Nell's Restaurant

It's weird visiting a new restaurant that inhabits the shell of a beloved old one. From the moment you sit down, your mouth reflexively begins to water for the old menu items. You half expect the former owner to wander by, chatting up the customers in the affable-host way he may have patented. And there, over by the kitchen, you think you even saw the ghost of your old favorite waiter. Wait a second—that is your old favorite waiter.

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Nell's Restaurant
6804 E Green Lake Wy N, 524-4044
dinner every night, 5:30-10pm
AE, MC, V; full bar

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Not everything changed when Saleh al Lago became Nell's. Mind you, a lot did. When the venerable Saleh Joudeh decided that after 17 years it was time to hang up the toque, he sold his sleek, multilevel lakeview room to Philip Mihalski, a creative whiz who had proven his culinary mettle in the estimable kitchens of Marco's Supper Club and Dahlia Lounge but had never before owned a place. Mihalski set about revamping: first on the floor, which has warmed up a bit but to my eye has gone pretty imperceptibly from classy to classy, and then on the menu, which has broadened from Joudeh's Italian emphasis to include more contemporary American innovations. The whole place thus feels a little more casual, a little more drop-in-wearing-your-jeans, than Saleh's did. And of course the name had to change, now honoring Mihalski's wife.

Left brilliantly intact in all this change, thank heaven, was Saleh's blue-ribbon service—indeed, many of the servers—who under Mihalski remain gracious, professional, and whip-smart about the cuisine. A-plus for service, no question.

And what grade for the food?

We began with a plate of nostalgia: calamari with parsley salad and aioli ($8), one of a few holdovers from Saleh al Lago's menu. It arrived glistening with oil and dusty with paprika: mildly breaded, speckled with Italian parsley, and studded with the witty innovation of fried capers. "Just grand," I scribbled in my notebook, noting the rare tenderness of the squid that had even the calamariphobe at the table vying for bites. Shimmering dollops of aioli could have stood more gusto, but that did not significantly mar the whole.

Mixed garden greens with red wine shallot vinaigrette ($5) was a friendly toss of nicely oiled lettuces with goat cheese and cracker points for intrigue. Dungeness crab salad ($10) worked similarly well, with big toothsome hunks of the crabmeat combining sympathetically with bits of sweet Braeburn apple and chunks of red radish for attitude.

Mihalski's starter menu is unusually sophisticated and clearly where he wants to display the range of his pretensions. He succeeds. One appetizer, black truffle and leek risotto ($12), was a creamy masterpiece, fully redolent of the piquant root and a thoroughly worthy resting place for four truffle slices. A daily special, foie gras terrine with sauterne gel饠($15), was both satisfying and fascinating, with the goose liver presented in its original buttery folds rather than creamed into p⴩. Bites of that unyielding richness, spread on crackling bread rounds with the sweetly heady gel饬 were a revelation.

One among us, having ordered Mihalski's five-course prix fixe dinner of the evening ($52), enjoyed two preludes. The first was oysters presented on the half-shell, resting in nests of spinach and topped with champagne sabayon and caviar. A bit much, we concluded, but it didn't stop him from cleaning his plate.

His next course, striped bass over beets and matsutake mushrooms, was more problematic. The roots and fungus anchored this dish deep in the musks of the forest, with nothing—certainly not the rich, overcooked bass—to lighten the whole. This wouldn't itself be a dealbreaker, especially since this chef appears skilled at handling heaviness, except for the fact that the parts of this dish weren't particularly simpatico. It was as if the chef were playing that old Sunday-night-with-the-roommates game, "What's in the refrigerator?" Hmmm . . . beets, fish, and fancy mushrooms; let's see if there's anything we can do with that.

Neither were the main courses without flaw. My veal sirloin ($23) was not only not veal-tender, it verged on tough; a insult compounded in this room whose very air holds sweet memories of perfect veal. (Look on the bright side, my companions noted: Perhaps the tough old cow on your plate wasn't tortured or destroyed in its infancy. I rather think it was my punishment for ordering veal in the first place.) I couldn't argue with the conception of the dish, however: Tender balls of sweet potato gnocchi waded in rosemary jus just beneath the vengeful bovine, with a clutch of mustard greens to round out the whole.