LITTLE ROCK — Two years is a long time in the restaurant business. Plenty of places go under long before their second anniversary. Lots of the survivors start cutting corners to save money, with corresponding declines in their quality.
It has been a little more than two years since Donnie Ferneau Jr. opened his eponymous restaurant, Ferneau, in the Ice House Center on Kavanaugh Boulevard in Hillcrest.
In those two years, Ferneau (the restaurant) has not gone under, and Ferneau (the owner/ chef) has not cut any corners.
The quality of the food is as good as ever, if not better than it was early on. The atmosphere is still comfortable and welcoming. The service remains excellent. (Our usual semi-anonymity is no longer possible there. But with one exception, discussed below, we don't think we could have gotten better treatment than Ferneau and his staff would be willing to provide any customer who walked through the door.) There are plenty of options, many of them affordable, on Ferneau's award-winning wine list.
Chef Ferneau still uses the freshest available ingredients - Arkansas produce when it's available. But he's more than willing to reveal the exclusive supplier for, say, his smoked salmon. And, unusual for a high-end restaurant, everything on the plate is comparatively healthful. The kitchen sticks with really lean cuts of meat and stays away from heavy, butterbased sauces or, for that matter, any kind of fats.
In short, Ferneau remains at or near the top of our short list of top-notch central Arkansas restaurants, and still our first choice to take out-of-town guests (as long as they're paying).
Top quality doesn't come cheaply, and Ferneau's prices, as we noted in our initial January 2005 review, are enough to make a frugal diner blanch. A few more entrees have crept up past the $30 mark, although none yet scrape the $40 cap. You get good-size portions for your money, enough to satisfy without being large enough to bloat.
Moreover, Ferneau has introduced a prix fixe menu on Tuesdays and Wednesdays - three courses, appetizer, entree and dessert, all regular menu items, for $35, which, when you consider that the entree price alone would be $25-$30, is practically a steal.
Ferneau's decor, which we once described as "semi-San Francisco hot," features carefully placed mosaic tile swirls and seemingly random paint splashes on the cement-wash walls, warm colors on pillars and pilasters and lightweight but comfortable black-lacquer wood chairs at sturdy tables with black tablecloths (topped with protective, easy-wipe glass). You can watch the chef and his crew of merry cooks preparing your meal in the semi-open kitchen.
The restaurant also has two outdoor patios, one along the front windows and one along the side, for clement-weather dining.
Head directly for the excellent Chili-Dusted Shrimp Cocktail appetizer ($10), a half-dozen plump tail-on shrimp perfectly boiled, dusted with mild chili powder and cutely arranged around the rim of a glass containing a zippy chili-ketchup-horseradish cocktail sauce.
We were surprised by the generous number of snails in the Escargot with puff pastry and white-truffle Maytag cream ($11), but not as surprised as we were by the white-truffle Maytag cream, with just enough bleu cheese kick. The puff pastry was wind-light and very flaky.
Also a pleasant surprise: the Gouda Grilled Cheese sandwich on sliced baguette ($11) served with flaked Alaskan smoked salmon (mmmm!), arugula in a light vinaigrette and a dab ofwhole-grain mustard.
Try the salad of organic winter greens tossed in a champagnepear vinaigrette with diced Bartlett pears, Maytag bleu cheese and candied walnuts ($9). Spearing the tiny pear pieces and corralling the walnuts and bleu cheese crumbles helped us burn off any calories we ingested.
And we were glad to revisit an old friend, the Mussels with saffron and lime ($13 a pound, $25 for the two-pound entree size), good-size mussels with slightly stewed cherry tomatoes and grilled bread in a tangy broth, all of which the waiter spooned out into a plate from a big wine bucket. Alas, about a third of the mussels failed to completely open in the cooking process, which made the dish a little messier than we would have liked.
Four of Ferneau's 10 entrees involve seafood. Another old friend, the Sake-Grilled Ahi Tuna on sticky rice with cilantro-ginger ponzu sauce was well worth the market price ($29).The tuna was served rare as we requested (seared on the outside), the sake grillade giving it enough of a boost that we pretty much ignored the sauce.
The Horseradish-Crusted Salmon ($24) was delicious, and the asparagus risotto drizzled with balsamic vinaigrette was the perfect accompaniment.
Pan-Seared Maple Leaf Duck Breast ($31; Maple Leaf is the brand name) in a port-duck reduction came out medium rare with layer of easily removable fat intact (helping keep it moist) and was wonderful. But what really drove us wild was the duck confit-topped wild mushroom orzo (rice-shaped pasta) with huge pieces of mushroom.
We oohed and aahed over the tender Domestic Rack of Lamb in a veal reduction ($37) with red-onion potato hash.
Tuna and lamb came with a grilled squash-and-zucchini medley (we usually loathe squash-and-zucchini medleys, but this was pretty good); the salmon came with field greens.
The only thing missing: Bread. Didn't get any, except on the grilled cheese sandwich and as a dipper for the mussels.
A bottle of nicely balanced Albarino, a Spanish white with nice citrus accents ($33 on the wine list, $36 on our ticket) turned out to be the perfect pairing with the tuna and salmon.
We're glad to report that the Bananas Foster ($8), bananas sliced into a slightly stronger lake of caramelized sugar, rum and banana liqueur with a mountain of made-in-the-kitchen vanilla ice cream - is still to die for.
Service was excellent on both our visits; Ferneau, recalling the single complaint we made in our first review - that his really cool, ergonomically designed, scimitarshaped silverware is a bit dodgy for left-handed diners - begged, borrowed, stole or dredged up out of storage a complete set of hand-neutral silverware, just for us. (We usually don't like to take advantage of our position, but sometimes it's good to be special.)FERNEAU
Address: 2601 Kavanaugh
Blvd., Little Rock
Hours: 5 p.m.-10 p.m. Tues
day-Saturday (bar stays open
later)
Cuisine: Eclectic
Credit cards: V, MC, AE, D
Alcoholic beverages: Full bar
Reservations: Yes
Wheelchair accessible: Yes
Carryout: Yes
(501) 603-9208
Weekend, Pages 94 on 03/02/2007