When I heard that the Bay area's newest Johnny Carino's franchise — opened just a few months ago by the Al Dente restaurant group, which owns five other Carino's locations — had been transformed into Novo, I was ecstatic. Ha, another blow struck against the cookie-cutter cuisine of the national chains! Good going, Al Dente!
Wait a minute. After visiting Novo, I'm not entirely certain what's changed.
The interior is the same. This restaurant was originally built to a more modern template than the typically "country" ambiance of most Carino's, so Novo already has a unique look with no need to call in the contractor. It's a large space, with an extensive and attractive bar. Hang a giant N, O, V and O above the open kitchen and poof, it's a new restaurant.
The food? That's going to take a little more work.
Sure, the names have changed, but some of the dishes seem almost indistinguishable from a few of the popular items on the old Carino's menu. "Dynamite sticks" — a fried tortilla stuffed with meat and cheese — is, at Novo, labeled "Tuscan Torches," its ingredient list reordered but ultimately familiar. There are a few more like that — "jalapeno garlic tilapia" has been replaced with "hot fish," "spicy shrimp and chicken" with "shrimp and chicken Vesuvio," "chicken Milano" with "chicken Monaco."
Despite these few holdovers, much of the menu has been retooled away from the dumbed-down Italian standards of Carino's — although that style is still represented. The new focus is on meat and seafood with a "Mediterranean" bent, whatever that means.
The pizza rolls (uh, I mean "Tuscan Torches") ($7.69) — tubes of fat and protein — scratch an ever-present itch for fried food, but it's a distinctly American solution for a distinctly American, not Mediterranean, desire.
No one will be craving Novo's pizza. The Margarita flat bread ($7.69) is flatly disappointing, with a cracker-thin crust that is not cracker-crisp. Each slice flops around, shedding flavorless mozzarella and sweet tomato sauce that tastes canned. By the time I bite into it, I'm sort of glad that more of it ended up on the plate than in my mouth. Again, why blame this on Italy or France or Spain? They don't deserve it.
Novo's shrimp appetizer is called "fuego" ($7.99) due to a hint of "fiery" jalapeno, but that blaze is quickly doused under a flood of cream sauce pierced only by a few strands of powerful sun-dried tomato hidden at the bottom of the bowl. OK, that's it: My utopian hopes are dashed. This is what chain restaurants do best, folks: Substitute fat for flavor. No matter that Novo is a single outlet, a "new concept" developed by Al Dente — it still tastes of chain.
The rib eye ($20.99) is listed as a 12-ounce cut. Some would call that dainty, but I'm ready to applaud the restrained portion size until I see it. The steak sprawls across my plate, covering vastly more territory than I would've imagined, probably because it's barely half an inch thick. When it comes to meat, girth is better than length. Props to the kitchen, though: The rib eye is nicely seasoned, has a good crust on one side, and I never would have believed they could pull off medium-rare with so little to work with until I saw it with my own eyes.
While I'm bemused by my pancake steak, dining companion Writer Rick begins to question the waiter about his dish. "I ordered cioppino," he declares, looking down at a pile of pasta covered by tomato sauce and dotted with seafood. "Yeah, that's what that is," replies the waiter, smiling obliviously. This exasperates Writer Rick. "But this isn't cioppino! It isn't even what's on the menu!"
Let me clear things up: Novo describes "cioppino" ($17.99) as crab, mussels, shrimp, calamari, tilapia, spinach, red onions, roma tomatoes in a traditional broth," which, essentially, is what cioppino really is. Pasta isn't in the equation, let alone pasta with marinara — with no soupy broth to be found. Like Rick said, this is not cioppino; it isn't even what's listed on the menu.
Even after the waiter happily offers to replace the dish, Writer Rick keeps pushing. He wants satisfaction — maybe he can jump behind the stove and teach the kitchen to make real cioppino, or maybe the menu could be changed on the spot. Or maybe we just eat the food in front of us, disgruntled and annoyed. Yeah, that's it.
Chicken Marsala ($14.49) is surprisingly tasty, loaded with mushrooms and laced with a sauce that, although sweeter and richer than it should be, tastes like actual Marsala. Lasagna ($11.99) is the dense cube of pasta and cheese you'd expect, with another layer of melted mozzarella thrown on at the last minute for good measure. There isn't much sauce involved, which isn't a bad thing considering the quality of the red sauce on the flatbread and "cioppino."
According to Al Dente PR rep Pamela Jones, Novo is still looking for customer input on the menu. That sounds like a good plan. So far, this former Carino's doesn't show much improvement over its previous incarnation. The menu may have changed — mostly — but Novo's food still tastes like the same lowest-common-denominator fare. Apparently, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Brian Ries is a former restaurant general manager with an advanced diploma from the Court of Master Sommeliers. Creative Loafing food critics dine anonymously, and the paper pays for the meals. Restaurants chosen for review are not related to advertising.
This article appears in Feb 28 – Mar 6, 2007.