Audio By Carbonatix
Arcodoro & Pomodoro is really little more than a Sardinian set of Siamese twins that provides elegant fine dining and casual but lustful meat-picking with pizza under one valet awning. Yet this genetic aberration’s dual personalities are as striking as they are similar. Everything on the menu is available in each incarnation, except pizza is offered only in the more casual Arcodoro.
Sardinian selections on the menu in both spots are called out in blood red, and there aren’t many of them, a fact that suggests a tight kinship among Italian cuisine. In fact, it’s hard to tell by looking at the Sardinian creations how they differ from Northern Italian grub, but there is a difference. The restaurant’s promotional material says Sardinian food, spawned and nurtured on the mountainous island of Sardinia off Italy’s west coast, is the “cooking of farmers, shepherds and fishermen: a simple rustic cuisine bursting with flavor and texture.” What they forgot to include in this sensorial roster is aroma, the kind that strikes you in the nose like a set of postgame hockey pads.
When a pair of Sardinian entrées was dropped off at our table, we were hit with a cloud of sea stench so stern, we thought it would send our digestive plumbing into rapid rewind. It’s fascinating to consider that the aromatic differences between Roquefort cheese and a set of aged sweaty gym socks are negligible. Yet one makes you retch while the other can make your mouth water.
The funny thing about these Sardinian entrées was how the stink fog cleared when we lowered our noses to the plates; all we could detect was a clean sea-spray after-scent. The risotto al Nero con gamberi alla griglia looked like a globule of spilled crude oil that had trapped a pair of shrimp. A mound of risotto, stained blue-black from squid ink, served as a pedestal for a pair of grilled shrimp and a sprig of dill. The shrimp were as succulent and meaty as they come and literally sweated flavor. The smooth risotto flaunted a frail tackiness and delicate briny flavors that make this merging of grain and marine life such a compelling bond. No stink here.
Maybe that stink came from the linguini su barchile, an outrageously simple bowl of linguini sautéed with clams, skinless tomatoes and garlic. Only on our visit, the clams were substituted with mussels that ringed the pasta at the bowl’s edge in a tight vertical formation mimicking a disciplined unit of Roman legionnaires. The mussels were tiny plump bulbs redolent with flavor, and the pasta strands had just the right amount of give on the dentures. But the subtle treatment that set this dish apart was a dusting of grated bottarga, the dried roe of gray mullet. This illusive but potent brown soot settled on the pasta and the edge of the bowl, lending the dish a briny piquancy that picked up where the mussels left off.
The differences between these twins show most strikingly in the architecture. Located in the spot that was Baby Routh before it was Cedar Street (a dumpy watering hole with a nice patio and a swell circular driveway for see-and-be-seen valet rituals), Arcodoro & Pomodoro is roughly the same merging of the more formal Pomodoro and the casual pizzeria/bar Arcodoro that existed at its old location on Cedar Springs, albeit with a little less demarcation. Arcodoro is a piazza replica with red clay tiles on the sloping roof over the bar, a wood-burning pizza oven in the back, street lamp sconces and a ceiling upholstered in bamboo poles hovering over a spectacular chandelier that seems to replicate olive branches or the foliage of some other agricultural commodity. Sometimes through the ear-rending din of beautiful-people prattle, you can even make out a note or two of the arias bellowing through the sound system.
The Pomodoro side of this restaurant is a bit more placid. The huge colorful fresco-like mural on canvas was ripped from the old location and transplanted here among the Fourtuny lamps that hang overhead. Just outside the entrance to the formal dining room is a pair of private dining rooms: a four-seat “chef’s table” situated in a wine cellar; and the “Cork Room,” a little cove with wine racks and a ceiling covered in tiles made of cork, one of Sardinia’s top agricultural exports.
Between the two dining rooms is a glass case stocked with distinctively blown bottles of grappa, that fiery swill distilled from fermented grape pomace that was given cache in the ’80s when some wise merchant decided to bottle it in artful bottles and ply it to yuppies.
Overall, the new digs fling a bit more romance and verve than did the old. And the food tastes better, too, although this might be a psychosomatic phenomenon.
What isn’t a figment of the imagination is the service. It’s tight, efficient, nurturing, and the waiters know the menu, even if an accent here and there makes ingredients such as “a splash of citrus” sound like you’re getting a dish seasoned with French car parts.
One dish you can’t seem to get away from no matter how far from Italy you stray is the mozzarella and tomato salad. This version comes with the distinctive brininess of buffalo mozzarella, an ingredient that makes versions with standard mozzarella obsolete. Yet the tomatoes on this salad should have been rejected. These slices, interlaced with cheese cuttings, were mealy and faded instead of juicy and robust. It’s hard to obtain tomatoes this time of year that you can do much with other than throw at a political rally, but perhaps the dish should be offered only when lusty tomatoes can be had.
A better predinner indulgence is the fungone con polenta al Gorgonzola dolce, a gasp-inducing union of moist and separate but tacky polenta wading in a smooth, potent puddle of Gorgonzola sauce. It was topped with a marinated and grilled portobello mushroom that was dry.
If there’s one thing upon which Pomodoro has earned its reputation, it’s raw beef. Virtually every version served here is exquisite, with thin lacy sheets of cool rich beef that are near impossible to capture on fork tines without seriously rending the slices into diminutive tatters. A special version of carpaccio was topped with two pieces of rich, chilled foie gras and a tight bunch of greens that rose out of the arrangement like duster feathers. Halved blackberries rested on the meat sheets with a section of lime slipped between them. Dabs of raspberry vinaigrette prodded it with a subtle raciness. This dish sparked a craving for toast points, and the delicious pane carasau, a thin Sardinian bread, was a bit too brittle for the task.
Not working as well was the ceviche, a rectangular pastry shell filled with sections of octopus tentacle, calamari and shrimp. The octopus was tough, and the creamy white fragments collectively were warm and slightly fishy.
Arcodoro’s wine list is a swilling playground for those who like to sip the earthy wines of Italy every now and then. The list contains a half dozen brunellos, a half dozen Chianti Classicos, a few Barolos and Barbarescos, a few amarones and a Tignanello. But the biggest surprise is the Sardinian wines. We supped a Cannonau de Jerzu Alberto Loi, Cardedo, which pretty much means wine made from red grapes similar to grenache. They make full-throttle reds with spice and grip hovering over the fruit.
I don’t know if that makes any sense, but it made sense with the lamb ravioli, a special. Pie-like slices of pasta stuffed with ground lamb were arranged in a circle in a bath of mushroom white wine sauce. The pasta sections were slightly undercooked, having less give than seems comfortable. But the flavors of the ground lamb with the mushroom bloomed with balance.
The veal was equally endearing. The scaloppina ai funghi di bosco was a set of veal medallions wading in rich Marsala sauce. While the crowd of wild mushrooms was lustily flavorful, the medallions were slightly dry, though the smooth, rich and slightly sweet Marsala sauce proved a deft accent to the nuttiness of the veal and the earthiness of the mushrooms.
The desserts were tight as a rusted screw. Tiramisu, by far the best version I’ve sampled in Dallas, was a simple chilled cube of Marsala-drenched ladyfinger layers with a thick drool of mascarpone zabaglione of cream and a dusting of chocolate. The flavors furiously clashed and married, turning the thing into a celestial sponge with a nice kick of restrained decadence. Panna cotta al mirto also worked up a furious finale. A rich homemade Italian custard flavored with myrtle bush berries on a wild berry compote made for a dish that was as rich and delicate as it was racy and satisfying.
Owned by Sardinian chef Efisio Farris, Pomodoro opened in Dallas in the late 1980s. A few years later he sprung Arcodoro next door, which he replicated in 1996 in Houston. Farris moved his Sardinian combo wholesale last year to this new Routh Street location, and here he seems poised to outdo himself. Meals sampled at the old location were inconsistent, ranging from sublime to mediocre. Somehow, not a sign of that affliction is present at the transplant.
Maybe it’s the sunny atmosphere. Maybe it’s the circular driveway. Or maybe it’s just that some Sardinian exports get better with age, even if they are joined at the hip.
