Audio By Carbonatix
What does a daringly beautiful and sleek lounge do when it wants to evolve beyond watering-hole food? It sautés quail. We ordered Zúbar‘s sautéed quail with new potatoes and asparagus, and we threw the kitchen off its footing. The chef made an emergency visit to our table and explained the dish would take a while because…er, it wasn’t exactly popular and some additional prep work was involved. We suspected he was trying to tell us he had to thaw the little fowl. And it seems our suspicions were confirmed when the food arrived. A pair of birds were splayed and placed on the plate next to a few over-oiled new potatoes and some crisp asparagus stalks. The birds looked like crucified robins. Plus, they were dry, mealy, and livery tasting, without clean, delicate flavors.
Yet it was a terrific barroom attempt. An even better effort was the portobello mushrooms stuffed with smoked salmon and ringed with dots of aioli and balsamic honey glaze. A flat piece of mushroom cuddled a tasty salmon cake creating a provocative interplay of musty earthiness and sea-washed brine.
Less risky stuff didn’t come off as well. Fried calamari was crisp and greasy with a typical under-seasoned batter, the kind that goes well with half-time reports and martinis. But you’ll need to beware here too. A request for a “dirty” martini–one loaded with olive juice–seemed to unleash the dustbin, making for a shaken blend that looked more like a pond-water sample. Plus, one of our glasses was smeared and covered with lipstick prints, an indication of how this place takes dirty seriously.
It also takes its interior duds seriously. The lighting is sumptuous and the long, narrow venue is fashioned out of a string of nuzzling pockets in which to locate yourself, depending on your desired level of intimacy. The front bar area is warm and expansive and it pours into a slanted, angled portal covered in plates of copper. Lining the strip of space beyond this portal is a banquette with a series of small terrazzo tables pushed against it. Beyond this long passageway is a back room where couches puff, pillows proliferate, and bodies supinate. Zúbar is a spot that proves advantageous to both the hunter and hunted.
That’s true even if you’re not eating the hunted. Vegetable green curry–bell peppers, carrots, mushrooms, broccoli, and onions served over a bed of rice pilaf–was fine, though the thickish sauce was a bit cloying, and the rice was riddled with clumps.
Fresh ravioli swimming in Alfredo sauce was delicious: thick and chewy with stuffings that were richly flavored and not at all shy about the smoke.
Opened roughly four years ago, Zúbar recently reorganized its menu to keep the place on the “cutting edge of the Dallas bar and restaurant scene.” And it’s off to a laudable start. Now if they could just get the lipstick off of the martini glasses.
