Food Blog:
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Eat Out.
Miss Tenacity.
New Mexico.
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Thursday, January 13
Scalo
I ate at Scalo again last night for the first time in nearly a year. They have transitioned back to a standard menu, after trying out a small-medium-large plates format for more than a year. One item on that menu was outstanding and I do miss it, even if I've heard that its a 'overdone' dish: beet and goat cheese salad. Scalo's version had popped herbs and seeds which gave it just enough crunch to make it interesting.
Further back in the past, the old menu had an item called a "vegetarian tart" that was a cylindrical layered creation including roasted red peppers, polenta, sauteed greens, and mushrooms. It was divine and I hope its back on their lunch menu.
Back to last night. The new menu seems a bit smaller than I remembered, and I ordered 2 starter dishes to make up my meal - traditional caesar salad and italian wedding soup. Also on the table was an order of pork tenderloin (more on that in a minute). The caesar salad was whole-leaf romaine, so I had to slice it up myself, and the dressing was a bit thick and heavy. I've had just a few really good caesar salads and this was just short of that. The flavors were very good, including irregular garlic croutons and flash-fried anchovies, the latter chopped up by yours truly to distribute their salt equally to the salad. Overall, a very good salad, but the best I've had yet is still from the Rancher's Club, where they prepare it tableside (raw egg and all - yum!). On to the soup - this was the best italian wedding soup I have ever had. The small meatballs were just barely done and therefore tender, floating in a nearly clear broth that had a gentle but very toothsome flavor base. In the broth were also the standard tiny button pasta - not mushy but al dente - and tiny bits of chopped herbs which included at least parsley but I thought I tasted something else in there as well (chives?). And finally, giving the soup a bit more robustness was the addition of tender slices of chicken, which did not clash in any way with the rest of the flavors (even though chicken is not a standard ingredient). Between the "heavy" salad and the hearty soup, it was a perfect amount of food to be full but not stuffed. Across the table from me was a pork tenderloin dish with fried gnocchi and sauteed kale, sitting in a rich puttanesca sauce. The flavors in the pork and the gnocchi were great, but the kale and sauce were too salty, despite having excellent ingredients.
Overall, a good dinner, one that will make me interested in coming back to try other menu items. And now that there are 2 MORE places in town that I've been meaning to get back to that are now CLOSED - Monte Vista and La Piazza, dammit - Scalo gets bumped up the priority list just a bit.
Oh yeah, and in a nod to the gossip-queen Pika: we sat next to Mr. Marty himself, resplendent in an orange windbreaker (we were in the bar area, so fashion norms are a bit more relaxed).
Time posted: 09:16 [permalink]
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CONTACT ME: tenacity -at- gmail.com
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