Good choices: Native tomatoes with herb salad; chicken livers with Caribbean nut crust; hali but with white bean stew; molasses marinated pork loin with grilled pears; crisp chicken with ginger-wasabi dressed greens; confit of duck, duck sausage; brioche with peaches and cream; chocolate cake.
Reservations accepted. Smoking at bar and in lounge area.
Credit cards: Visa, Master Card, American Express.
Access: Fully accessible.
RED RAVEN'S HAVANA
90 Washington St., Salem
(508) 740-3888
Restaurant reviewed 06/16/97 by Alison Arnett
When Mike Frechet opened a little joint called Red Raven several years ago, he described it as a ``concept'' restaurant. Its decorating scheme was outrageous - a little like a drag queen's dream in beads, velvets, and clashing colors. The music was campy, the mixed drinks had over-the-top names, and the space so cramped that one was forced to meet one's neighbor. On lively weekend nights, Red Raven felt like an outre Madri Gras party in this rather dicey area of Salem.
The food, however, especially at first, was incidental and never quite caught up with the spirit of the place.
Last March, Frechet expanded into a much larger restaurant in downtown Salem that he calls Red Raven's Havana. Many of the decorating touches moved across town: The walls are splashed with bright paint; the artwork is faux Picasso; beads and baubles and cheerfully tacky statuary flourish. The music's still campy and the cocktails still have flamboyant names.
The atmosphere's more subdued here, though. Maybe that's because the room is large, diffusing the ''we're all in this together'' feeling. Maybe the owner is deliberately trying for a more subtle tone.
But I think it's because everyone's too busy eating to concentrate on the surroundings. Chef David Chicane's food makes a strong statment; his flavors are bold with generous use of herbs and spices and his presentations lean toward abundant portions but simple displays.
Chicane divides his menu into spa, bourgeois, and gastronomique. Like the restaurant name, Havana, which Frechet says signifies the sophistication plus Caribbean light-heartedness of pre-Castro Cuba, the designations are rather arbitrary. There's, by the way, no Cuban food on the menu; the reference is to the ambience, Frechet says. Most of Chicane's dishes are straightforward in tastes, certainly not made up of thick sauces, so that even those under gastronomique aren't heavy.
A grilled quail appetizer sports a rich red wine sauce that Chicane explains relies only on some roasted chicken stock and quail juice plus herbs. Toasted pecan cornbread and a little salad of arugula round out the flavors of the plate. It's simple, yet has a satisfying range. Chicken livers crusted with crumbs and ground nuts were an inspired appetizer, savory and slightly salty, rich without being heavy.
Many of the dishes here have salads woven in, an accent point with the sharpness of a vinaigrette. Native tomatoes of many varieties, from slices of yellow tomato to little red pear to tiny Sweetheart 100s, are graced with a tomato balsamic vinaigrette.
I'm always looking for a great chicken dish, the most used and too often abused bird in the American diet. In Havana's version of crisp-skinned chicken seared under weights and then finished in the oven, herbs and garlic are slipped under the skin of the boned chicken halves, Chicane explains, to infuse their flavors overnight. The result is spectacular; this is chicken you'll remember. Thin, crisp-roasted potatoes and butter beans along with greens dressed with ginger-wasabi sauce made a backdrop for the meat. Confit duck leg with duck sausage was done in a sour-cherry sauce. Again the sauce was rich but not heavy, so that the taste of the duck, not the sauce, predominates.
Chicane, who formerly was at Upstairs at the Pudding in Cambridge, is especially good at creating ``spa'' dishes with distinctive character. Tuna is treated essentially like sushi, a dramatic presentation in dark and light shades. Very rare sushi-grade tuna rests on a bed of braised leeks and short-grained sticky rice is mounded next to it; the whole dish is drizzled with a wasabi and soy dressing. The tastes were clean and the dressing was a good sharp contrast. In the case of lean pork loin, just enough molasses gave the meat and its accompaniment of grilled pears and mashed sweet potatoes an extra kick.
A halibut dish starts with white beans stewed with an impressive array of vegetables - celery, carrots, roasted tomatoes, fennel - and a hint of orange peel. The tastes are irresistible and make the halibut, well-seasoned but a little too well done - almost an extra on the plate.
Not everything or every ingredient worked well. An appetizer of avocado, crabmeat, and vegetables fashioned into a spring roll seemed a waste of good ingredients, its tastes pallid. The olives were warm as advertised but short on any taste of marinade or herbs. The texture of a morel custard with caramelized shallot reduction was gritty; a summer dish of wild mushrooms in a pastry crust had been much tastier. And sirloin of beef was too fatty, overshadowing any virtues of the roasted shallot sauce or summer ratatouille.
Havana's desserts range from a delicious homey chocolate cake from the owner's grandmother's recipes to elaborate tarts from the excellent French patisserie Delphin Gourmandise in nearby Marblehead. A giant brioche cut open and filled with fresh peaches and whipped cream was delicious as were any of the Delphin mousse-centered tarts, especially one with a coffee-flavored mousse center topped with dark caramel. All the portions are large, though, and rich, so it's best to share.
The wine list has promise to it, with enough to match the strong-edged entrees. The wait staff is competent and conversant about the food, something not always found in the suburban restaurants.
Red Raven's Havana is an expansion in spirit as well as size. The ambience is fun but the fireworks are left for the plate, where they should be in a restaurant.
A mea culpa: In last week's review of Clio, I mentioned rhubarb seemed out of season for a September menu in New England. Not so, says Dan Carson of Verrill Farms in Concord, who called to tell me that local rhubarb is in its second season. As long as it's manicured carefully through the summer, it's good until hard frost, he says, adding that restaurants are buying lots of it now.
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