Restaurant Review: Pink Magnolia

As you sip a Blue Magnolia cocktail with homemade blueberry preserves and peruse a menu of “naughty” creamed corn, warm crab dip, and butter cake, you might be tempted to say that newcomer Pink Magnolia adds feisty elan to home-style cooking in a Bishop Arts scene rife with contenders. Blythe Beck’s motto is “Bacon, butter, and booze make everything better.” Perhaps, but not when they’re added in clunky, heavy-handed ways and execution is uneven. A butter lettuce salad with goat cheese, candied cashews, and cinnamon-apple vinaigrette was delicate. But a giant onion ring mauled the Iceberg Babies salad like a clumsy paw. Deviled eggs were overwhelmed with mayonnaise, and a bourbon milkshake seemed a slush of straight bourbon and cream. At brunch, chicken and jalapeño waffles with bourbon maple syrup had the potential for a good balance of peppery, savory, boozy, and sweet, but the waffles were pale and undercooked. An order of chocolate French toast wasn’t a joyful extravagance running with chocolate rivers but instead a surprisingly dry dish, its caramelized compote mostly cool, raw banana. But I would forgive many sins for the rib-eye tip pot roast with parsley-flecked Yukon gold potatoes, carrots, and Cippolini onions, which gained both panache and polish from a phenomenal red wine demi-glace. It was everything I’d want a pot roast to be.