LITTLE ROCK — Ferneau is for first dates. The blood-red beet soup a choice pairing for those carefully made-up lips. The boozy bananas Foster for two ideal for antsy fingers. You can’t be sure the dinner you asked for will be quite what you have in mind, but neither can you be sure the diner you asked out is what you have in mind.
Who really is this person?
Will he ask me questions or just drone on about himself?
Why did she say “yes” to me? Oh, she’s already disappointed.
COOL
Ferneau’s is cool, its presence along Kavanaugh understated, like that place in the East Village you mention because that’s what kind of date this is.
Inside, there’s the luminescent bar and the chic ceiling tapestries - the perfectly adequate threepiece jazz act sliding in on “Thriller” and out on “Superstitious,” and the kitchen burning bright outof the periphery. The waiter recommends the nachos ($15). They’re really wonton chips topped with Ahi tuna and drizzled with Ponzu and spicy mayonnaise. The prospect doesn’t tickle you or her, but, well, OK.
Not OK. The tuna is wholly overwhelmed by the texture of the thick chips and the sweet spice of the sauces. Tuna isn’t barbecued pork; it won’t be slathered with carbohydrates.
Don’t listen to the waiter is one way to assert yourself in the presence of your impressionable date, so the next round you declare your desire for the Southern-fried Oysters with grilled jalapeno vinaigrette ($12), and, oh, what savory redemption! Juicy saltwater flesh rolled in semolina breading. It feels as natural poised on the fingertips as the tines of a fork. Salty, and yet,something unexpected.
“It’s just spicy enough to mask the oyster taste for those people who don’t like it, but not so spicy that it drowns it out completely for those who do,” she says.
Mais oui, mon cherie!
The beet soup ($5) tasted only half as bright as it appeared, but Ferneau has a history of incorporating local, seasonal produce, and limited time surprises like this one should be lauded.
While gumming a lemon basil sorbet, you decide the most pleasing next step in this new relationship - for these things often firm upafter a drink but before the entree - is to split the surf and turf ($50). Unlike the steak and lobster tail you’ll find nearly anywhere else, this combo features seared tuna and lamb chops.
These are grain-fed Midwestern ewes, aged slightly (that is, post-mortem) before baptism in a truffled demiglaze. Each bite is so stultifying you lean your faces closer as if sharing some coterminous whirling rapture.
CODA
A week later you two return to try out the “Late Night Menu,” available Thursday and Friday, 10 p.m. to 1 a.m., and Saturday, 10 p.m. to midnight. You’ve heard the fare is fit for one of Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov’s nightspots. The place is all citrus rum drinks and beautiful young people and drunk food done up like haute cuisine. You’ve heard this.
It’s all true. The people, they are young, and it’s a crowd. You are surprised to find the lambent tableau of the dining room filled this time with drunk twentysomethings. The ladies in platform pumps. The fellas in ball caps turned backward. (Are we still doing this? Tell ’em, Jamie Kennedy.)
The drinks are viscous pairings of tropical fruit and rum/vodka/tequila. The popular “BLTini” (lemon-basil martini) ($9) is better than most simple-syrup mojitos around and far prettier, and the pomegranate-ginger mojito ($7.50) is devil-may-care. That’s, “the devil may care about my wicked headache tomorrow, but I don’t.”
Of course, you and your date haven’t arrived drunk, and now you’re feasting on the Grilled Peanut Butter and Banana and Bacon Sandwich ($8) with honey on Boulevard Bread Co. ciabatta.
“Oh, you know what this is?” she says. “This is drunk food and we’re not drunk.”
She’s right. The revelry’s passing you by. The Fried Pickle Slices ($8), sprinkled in Parmesan and dipped in homemade ranch dressing,are so tart and crisp they are, like the oysters, a delight and surprise.
Perhaps, in your satisfaction, you lose your senses some, because now you’re saying, “You remind me of a woman I used to know.”
“Yeah? You don’t remind me of anybody,” she says.
A simulcast insult from both sides of the table. A tricky achievement for all but the most seasoned couples. You know, she knows, it’s over.
The only thing left is simple sensory pleasure. “Waiter, we’ll have ...” the Gouda Grilled Cheese ($13) with Wild Alaskan Smoked Salmon and whole-grain mustard, “and the ...” Chili-Dusted Shrimp ($12). Neither surprises like the fried pickles or the peanut-butter-banana-bacon grilled sandwich. The smoked salmon is lumped on the side, and the grilled cheese itself is a little dry. The shrimp is,well, little more than what it is.
Where before you couldn’t be sure of the food or the frisson, now you know. She and the salmon are “a little dry.” You and the shrimp are “little more than what it is.”
Ferneau is for first dates.
Ferneau Address: 2601 Kavanaugh Blvd., Little Rock Hours: 5 p.m.-10 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday (bar open until 2) Cuisine: Eclectic American Credit cards: V, MC, AE, DC Alcoholic beverages: Full bar Reservations: Yes Wheelchair accessible: Yes Carryout: Yes (501) 603-9208 ferneaurestaurant.com
Weekend, Pages 33 on 07/15/2010