Adventures in Dining
The dining experience at ADOLFO'S is as colorful as its chef-owner.
By Sara Roahen
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ADOLFO'S one-man wrecking
crew, chef-owner Adolfo Perez Palavicini, mixes Creole and Italian styles with the
greatest of ease.
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WHAT: Adolfo's
CUISNE: Creole-Italian
WHEN: Dinner weeknights
WHERE:611 Frenchmen St., 948-3800
CARDS: Major
Adolfo's is one restaurant that demands to be named after its chef. Adolfo
Perez Palavicini is the sole keeper of his treehouse cottage-like restaurant,
the humble star of a little-known one-man cooking show in Faubourg Marigny. In
a cubbyhole kitchen barely big enough for most of us to make tea for a few
friends, Palavicini passes multiple-course meals of saucy Italian-Creole fare
to the dining room at a pace that keeps one server swerving like a puppy still
getting used to his feet. The ratio of one cook to one server to as many as 36
hot and hungry diners has mistake written all over it. It also encourages
giggles, friendly forgiveness and a little spur-of-the-moment magic.
While Adolfo's embodies New Orleans funk in its display of erotic
coffee-shop paintings, mix-and-match dinnerware, and tiled tables that recall
Mexican restaurants in the 1980s, the play of early-evening light upon its
second-story, clayish red-brown walls and ceiling evokes the mystical mood of
the mountainous Southwest. And when the sun sets in the dark room strung with
Christmas lights and perched above the Apple Barrel Bar, an illuminating broth
of slivered garlic and herbs with a top layer of floating olive oil and bread
crumbs is spoon-fed euphoria.
Palavicini checks into the restaurant just one hour before service.
He makes most everything to order and claims he doesn't need much preparation
time. Just enough for the daily soups, the peppery red sauce and the unequaled
house dressing piquant with mustard seed and a squeeze of lemon. Oh yes, also
enough time to roll fresh, papery pasta sheets, butchering beef, cleaning fish
and pounding the veal he panees all night long. His menu is not short. In most
kitchens, this workload would send a couple of cooks into perilous feats of
knifework and frenzied pan-tossing. Palavicini plain gets it done. His
soft-spoken greetings from behind the line drip with the sound of his Spanish
homeland and a mellowness uncharacteristic of a chef.
At its best, the food at Adolfo's matches in unfettered flavor its
creator's effortless zeal. Five oysters lolled in a puddle of spinach cream
sauce drunk with Pernod. A simple, parsleyed garlic butter coated a handful of
absolutely tender escargots. Baskets of toasted garlic bread meant that not a
spot of either appetizer's sauce was wasted. A masterfully made cannelloni
starter was a paradigmatic mix of Italian and Creole. The fresh pasta came
rolled around earthy corn kernels, flaky Gulf crabmeat and hot, ground Italian
sausage to complement its thin blanket of tomato sauce.
The Seville-born chef left home at 14 on a conquistadoran quest in
Central America. Six years later, after jumping a ship in French Guyana that he
swore was headed for Portugal, he dove overboard into a chilly November
Mississippi River. Here he stayed. This adventure story tells itself through
his swarthy tomato sauce; simmered with whole bay leaves and sweaty spice,
a ladleful tops sides of linguine that prelude each entree (the
complimentary salad course acts as a summery side on entree plates).
Such free-spirited abandon doesn't always work. Take the
rudimentary wine list. It is a complicated game of show-and-tell that sends an
already haggard solo server (two servers do share the dining room on most
weekends) ambling from table to table juggling up to six bottles at once.
Although, like the food, all of the wine selections were reasonably priced, the
laid-back system lost its hippie charm when the waiter didn't have time to
perform other essential tasks. Like open our bottle.
At its worst, the food at Adolfo's tastes rushed. On the house
specialty, "ocean" (an ocean of shrimp, crab and crawfish cooked in cream; I
had mine atop red snapper), two mealy, spoiled shrimp had me eyeing my
partner's fast-disappearing tasso-topped breaded breast of chicken. And paneed
veal was pounded so thinly that it fell apart under its weighty
cardboard-flavored breading. Disappointing slips like these threatened to foil
an otherwise feel-good meal. But when Palavicini's soothing voice asked if
everything was all right through wooden shutters separating the kitchen from
our alcove, everything felt -- and tasted -- a little better.
Negative oven space (aside from the small one used for storage)
dictates that no desserts are baked on the premises. Angelo Brocato pulls
through with cannoli and spumoni. The no-brainer amaretto poured over vanilla
ice cream is a perfect way to have your dessert and drink it, too.
On the whole, Palavicini's creations are worth the wait. Like the
Cajun-seasoned catfish comfortably fat with crawfish, whole shrimp and a
spoonful of stuffing. Or the linguine marinara piled proudly with chunks of
anise-spiced sausage. One evening, when service was limping along slowly, the
room with a customer profile as spicy as the marinara joined in singing "Happy
Birthday" to another patron. The birthday boy passed around slices of doberge
cake to tide us over. Like our server said at the beginning of the meal, as
long as everyone keeps a sense of humor, the chef will take care of the rest.
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