Sat.It's been a year now that I"ve been writing the Food column for Weekly Planet, and, thinking back over the past 52 weeks, I’m humbled by the culinary lessons I"ve learned.I"ve been waited on royally by tuxedoed servers. I"ve drunk guarana soda from the Amazon and Jamaican ginger beer. I"ve eaten magical tangerine sauce over grouper, and ethereal Chinese lychee pudding, vegetarian Cubans, chewy octopus sushi and countless martinis, some better than others.
Lots of funny moments with servers: a couple of times, I suspected they were hitting on me or my companion. Sometimes, they forgot me altogether and disappeared for what seemed like eons. Sometimes, their kindness exceeded the strict requirements of the job. Once, a chef guessed my undercover mission after recognizing my famous dining companion.
There were others who found me out.
Last week, I was standing at the bar at Jackson’s Bistro-Bar-Sushi when I saw the bartender do something unappetizing while she fixed my drink. The fellow next to me suggested I complain, but I demurred, which prompted him to say sarcastically: "Oh, yeah — you"re here from (The Other Paper) and you"re testing the food!"
This was a lesson I"d like to forget. It involved a pina colada ($5.25), which may be a wussy drink, but I enjoy it because it is made from my favorite fruit. What the bartender did was this: After fixing the drink, she reached for a pastry bag filled with cold, real whipped cream, carefully piped a clean, white curly-cue atop, and then ran her dirty finger — which also handled money — across the piping tip to remove the excess, licking the cream from her finger!
Eeeuuu.
Fortunately at that juncture, we could set aside hygiene issues to claim our reserved table at the restaurant.
I found the restaurant’s food typical high-end fare, with a few standouts — particularly accomplished sushi and a knockout tomato-basil soup. The real attraction is the place’s ambience — its waterside location, its great eyeball view of downtown and its sprawling, 20,000-square-foot premises, and its unusually diverse, energetic and exuberant crowd.
It was a Friday night, and the place was jumping with groups of men, clutches of couples and guffawing parties of women. Everyone squawked at a higher decibel than usual since we were competing with the banging beat of the rock band and dancers in the next room.
At 9 p.m., every restaurant table was full, and outdoors on the patio another couple of dozen full tables faced downtown’s glittering facade. It was a cool, clear night, and people seemed to enjoy the leisure of sitting, eating, drinking and flirting.
Owned by Greg Stinson and Jack Campbell, Jackson’s has Thomas McKinney for an executive chef is Thomas McKinney, and its sushi chef is Matt Beilstein.
As an opener, we thought we would start with one of Beilstein’s appetizers, a tempura lobster roll ($12.95), spicy mayo cucumber and eel sauce draped around fresh lobster meat. The rolls were delightful in that they were at once crispy and gooey, because they"re wrapped with lobster and rice like sushi, but are tempura fried. Festively finished and neatly tied with a seaweed bow, they arrived with a suitably numbing wasabi sauce.
Our second appetizer was even better, a big bowl of tomato-basil soup ($3.50), deep elemental red like the walls of the Grand Canyon, its texture less like soup and closer to thick ketchup, but infused with a deep, abiding flavor and smoky, complex taste. Quite fabulous. Light eaters might pair it with wine, bread and salad for a soul-satisfying meal of minimal calories.
As we ate, we watched the crowd, well-dressed but casual. A big group of older people sat beside us, a couple of young U.S. Marines directly behind us. It was an unusually diverse crowd — every ethnicity, color and age group appearing somewhere in the room, which may also be why it generates such potent social electricity.
The service during both visits was pleasant, friendly, but leisurely and unpredictable — careful attention for a while, and then, bang, the waiter would disappear without a trace.
My dining companion ordered as an entree pistachio-crusted red snapper ($18.95), fresh fish coated with crushed nuts and served with fried plantains, pineapple coulis and a healthy pile of ‘sweet potato hay." The fish was fine, acceptable, typical of its type; but the plantains were dry, and the way the sweet potatoes were shredded and fried tended to obscure their wispy flavor.
My entree, crispy seared duck breast ($16.95), stuffed with dried apricots and goat cheese and served with Mandarin orange demi-glace, was slightly overcooked, and its sauce too spare. It sat upon a pile of run-of-the-mill, smashed potatoes.
At lunch one day, we tried a fresh, pretty, sushi lunch special ($12.95); it arrived with a simple ginger salad; Tampa roll — fried grouper set in rice rolls; a California roll made from crab, cucumber and avocado; roasted freshwater eel; fresh tuna sashimi glisteningly pink, and a cup of miso soup. The soup was the only disappointment, suffering from weak broth, but its plentiful burden of mushrooms, green onion bits and pieces of tofu redeemed it somewhat.
The house salad ($2.95, small, $4.95 large) hit the spot with a nice assortment of greens, purple onion, sprouts, big wheels of fresh tomato, red and green pepper, mushrooms, red leaf lettuce and romaine, and topped with thick, homemade ginger dressing.
A colorful creation in the form of a panini portobello sandwich ($7.95) was made from fat pieces of panini bread, jammed with mushrooms and artichoke, red pepper and provolone. Other than its limp dill pickle, the sandwich was attractive because the grill’s heat had melted and bonded the cheese inside to the bread, the same way poems can melt a heart if they"re offered in the right spirit.
Dessert entailed pecan pie ($5.25), a 3-inch-high piece with a thick crust, but it was forgettable because, though it was heavy with nuts, they were limp instead of crisp, and not much goo held the filling together.
I did like its mocha-chocolate sauce, real whipped cream pearls, blueberries and fragrant mint leaf, perched like a jaunty question mark on top.
The green curve of the mint leaf recalled another mystical e.e. cummings line I will leave with you to contemplate over food: "Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question."
Contact food critic Sara Kennedy at sara.kennedy@weeklyplanet.com or call 813-248-8888, ext. 116.
This article appears in Oct 30 – Nov 5, 2002.
