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Arthur Clays' Owners Have Put Their Talents to Work
• by Joe Pollack
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Like many young married couples, Stephen and Kerri Scherrer are able to divide responsibilities. He cooks. She bakes.
They have put these talents to work at Arthur Clay's, their rising star of a restaurant in the rapidly growing restaurant oasis of downtown Maplewood. For those who consider excellent dining as the best sign of an oasis, Monarch is a few blocks to the west and the Schlafly Bottleworks is right next door to the east. The latter qualifies because of the presence of one of the city's top desserts, Sticky Toffee Pudding, on its menu.
Arthur Clay's, a recent addition to the local dining family, has a menu whose creation is like many of the area's newer – and better – restaurants. There are daily changes, driven by market availability and the chef's mood. For example, in a pair of visits a week apart, only one appetizer and one entree were identical. Scherrer's cooking displays a worldwide range, with influences and flavors of China, Thailand, Germany, France, Italy and Latin America, all cooperating with American styles. As a matter of fact, the international cooperation appears a lot closer in a Maplewood kitchen than it ever was on an Iraqi battlefield.
The storefront restaurant is small, with a bar taking up parts of two walls in the front room. The back room is slightly larger and seemingly noisier. Another good point seems to be that the Scherrers have wisely put together a talented staff, with many skilled veterans the Guru has seen through the years. Seeing familiar faces among the servers is an encouraging factor for first-time diners, and Mrs. Scherrer, who does much of her dessert preparation during the day, is a charming hostess at the dinner hour.
A couple of recent visits were highly enjoyable. The cooking showed imagination, a willingness to use uncommon combinations – cauliflower puree with salmon, cherry-pecan chutney with sweet potato bisque and butternut squash soups, sticky rice with striped bass, Jordan almonds with foie gras, chive spaetzle with duck breast, and again with a sirloin sreak.
Presentation was delightful, with stylish flatware and crystal. Arthur Clay's shows no signs of being a new establishment operated by rookies. The Scherrers, and their restaurant, appear to have few rough edges.
Two visits brought admirable meals, and good company. Two established restaurateurs and a chef, now retired, who had an outstanding haute cuisine career, were checking the new kid on the block.
Our meals were outstanding, and the wine list, though not as long as a sommelier's dream, showed some superior selections at moderate prices, plus a solid selections of wine by the glass. A Peachy Canyon zinfandel was a nice match with duck confit, and a tart, acidic sauvignon blanc from R. H. Phillips scored with some oysters. A Bonny Doon dry riesling was a pleasing aperitif and a pair of reds, a Spanish tempranillo and a French Cotes du Rhone, were solid accompaniments to the meal.
With appetizers growing in size as rapidly as small children, I've found that a bowl of soup and an appetizer can serve as a dinner, especially if lunch was late, or large. Arthur Clay's scored with elephant garlic soup topped with a small handful of Asian mizuna greens and a trail of truffle oil that raised the bowl to elegance. The soup was delicious, with the flavor of garlic filling the mouth splendidly. Garlic cloves had been cooked long enough to be soft and sweet, and the truffle oil brought a musky flavor to the dish. I followed the soup with a delicious dish that paired sweetbreads with extremely rare bluefin tuna and some mushrooms, plus a few warm greens for color and texture. The combination was superb. The sweetbreads and the tuna were both soft, but of different textures and extremely different flavors, and the mushrooms complemented both. An unexpected pairing brought an unexpected – and delightful – result.
An appetizer of three West Coast oysters – Yaquina Bay, Raspnerry Point and Emerald Cove – was accompanied by three different sauces, featuring ginger, papaya and chile. The oysters were excitingly briny and perfectly chilled. The sauces were good, too, and yet. . . . I prefer my oysters, or clams, plain with a squirt of lemon and maybe a drop or two – no more - of Tabasco. Too much sauce, any sauce, detracts from the overall pleasure.
Mushroom soup, part of a vegetarian tasting menu, was an intriguing idea, and the server discussed its vegan heritage, with no cream or meat stock, but just a mushroom reduction. A sprinkle of truffle oil topped it off, and the dish was hearty and delicious, filled with the earthy flavor of mushrooms. Steamed mussels, served with small chips of ham, almonds and herbs, were fat and juicy. A superior dish.
Duck confit was a whole leg, crisp outside and falling-apart tender inside, over some fine fresh greens lightly dressed with a mild vinaigrette, a tasty contrast to the unctuous meat. While one could feel the arteries clogging, an occasional treat is good, and besides, the portion was small enough to go along with Julia Child, who says, "Eat good food, but in small quantities." First-rate monkfish was served with French flageolet beans, a piece of braised oxtail that offered a strange, but appealing contrast with the oxtail, and it was served in a rich red wine reduction sauce.
Striped bass, cooked to the right moment, arrived with a shiitake salad and some sticky rice in a tomato broth that had been enriched with some Thai spicing. It was a dish of numerous flavors, enough heat to be noticed but not to offend and a long, smooth aftertaste that was rich on the tongue for the rest of the evening. A New York strip steak was another winner, the tasty, tender meat supported by some tasty, if not special, chive spaetzle and mushrooms, with a splash of truffle oil doing wonderful things to a standard au jus.
Dessert also takes some winning turns along the "more is more" road. Particularly striking were a caramel ice cream that came with a chocolate cake and a macaroon. The cake was nice enough, but it was the ice cream that tasted like nothing so much as a perfectly toasted marshmallow popped in a freezer. Macaroons have become chic in the high-rent districts of Paris and the Upper East Side of New York, but this version was much easier to understand than, say, those flavored with combinations like mint and lavender or bergamot and fenugreek. This was a simple almond macaroon, generously sized and set upon a base of chocolate ganache - some very fine chocolate, too, by the way. The taste/texture mix was a great combination of both childhood and adult delights.
Maplewood may be a dining destination whose time has come, and someone has told the Guru of an impending hot dog spot, a statement that adds proof strong enough to even convince a "Law and Order" jury.
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