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The elegance and distinctiveness of Chef Erik Desjarlais' Evangeline menu has attracted the attention of critics and diners alike since the day the restaurant opened in April 2008.
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By N.L. English
July 27, 2008
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Evangeline - Portland, Maine
Evangeline serves meals that evoke the curiosity, reworking traditional French ingredients and presenting them with a purity and conscientiousness that tastes fresh and original. The flavors are for the most part quieter than expected, an invitation to hush up and savor.
The browned, roasted or sauted ingredients, such as duck and onion, are golden to light caramel, never dark and never bitter.
The sauces are light, giving them a refreshing subtlety.The food doesn't shout salt, as it does at restaurants that shake the salt as if taste buds have fled the country.
The snails ($10) absorbed my attention first. Eight or nine helixes of snail meat sat naked in a small, central bowl inside a wide brim in an unusual dish. With chicken stock, white wine, butter, shallot, a touch of vinegar and chervil, chives, tarragon and parsley (as chef and owner Erik Desjarlais told me later), the sauce held a ringing tartness in its almost sweet flavors, which was exactly right with the tender crunch of the snail meat.
Two lumps of creamy sweetbreads ($9), encased in a golden, delicate crust, sat in their own little central bowl with capers and golden onion -- calm, gentle flavors that pushed the easily obscured pleasure of creamy sweetbreads to the front of the stage.
We were drinking a Schoenheitz Cremant from Alsace ($33 a bottle) that the sommelier said was slightly dryer than the Roger Goulart Spanish Cava ($27) I know and like—both are sparkling wines you can enjoy for a lot less money than champagne.
But as I sat with my glass empty for several minutes, it dawned on me that the bottle was in an ice bucket across the room. Too bad that resulted in an empty glass for me twice that evening; though the second time, the glass was filled as soon as I glanced backward toward the bar area and caught someone's eye. The wine list is a miniature course on wine -- great to read if you care about it, easy to skip if you already know it all or don't care in the least.
An entree of duck breast ($25) wore a golden mantle of perfectly browned fat. Each slice brought both its edge's deep flavors and the iron clarity of rare meat.
A tangled ball of caramelized onion was set on an arch of brown sauce. "It's made with duck stock, reduced, finished with seasoning and a touch of butter," Desjarlais said.
Poullarde is a chicken, we learned when we asked our good server. So is the poussin on the menu, but a poussin is little. Both are milk-fed.
No, chickens do not typically drink milk. But according to Desjarlais, the unparalleled blue-foot chickens of France are fed grain with powdered milk mixed in, which is also what the owner of Four Story Farm in Honesdale, Pa., does to the chickens Desjarlais serves.
"Not your mother's chicken," my friend pronounced her poullarde ($26). In fact, as far as I'm concerned, it's not anybody but Evangeline's chicken.The meat was incredibly tender, moist and good, with a thin golden layer of skin wrapped around each of three big chunks.
Pureed white asparagus, bitter and tempered by a mild vinaigrette, and tiny zucchini sliced lengthwise completed that meal.
I left untried the beef-fat-fried potatoes (anyone ordering them with mussels or as a side is told how they are cooked) and the steak, the pork and so much more.
Chateau de la Roulerie,Coteaux du Layon Chaume ($7 a glass) was recommended to go with our cheeses ($5 each). The yellow wine's discreet sweetness, fruit wrapped in velvet, improved with every sip.
The cheeses did too, from the gooey Winnemere wrapped in a band of spruce bark and served in fat little spoons-full, and Bayley Hazen Blue, nutty and smooth, both from Jasper Hill Farm in Vermont.
Lazy Lady Farm Capriola (aged goat cheese with the slightly sour tang of nutty age at the edge and a milder center), and cow's milk Sarabande from Dancing Cow Farm in Vermont (with a tangy rind and an unctuous center ripe as a durian from the jungle) were flanked by a few macadamias roasted with a touch of cayenne, spots of buckwheat honey and tupelo honey.
Was it true that the chef had portioned the dishes so we could enjoy four courses, as the server said? I certainly did, happy with the "fig Newton" ($8.50) we ordered for dessert—two little sandwiches of moist mission fig and jammy strawberries.
One fresh fig had been stuffed with butter and sugar and spiced with vanilla seeds, and next to it was strawberry chartreuse ice cream, haunted by the liqueur and set on crunchy spears of roasted, blanched almonds, all from the skilled hands of pastry chef Kat Laughlin.
With our bill came two pale-blue marshmallows that tasted like fresh blueberries, and cherry chocolate truffles rolled in toasted bits of coconut.
Like the rest of the evening's tastes, these displayed confidence and charm.
N.L. English is a Portland freelance writer and the author of "Chow Maine:The Best Restaurants, Cafes, Lobster Shacks and Markets on the Coast." Visit English's Web site, www.chowmaineguide.com.
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