Little Saint Gorgonzola pimento cheese plate, with house pickles, benne wafers and salty ham (Photo by Dominic Hernandez)
There’s a kind of restaurant this city seems to produce without even trying, one that lives to color over the lines separating fine dining from casual dining, bistros from dives. You know the kind I’m talking about: cramped quarters, idiosyncratic in look and feel, with a chef who, defiantly spurning the masses, speaks almost exclusively to a hipster foodie base.
The latest restaurant to try and join this club is Little Saint, on the distant edge of the Museum District, and it would appear to check most of the boxes. The hanging plants and jars of tea steeping in the windowsill suggest a low-key, eco-crunchy cafe, and the menu extends that impression with its emphasis on mindful meatlessness.
The kitchen, under the direction of Alex Enggist, can be just as playful, detailed and regionally evocative as the competition it has its eye on — witness the smoked bluefish dip, with crackers made by dehydrating the skin of the fish, or another dip, a play on pimento cheese, made with Gorgonzola and paired with fantastically crispy benne-seed crackers. But just as often, execution fails a good idea, as with a plate of gnocchi and trumpet mushrooms — an intended study in soft textures and golden browns — done in by undercooked fungi, or a Mexican take on hoecakes that turned up chalky, crumbly rounds, or a not-quite-authentic Cubano that committed the unforgivable sin of dry, thready pork.
Enggist and crew would do well to curb their globalist impulses. In the food world, unlike the political world, nationalism isn't a dirty word. And there's nothing remotely divisive about a plate of fat, sweet scallops with creamy grits, one of the best things on the menu here. It is, rather, a dish of broad and happy consensus, a testament to the virtues of simplicity and an indication of what this restaurant could become with a tighter focus. Less hipster foodie, perhaps, less like the class of restaurants it aspires to be, but better.
2 1/2 out of 5 stars
2901 Park Ave.
804-303-9772
Hours: Tuesday to Thursday: 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Friday to Saturday: 10 a.m. to 11 p.m.; Sunday: 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Prices: Breakfast/Lunch $4 to $20. Dinner $4 to $22.
Handicapped-accessible
