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|
 |  | Spiced Pear executive chef Kyle Ketchum prepares a sauce
in the open kitchen as diners taste and savor the meal | A little drama before
your gourmet dinner |  | The Spiced Pear opened with aplomb four years ago with a Paris educated resort chef at the helm. Several chefs and managers later, Rhode Island’s most expensive restaurant is still searching for an identity.
But a risk-taking general manager with charismaticand talented new executive chef in the kitchen and an accomplished pastry chefback in the fold, is making this fine dining establishment on the Cliff Walkworth a second look.
Tim Thuell, manager for about six months, doesn’t want the Spiced Pear to simply be an occasion restaurant, though that is a natural. He wants to make it “the venue for Sunday nights” by introducing dinner theater. This Sunday the play Art will be performed at 6 p.m. After the single act, three-person plat, he hopes that guests drawn in by the free performance will stay for dinner.
Thuell said he is putting out new ideas inthe hope that they succeed.
Why shouldn’t they for a $49 four-course dinner on theater nights with executive chef Kyle Ketchum’s lovely menu from sea and land and pastry chef Laurent Vals’ amazing desserts. That’s the price for some of the entrees on the dinner menu. The fixed-price dinner will be available to anyone on Sunday, whether or not they are seeing the show.
Ketchum comes to the restaurant from The Lark in West Bloomfield, Mich., where he earned a “Best Chef in Michigan for 2005” nod from Hour Detroit Magazine. He learned much, he said, working with Michael Smith and Debbie Gold at The American Restaurant in Kansas City including how to have good relationships with purveyors. Buying from local seafood companies and produce from Sid Wainer & Son of New Bedford adds to a meal.
He too echoes the desire for the Spiced Pear to go beyond special occasion dining and said, “ I want us to be known for breakfast, lunch, and dinner” but “ mostly I want the food to be great.”
It’s at lunch that he serves the Kobeburger ($25), which earned the Spiced Pear a mention in Esquire magazine a fewyears ago. On Friday nights when there is live jazz from 6-9, they serve miniKobe burger sliders in a trio ($17).
He will build upon New England specialties with a contemporary flair but mostly he wants to be approachable.
When he noticed few diners trying his foiegras basted poussin on the menu, he made a change to say foie gras basted youngchicken. He is not one who believes fine dining means attitude, a complaint many had with the restaurant before his arrival.
Even something as small as popcorn keeps his attention. He was thinking of discontinuing the servings of popcorn, tossed with truffle oil and Parmesan on my last visit. But in talking to guests, he learned how much they enjoyed this treat and now he considers it a challenge to adorn it with a variety of flavors.
The heart of his menu offers more seriousflavor profiles. His jumbo lump crab cake appetizer ($21) is all shredded craband paired with amazingly light and bright blood orange vinaigrette. A veal loinand cheek duo ($48) is cooked for seven hours after a marinade and is as amazingfor the rich flavor as the perfect texture and tenderness.
Pastry chef Vals was in the kitchen when the Spiced Pear opened with former chef Richard Hamilton, but he left during some of the turbulent time when chefs were coming and going. Now he’s back and we can all be glad. His dessert menu includes an assortment of chocolate truffles named for different hotel rooms in the Chanler, home to the Spiced Pear. The briar Rose is molded dark chocolate with raspberry flavor; the Victorian is milk chocolate with hazelnut flavor; and the lavish Lois XVI is molded white chocolate with candied orange and almond flavor. His Valentine’s desert tonight is an amazing trio of ethereal white chocolate mousse, mango, and lighter than air raspberry crème.
As for the theater part of dinner theater,Art is a quirky little play by Yasmina Reza being performed by the New EnglandTheater Training Institute under the direction of Tom Erb. He stars in the playwith Mario P. Neves and Ed Patterson. Also starring is a painting that was doneby Newport artist William Heydt which he good-naturedly painted to the directors specifications by putting his creative ego aside.
If the dinner theater draws a crowd, therewill be more performances and Thuell hopes to move them outdoors for the summermonths.
Details: The Spiced Pear Restaurant at theChanler at Cliff Walk, 117 Memorial Blvd., Newport,
(401) 847-2244. |
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