Sometimes
one discovers a restaurant, and wonders: Where has this one been hiding?
For several years, Watercolor Café has been hiding in plain
sight on the Boston Post Road in Larchmont, a town with more than
its fair share of enticing restaurants.
Watercolor Café is a small affair, a narrow restaurant one
can easily miss because it doesn’t take up much street frontage.
Space is at a premium, and none of it is wasted. Even the staff of
slim efficient waitresses seems tailored to match the restaurant’s
physical characteristics.
No one ever said a small restaurant can’t be charming, and Watercolor
Café has charm to spare. In keeping with its name, paintings
(which can be purchased) hang on the walls. Owner Bruce Carroll used
to rotate artists but lately has just featured the works of Annie
Michel because they go so well with the décor.
Pironi glass
sconces provide splashes of color with horizontal green, red, yellow
and blue stripes on a white background. The same colors echo in
a line of elongated, monochromatic, post-modernist hanging lights
basket of flatbread crackers and wedges of crusty Italian bread
gave us a case of the munchies. We deferred them, preferring to
save our appetites for the real offerings.
From an accessible wine list ($18-$72) of American, French, Italian,
Spanish and New Zealand vintages, we chose a ‘96 Cune Reserva,
Rioja, Spain ($34). Cune stands for CVNE, or Companía Viñícola
del Norte de España, an important Rioja bodega. 1996 was
a good year for Spanish reds, and this robust blend with ripe flavors
and smooth tannins didn’t disappoint.
We overheard one staffer tell another: “No more oysters and
one more duck.” Duck wasn’t on our shopping list, but
the oysters were.
Fortunately, we got the last order. Our spicy deep-fried oysters
($8.95) arrived frighteningly fast. Three oysters revolved around
a guacamole center. On the plate were piles of a mango, blueberry,
kiwi and papaya fruit salsa. The oysters were breaded with a mixture
of flour and cayenne pepper, imparting crunch and a little spice
in every bite. Uniting the flavors surprisingly well were greens
coated in balsamic vinaigrette. The oysters were not so much the
star of this production as a complementary player in it.
A grilled vegetable terrine ($8.50) was so attractively plated with
basil oil and balsamic reduction, it was worthy of the name Watercolor
Café. More sandwich than terrine, it combined artichoke heart,
portobello mushroom, eggplant, roasted red pepper, grilled endive
and a thick pat of goat cheese. My companion swooned over this number,
even entertaining thoughts of vegetarianism. Well, I’m not
one to proselytize. I eat a lot of vegetarian meals in unguarded
moments. I just know that vegetarian restaurant critics are of little
use to the general public.
A crisp angel hair pasta pancake ($8.95) was pure comfort food.
The outer crispness of the pancake yielded to a pasta interior coated
in a basil cream sauce. Two jumbo shrimp, marinated then grilled,
completed the picture.
Inexplicably listed as a salad, where one could easily miss it if
one weren’t in a salad mood, two big wedges of crisp Brie ($8.25)
came with tomato and portobello slices. We could just about feel
our arteries hardening as we bit into the crunchy breaded and deep-fried
exterior of the Brie, almost more pleasure than one man could endure.
My Peewee Herman-esque companion, Bob, was thrilled because the
tomatoes were seedless. Bob keeps explaining to me that he loves
tomatoes, just not the seeds. I retort that eating tomatoes without
seeds is like being in a celibate marriage with Nicole Kidman.
What’s black and white and re(a)d all over? A newspaper. What’s
black and white and pink all over? Watercolor Café’s
tuna steak ($19.95) encrusted in black and white sesame seeds and
pink peppercorns. Seared rare, the inch-and-a-half triangular slab
was accompanied by a soy, ginger and honey-lime vinaigrette, an
inverted mold of pineapple rice,spinach, grilled vegetables and
two piles of the fruit salsa. Some restaurants still deliver value.
There was plenty of value to be had in Watercolor Café’s
free-range chicken ($15.95). Served on the bone for flavor, half
a chicken was coated in a delicious hoisin-barbeque sauce. It came
with onion rings, grilled asparagus, mixed grilled vegetables and
horseradish mashed potatoes. And it was so good that, for the first
time in a long time, I painfully overate.
We looked at the dessert menu, and groaned. We waited and hoped
for second wind. Bob ventured a tacky comment about how the Romans
made room for dessert. While Bob sipped Quady Essencia Orange Muscat
($5/$18), I wet my lips on Quiady Electra ($5/$18), a low-alcohol
version in which chilling arrested the fermentation process.
On the recommendation of our waitress, I ordered chocolate mousse
cake ($5.95), which came with a strawberry and blueberry garnish,
vanilla ice cream and raspberry sauce. It was good, but in hindsight
I wished I had selected something more unusual, like the homemade
tollhouse pie ($5.95) or the Grand Marnier crème caramel
($5.95).
Bob ordered the Brazilian pavé ($5.95), misnamed in that
it wasn’t square like a paving stone. It was, in fact, a delightful,
tiramisu-like combination served in a cocktail glass: ladyfingers
soaked in crème de cacao layered with marscarpone and cream.
We observed waitresses and bus girls weaving past one another in
A well-choreographed ballet. No request seemed to faze the staff.
Every staff member was willing to help with any problem. Carroll
led by example, rolling up his sleeves and working as hard as anyone.
We found that if we tracked anyone’s movements for long, we
grew tired by proxy.
We reflected on our meal and wondered: Were we lucky in our ordering,
or is everything terrific at Watercolor Café? The menu seemed
to strike the perfect balance between gourmet and comfort food.
Sadly, not many restaurants do that kind of food well. For us, Watercolor
Café was the quintessential neighborhood restaurant.
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