, fire and wind). Many dishes are available in small, medium and large portions, making for an unusual breadth of options. You might order a mushroom fricassee with grilled bread as an appetizer or a main course; ditto for the togarashi-crusted tuna with fennel slaw and pomegranate sauce. The “fire” (meat) dishes come in medium and large sizes. Hostess Nina Hien, the chef’s wife, urges diners to mix and match, “sharing and passing dishes around.” The bold-flavored offerings range from forest risotto with wild mushrooms and pine nuts to grilled beef tenderloin with whipped potatoes and collard greens. Start with a grilled asparagus and radicchio salad with feta cheese or sheep’s milk ricotta gnocchi in rosemary-lemon broth. Move on to lobster and mussel stew with coconut-lime broth or wood-roasted duck breast with celery-root gratin and caramelized onion jam. The wood oven is used for flatbreads, smoked foods and roasting pork loin with piquillo sauce and rack of lamb with rosemary-coriander sauce. It also produces a chocolate lava cake that is Pangea’s signature dessert. Other sweets include coconut brûlée and lemon cream napoleon. In late 2002, Pangea added a “wine bar and den” serving fondues, flatbreads and wood-grilled pizzas. (607) 273-8515. Entrées, $17.25 to $21.50.
Dinner, Tuesday-Sunday from 5:30.
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