I’m on a bit of a staycation, as the term goes. Henry’s away for three weeks, it was a last minute thing, and I decided rather than spring for airfare and hotel, and also not wanting to cancel existing Casa SaltShaker reservations, I’d limit dinners to the nights we already had reservations for, let them fill up, but take the rest of the days off and catch up on some of the restaurants here that I haven’t gotten a chance to get to. Sometimes it’s just that they haven’t come up in rotation, sometimes it’s that I know my husband and just how far I can push his palate…. So expect some sushi spots, some slightly more eccentric spots, and, I don’t know what it is for him, but French spots. He just won’t.

Now, long time readers and/or expats who get out and eat, probably remember Casa Umare, the famed dozen or so seat bistro inside the hotel of the same name, where well known chef Dario Gualtieri was cooking up absolutely exquisite, stunning, French fare. Modernizing and upscaling classic dishes, but with a solid French spirit. Delicious, not fussy, but some of the best French food around. He left a couple of years ago and opened up his own spot, Dario Gualtieri Bistro, Armenia 1378, in Palermo. It’s been on my list since he opened… two years ago? But, French, and all that.

 

So, I have to admit, I went with the expectation of this being a fairly small, unpretentious spot… I mean, “bistro” – it’s the definition of the word. And “simple fare”, French homestyle cooking, no doubt fancied up. The last menu posted on their Facebook page (which hasn’t been updated since last April) showed a tasty menu that features things like rabbit pasta and slow cooked veal shoulder with oyster mushrooms…. It also shows a tasting menu price of 1600 pesos, all inclusive – water, wine pairing, the works. Now, taking into account May’s peso devaluation, I figured, okay, that’ll be more like 2300-2400… it’s 2600, but close enough to be in the ballpark.

It was clear immediately on entering that this isn’t a small place – it’s a huge old home that’s been converted to a restaurant. Yet, at the same time, the tables are spaced so far apart that in truth, there are under 30 people in the dining room, that could easily be arranged for double that. I also wouldn’t put the space down as casual, but hey, the waitstaff aren’t all that formal – the food runners are in black t-shirts and pants, and the waitstaff and managers are in open collared shirts and slacks, but we’re all good here. There’s a semi-open kitchen at the back of the room, and Gualtieri and team are back there cooking up a storm.

Service is a bit haphazard. They’ve clearly subscribed to some sort of “keep moving and you’ll look busy” ethos. The half dozen folk attending to customers are constantly on the move, circulating around the tables, approaching, moving away, it’s very distracting, and by the end of the night, just plain annoying. At one point I see one of the food runners/buspersons stop at the wait station and survey her tables from there. The manager/captain nearly runs over to her and actually tells her to walk around while she looks to see what needs to be done. That’s the opposite of good dining room hospitality – you want to be unobtrusive, and if you can find a spot where you can see your station, and your guests can see you, you’re golden to stay there.

I get asked four different times if I’m allergic to anything or have any dietary restrictions – once by the person I made the reservation with, once by each of the two waiters, and once by the sommelier. I also get the offer to explain how a tasting menu works from each of the three in the dining room, separately. I get asked by at least two people after every course if I liked it. They spend so much time circulating and let’s call it “engaging” customers, that they miss stuff they really should be doing. The waiters twice set the wrong silverware for my table (and I’m not the only one), once bring a repeat of a dish I’ve already had, and the sommelier only manages to serve one of seven wines before the dish it is supposed to accompany arrives at the table – and twice, I’m more than halfway done with the dish before he does. They’re not overworked here, again, fewer than 30 people in the room. They’re just buzzing around inefficiently.

The food, which I’m about to show you, is not at all what Gualtieri used to do at Casa Umare. It’s fiddly, fussy, “tweezer” food. It’s pretty as all hell. But dish after dish is just kind of… good. There wasn’t anything horribly wrong with any dish, but there just wasn’t anything exciting, other than the visual. And the kitchen is agonizingly slow. An eight course menu – and that includes what is basically an amuse to start, and a “pre-dessert”, so really, more like six courses, takes them over three hours to send out. I mean, thank god I could pull up an ebook on my phone to read. The four women at the table next to me flag down the manager as their main course is served and ask to be let off the hook for the two dessert courses, please just bring them the check and let them leave, they’ll pay for everything. The table of two behind me are making fun of how slow it is, and how they wish they could be anywhere else by this point.

So, with all that said, let’s just go on to the food… I feel like I’m subjecting you to the same delays….

 

Chipirones, baby squid, filled with sole “ceviche”, accompanied with a yellow chili emulsion and a nasturtium leaf. Only, it’s a hot dish, not a cold dish, so what may have been ceviche when it went inside the squidlets, is no longer, it’s cooked fish with some lemon. And the emulsion is of yellow bell pepper, not yellow chili….

Heirloom tomatoes, olive oil, passionfruit seeds, tomato water and tomato sorbet, gremolata, basil. Okay, it’s some cut up tomatoes with some microgreens and a little black pepper and lemon zest, in a vaguely tomato flavored broth with a sorbet that has less flavor than that. Passionfruit seeds add a little crunch. It’s a nice little salad, but….

Scallops with granny smith apple and bouillabaisse consomme. Two little bay scallops, the tentacles off of one of the chipirones above, some shredded apple, and a fine dice of various vegetables, and a broth that may or may not have had some seafood in it… this is the dish they brought to me twice. I passed on the second time, thank you very much.

Fish of the day with carrots, prawns, a bagna cauda, and sorrel. No one seemed quite sure what the fish of the day was, since the food runner and the waiter each gave me a different spiel for the dish. A small fillet topped with a single small prawn, some carrot “leather” and chips, and an emulsified sauce of sorrel and what purported to be bagna cauda, but I didn’t get any garlic or anchovy flavor out of it, it was dominated by the sorrel.

Various preparations of cucumber, radish, and daikon, with cured venison, red fruits, and beef broth. Umm, yeah, that’s pretty much what it was, and it was probably the most flavorful dish of the meal, though the venison being rolled in undercooked quinua and then crumpled up into balls was… odd.

Slow cooked lamb, squash puree, seasonal vegetables, smoked herb sauce. I will say I loved the smoked herb sauce. It reminded me of the herb sauce we make for our huatia sulcana, just without chilies. The lamb was beautifully cooked, but had little lamb flavor, the vegetables and puree were fine.

The pre-dessert, cherries soaked in anise liqueur, served with a gelato made from spice bread, and a slice of what I gather was chopped up and pressed together dried figs, dates, and apricots. Yeah, that’s what it was. Exactly.

I mean, maybe points for the most striking visual of the evening, a variety of textures of peaches, almonds, and bits and pieces of stuff. Tasty.

So that was the food. As I said, nothing truly bad, but nothing exciting. And all very prettily plated.

The wine… according to the menu, a tasting of the greatest hits of Luigi Bosca, including some of their reserve wines and their Gala line. And they all sounded like they would pair really well with the dishes they were designated to. Except the only Luigi Bosca wine served was the sparkling at the beginning. After that, things veered off, and the sommelier seemed to almost be serving random wines. The two tables closest to me got different wines than I did and than each other did, for almost every course. And when it came down to it, not one of the wine pairings worked with the substitutions. I asked him about it, especially given that we were talking some fairly significant price point differences with some of these wines (like hundreds of pesos less per bottle), and the response was, “it gets boring serving wine from the same vineyard all through the meal, so I thought I’d mix it up a bit”. Yeah, umm, sounds more like a cost cutting move, and if I were the suspicious sort, I’d guess some of those were just sample or open bottles being finished off.

So all in all, unfortunately, this one’s a pass for me. It just wasn’t good enough to justify spending the exact same amount for dinner for one as the group of eight of us spent at La Conga for lunch, the post prior to this, where while it wasn’t remotely fancy, I’d say I was far more satisfied with my meal. And what a shame, because I used to really love Gualtieri’s food at Casa Umare.