Never mind the inkblots. Forget the glass half-full (or is it half-empty?). This one’s a patio test. When you sit on the patio at Amuse, Doug Brown’s new restaurant on Lamar Street, what do you see: a grimy parking lot enclosed by a wrought-iron fence? Or does your gaze extend to the panorama of downtown, spread before you like a pop-up card?
Brown, who owns Amuse with partnering chef Jason Foss, takes the more sophisticated view. Yes, okay, there’s a parking lot in the foreground; it’s the city, babe. Chilling on the patio at Amuse after the sun’s gone down—when rush hour’s over and it’s just you and the skyline—can make you feel as colossal as the high-rise buildings themselves.
Amuse may be a risk, but Brown’s done it before and succeeded, when he and Foss left the Landmark at the Melrose Hotel to open Beyond the Box, their Eatzi’s-esque market near Thanksgiving Square. They know urban.
Part of a new frontier in the Cedars, along with Gilley’s, Poor David’s Pub, Tryst, and the South Side lofts, Amuse is big city to the core, from its multifaceted cuisine to its worldly young staff to its suave lounge with couches and settees—just the ticket for the young city slicker. Running the kitchen day-to-day is Jose Vargas, who met Brown 12 years ago at the Harvey Hotel in Irving.
The mostly American menu is anchored by basics such as roast chicken and honey-glazed salmon, but innovation could be seen in the sauces and sides. A pork chop marinated in cider, for example, came with a cake of risotto studded with blue cheese and bacon—big flavors there.
It’s said that every cookbook has one keeper recipe, and every restaurant, one primo dish. At Amuse, that dish was the lamb shank. The meat slid down the Flintstones-worthy bone onto the plate in melting-soft hunks—tender fibers with the fat rendered away, leaving only mellow flavor. Beneath the lamb sat couscous, Moroccan-style, with raisins and slivered almonds, for a keen interplay between savory and sweet.
Amuse made trout seem new by dressing it in a sauce as fresh on the tongue as it was to the eye: blood-orange butter, both tart and sweet. Chopped hazelnuts, freshly toasted and scattered all over, were sharp and spunky.
Not all was in top form, however. Flank steak, cut on a sharp angle into rough-hewn slices, had a brisk marinade of garlic and citrus, though its Parmesan polenta was no big whoop. And the goat cheese tart, over which everyone at Amuse beamed so proudly, was sloppy and out-of-proportion, its too-flaky crust collapsing beneath an abundance of softened onions and globs of goat cheese.
The better appetizers were those where finesse was not required: tender gnocchi in cream sauce with strips of sun-dried tomato, or chicken-fried portobello, the mushroom cut into thick, crisp slices. Amuse also excelled at salads, pristinely composed and with stimulating ingredients, such as the starter salad of endive, dried apple, blue cheese, bacon, and walnut. Four entrée salads feed the lunch crowd, including one with salmon, spinach, feta cheese, and hard-cooked egg.
Desserts were high-concept and designed to be shared: s’more “fondue” with layers of melted chocolate and marshmallow or “funnel cake” with random scraps of greaseless fried dough. But there was no showpiece chocolate dessert. No frosted layer cake, not a mousse in the house. Too pedestrian, perhaps, but missed nonetheless.
There’s nothing pedestrian about the wine list—not with appealing, affordable anomalies such as the Jim Jim Shiraz from Australia replacing the same old wines you see everywhere. At other restaurants, limiting your wine list to unfamiliar boutique labels would be a risk. At Amuse, it’s business as usual.
Update: Amuse is now Sala.
