Alison at Arms
 Morgan McGivern |
(6/03/2008) In some cultures marriages are arranged and all those who participate in or witness them have to stand by and hope for the best. With fingers crossed. The recent arrangement of Alison Becker moving her eponymous restaurant, Alison, from Bridgehampton to the Maidstone Arms in East Hampton feels like such a marriage. You really hope it will work but you’re just not sure.
The Maidstone Arms has had a revolving door of names and chefs over the last few years, and nothing seems to stick. It is a lovely old building. A nice porch in front looks out on Town Pond, the swans and their six cygnets, and the beautiful cemetery. Inside to the right is a blue and green lounging area, to the left a small bar.
The main dining room, straight ahead, is a pretty, low-ceilinged room, rather Colonial feeling. It used to be Williamsburg blue or Greenbriar green. Not sure. Now it has been “Alisonized,” as Ms. Becker calls it: The walls are a beautiful cream color, the lighting is good, the floors dark wood, black-and-white photographs adorn the walls, and the music is younger.
The menu is short and has some tempting offerings, but not much in the way of local fish. Yet.
We started with the spring lettuces salad with shaved radish, fresh herbs, and sherry vinaigrette; the crayfish fricasee with morels, peas, ramps, and creme fraiche, and the sautéed sea scallops with caper-raisin sauce, herb oil, cauliflower purée, and chervil. The salad was delicious, a dainty mound of leaves delicately dressed with a very high quality sherry vinegar and lots of nicely sprinkled-about herbs. It was the kind of salad you’d have in France or at a friend’s house — a friend who is a really, really good cook.
The crayfish fricasee was also good. Any time crayfish are available, I’m all over it. The spring-like adornment of morels, peas, and ramps seemed like an odd combination, but it worked. Each flavor came through — the earthy morels, fresh, barely cooked peas tasting very green, and the sweet, swampy, salty taste of the crayfish in the rich creme fraiche.
The sautéed sea scallop dish was recognized as an homage to Jean-Georges Vongerichten, cauliflower, caper-raisin sauce, and all. It was a beautiful dish to behold, pure white cauliflower purée topped with three nicely caramelized slices of scallop. And there’s my gripe. If there are three slices of scallop on your $16 scallop appetizer dish, that means you are getting one and a half sea scallops. I’d like to eat the other one and a half.
Other than that, the cauliflower purée was creamy, salty, and rich, a nice contrast to the scallops. The sweet-sour flavors of the caper-raisin sauce were a great accompaniment. You don’t often see chervil on menus (or at the market), but it is a delicious, delicate, and pretty herb that goes beautifully with certain subtle fish dishes. This was a nice touch.
For entrees, we had the sautéed black bass with cockles, chorizo, sweet peppers, and parsley; the “crispy skin” Murray’s chicken with potato purée, broccoli rabe, baby artichokes, and Meyer lemon-rosemary jus, and the braised halibut with pickled pearl onions, cherry tomatoes, fennel, zucchini, and herb fumet.
But a word about the service. Ms. Becker has been in the restaurant business for many years: first on Dominick Street in New York City, then On the Beach, or, more accurately, “on Poxabogue,” on School Street in Bridgehampton, and now at the Maidstone Arms. She is a great cook herself and knows how to transform a space into something cozy-country and elegant at the same time. She is present, pretty, and has always had excellent chefs in her employ.
The managers and hostesses at the Maidstone Arms are also pleasant and professional. I do, however, fear for our waiter’s life and state of mind during the crushing August season, when some hedge-fund pooh-bah or eensy, cosmo-swilling princess gives him a hard time. Or wants to change an order. Or does anything that may, well, confuse him, or slow him down. He was charming, graceful, and meticulous. Our order was repeated back several times. When an ice bucket for our wine was declined, he insisted we have one nonetheless. Sweet, thoughtful, and probably inexperienced.
The sautéed black bass was perfectly cooked, with a nicely crisped skin on top, and the flesh was just cooked through with the right amount of salt and pepper. The frizzled cockles and thin slices of chorizo gave it an additional salty, briny, smoky flavor. The Murray’s chicken was also very well prepared, the skin was indeed crispy, as promised in quotes on the menu, and the Meyer lemon-rosemary jus tasted just like that — perfumey Meyer lemons and herbaceous rosemary.
The portions of potato purée, broccoli rabe, and baby artichokes, however, were too puny for the big, beautiful white plates that everything was served on. The braised halibut, with pickled pearl onions, cherry tomatoes, etc., was probably the best of all, a pure white rectangle of fish full of the herb fumet flavor. The surrounding vegetables were beautifully presented, the summer squash and zucchini cut into diamond shapes, poached just enough, with the fennel and cherry tomatoes adding sweetness and color. It looked like a beautiful, virtuous spa dish but was rich and full of flavor.
Chef Robert Gurvich has worked with Alison on and off for quite a few years. Their venture into the Maidstone Arms has provided this space with a good, short, well-thought-out menu. His New Orleans roots pop up in the crayfish dish and the food is beautifully presented. Prices for appetizers run from $13 to $18, entrees from $17 to $44.
For dessert we tried the trio of ice cream sandwiches, the strawberry shortcake, and the cookie plate. The ice cream sandwiches were three dainty (okay, really small) dark-chocolate cookie discs with three flavors of ice cream in each. They were inexplicably glued to the plate with chocolate ganache, which is probably a good idea for transporting something slippery-slidey on a plate out of the kitchen, but not a good idea for diners who want to pick up the sandwiches and eat them with their fingers. As one is wont to do.
One sandwich was filled with coffee ice cream, one with vanilla, and one with mint. They were delicious little morsels, but the mint ice cream tasted like spearmint, and I think peppermint is a better match for chocolate.
The strawberry shortcake tasted good, but it was a lemony cookie topped with strawberry ice cream, strawberries, and whipped cream. Strawberry shortcake should be strawberry shortcake, a biscuit-like cake filled with strawberries and whipped cream. Hold the lemon cookie. Hold the ice cream. The cookie plate was nice and had a creative variety of cookies, a soft Oreo and a superb Linzer cookie being the stars.
I hope this arranged marriage works for the Maidstone Arms and Alison. It would be nice to have a hipper and prettier restaurant in the old grande dame at the gateway to the Village of East Hampton. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.