Review: Pescabar

Dean Fearing, this mess is all your fault. Your brash, no-rules-no-borders culinary stance at Fearing’s has tempted other restaurateurs in town to leave their comfort zones and take needless chances. Alberto Lombardi, a royal member of Dallas’ restaurant ruling class, was doing just fine until you came along. And now, instead of creating a small, tightly defined menu and neighborhood-friendly vibe–like those he perfected at Taverna, La Cubanita, Penne Pomodoro, Toulouse, and Sangria–Lombardi has followed your star and sailed off course at his Pescabar in West Village.

The pre-opening press material hyped Pescabar as “a new Italian seafood restaurant [that] will feature a menu focusing on fresh fish and seafood flown in daily from Hawaii, San Francisco, New York, and Washington State.” Then the dangerously cross-dressed food descriptions began: “The highlight of the menu at Pescabar will be a ’Crudo sense Frontiere’ (Italian for ’raw bar without borders’) featuring several types of oysters, scallops, arctic char, Dungeness crab, salmon, tuna, and snapper, plus incredible seafood carpaccio and Pescabar’s unique version of Italian sashimi.” See what I mean, Dean? Does every menu in this town have to have a sushi element on it?

Forgive me for expecting Pescabar to be a sequel to Lombardi’s elegant yet whimsical Italian seafood spot, Lombardi Mare in Addison. My, she was yar. I can still taste the polenta-crusted salmon served with red cabbage and see the stunning etched glass doors and the row of fish bowls, each with one live goldfish, suspended from the ceiling along the bar. Unfortunately, Lombardi Mare, a victim of the post-9/11 economy, is gone.

But the taste of the crab “fondue” served at Pescabar will be with me for a long time. Do I dare type the words “cat food” and “Alberto Lombardi” in the same sentence? There was nothing fondue about the dish. The waiter set down a couple of pieces of stale focaccia bread and a seashell filled with a thick dip made of fishy crab. The presentation of another starter, a Dungeness crab, was equally confusing. Instead of a whole cleaned crab with the shell placed on top, ours, served in a pool of melting ice, was quartered. We had to pick out tiny parts of the shell and eat around the black gunk left inside. It took a serrated knife to slice the thick slices of tomato in the burrata Caprese, a travesty considering that, at the time of our visit, local tomatoes were still in prime growing season.

All of the appetizers ruined our appetite for completing the meal, which we would have preferred to move along at a faster pace. But our waiter was too busy watching the Olympics on the TV over the bar to take the rest of our order. Thankfully NBC had commercial breaks. Those were the only times we managed brief conversations with our waiter. I asked him, “What do you love on the menu?” He said, “Everything is great.” When we inquired about the origin of the colorful contemporary harlequin painting by the hostess stand, he said, “What do I know? I’m a guy.”
 
So was Michelangelo, dude. I might expect that response from a server at Bennigan’s but not from a waiter in a finer-dining restaurant. Come to think of it, maybe Bennigan’s recent demise was Lombardi’s staffing gain. Both times I dined at Pescabar, the pace of service was uneven and the attitude of the staff was disinterested at best.

One good thing about taking a long time over dinner at Pescabar is that it gives you plenty of time to play Guess What the Designer Was Trying to Do. On our first visit, the full dining room was open, and we were seated near the back, in front of a glass wall that separates the kitchen from the main room. The wall doubles as a projection screen. As we attempted to see who was doing what in the kitchen, we were blocked by video footage of anorexic fashion models sashaying down a catwalk toward our table.

Equally jarring were the huge, overly ornate Venetian mirrors hanging on the chartreuse-colored walls alongside the aforementioned harlequin painting, which, according to another waiter, Lombardi bought on eBay. One woman at our table said, “It is as if some overachiever insisted that the theme for the senior prom be Masked Ball, so the class of 2008 painted the walls split-pea-soup green, rented Venetian mirrors and whimsical furniture, and draped a whole lot of fabric to create a tent-y vibe.”

The tent-y vibe happens when they partition the half-empty dining room with a red satiny drape. Each time one of the doors to the front patio opens, a cigarette smoke-filled breeze blows in, and the billowing curtains create a Bedouin boudoir feel.

One might be tempted to wonder whether Pescabar will be in the same location tomorrow, except this is Alberto Lombardi we are talking about. He is the consummate professional. If he sees something is broken, he will fix it. And he has a solid base of quality food to work with under all those froufrou options. Most of the goodies are listed under the Italian “pasta and risotto” section of the menu. Both linguine with clams and spaghetti tossed in basil oil and topped with tomato sauce and dollops of warm, soft, and buttery burrata cheese were outstanding examples of fine food at a fair price. Ditto for that old Italian classic (ahem) Oysters Rockefeller–four oysters baked in a rich sherry-spiked cream sauce.

Mr. Lombardi, when Dallas thinks “Italian seafood,” our mouths water for what we know you do best. You’ve been a restaurateur in Dallas for more than 30 years, and it can be argued that you are the driving force behind what our palates recognize as Italian food. Leave the seaweed salad, Moroccan spices, and togarashi to Dean. He’s a wild child. Give us back your borders. We’re hungry.

Get contact information for Pescabar.

Update: Pescabar has closed.