We want versatility in our restaurants. Sometimes we want the edgy excitement of a city restaurant, all minimalist design or brasserie-bold. But very often we want the other extreme - a nurturing environment, a soft landing to the day, a way to wind down a frenetic week.
Walking into Wild Horse Cafe, near the railroad tracks in Beverly, is instantly calming. It's a pretty place: Candlelight flicks in the long, low room as the hostess leads our party to an oak table flanked by upholstered couches. The room has almost too much furniture, like dim memories of a grandmother's parlor, but that's comforting, too.
It was a promising start to an evening.
The cuisine of the Wild Horse, owned by Michael and Robert Hubbard, falls under the category of New American, an umbrella designation that can mean almost anything. Mostly it seems to mean mixing flour tortilla egg rolls with Moroccan-style lamb shanks, lasagna with shepherd's pie. The food purists shudder but, truth be told, it is the new America - a little of everything and everywhere popping up in life and on the table.
The Wild Horse's chef, James H. Turner, takes a bold approach to the genre, and does a great job when he stays simple. The mainstay of the kitchen is a wood-fired brick oven, visible when one walks into the dining room. Turner uses Beverly's wealth of seafood well, one evening choosing native cusk to roast in the oven. This underutilized species of cod rarely appears on restaurant menus, but handled well, can shine as much as more lordly swordfish or tuna. The cusk was smoky and intense from the oven-roasting, perched above a melange of native black trumpet mushrooms and morels and offset by garlic mashed potatoes. The fish had enough heft to stand up to the roasting, yet remain moist, and its mild flavor served to accentuate the savory tones in the accompaniments.
Turner, in a phone interview, spoke of a commitment to buying local organic ingredients and using the sea's bounty in unusual ways. Bread is baked daily and the desserts are made there, all part, he said, of taking "that extra step."
He does have a way with seafood. Crab cakes, that most ubiquitous of appetizers, spoke of the sea, tasting just of crab with a crisp exterior but little interior breading. In another appetizer, the delicacy of seared sea scallops was preserved with just a little cider glaze on top.
Perfectly roasted chicken can be any restaurant's signature dish, especially done over a wood fire as here. Both times I sampled the dish, the chicken was intriguing, the smokiness against moist flesh comforting, something one never gets tired of. Another ode to simplicity was the spaghetti with mushroom duxelles, peas, and shaved Parmesan with just a touch of truffle oil. The nuances of this dish didn't come from complexity or from ingredients added on profligately, but from the quality of each. We're so used to machine-made spaghetti that tasting the firm and silky strands of this handmade pasta was a revelation. Instead of a backdrop for the mushrooms and peas, it became a full player in the flavors.
Suburban restaurants often seem to pile on the cheese, maybe having learned that patrons feel richer is better, more gourmet. That happened in a shrimp and spinach pizzetta, the mozzarella and ricotta running rampant over any other tastes. A spinach and sun-dried tomato lasagna just missed the same fate, its gutsy flavors holding up against the cheese.
Turner, who formerly was at the Harraseeket Inn in Freeport, Maine, has been at the Wild Horse only a short time. Although his handling of the main ingredients, such as the fish, was skillful, some work on what's called "sides" in restaurant parlance, the accompaniments, would smooth out the cuisine. The excellent scallops surrounded a clumsy clump of carrots and turnips mashed together. Roasted vegetables with several entrees were cut in unappetizing large chunks and tended to be rather raw inside.
But the oddest was a wood-grilled pork loin, a fine piece of meat nicely done, served with jasmine rice and a melon salsa coulis. So far, so good, until I reached the strawberry slices sprinkled over the pork and rice. Pork with fruit certainly works, but only certain fruits with some acidity and body. Strawberries just tasted weird.
The deep dark chocolate cake was an intense slug of fudgy cake with cappuccino ice cream and whipped cream, over the top but good. However, considering the assertive flavors on much of the menu, grilled bananas with a warm caramel sauce and a light creme brulee held more appeal.
Service varied, attentive at times, a little insouciant at times. Tuna ordered medium came out very rare, and by the time the fish was returned with the proper degree of doneness, much of the oomph had gone out of the dish. There seemed to be an eagerness to get the drink orders immediately and then a falling off of attention on a busy Friday, an obvious impatience on the waiter's part that our party had talked too long. Although these details always matter, they especially do so when a surbuban restaurant is striving to be a cut above the ordinary and therefore charging a bit more than surrounding places.
The Wild Horse Cafe has many pluses to build on, though, from the dedication to organic ingredients to the excellent fish to the skill of the chef. It's a pleasant place, and it will be a pleasure to watch it develop.
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