L'Oricio - New Haven, CT

L’Oricio – New Haven, CT

I was rolling off my current engagement and the colleagues at my company had a “rolling-off” good bye dinner for me. I had two options to choose from, L’Oricio and Zinc, both in New Haven.

Having already been to Zinc (fairly good though some definite miscues), I chose L’Oricio.

When I first walked in, it was nice, there were actually people there, unlike at Pacifico.

They didn’t have much to offer in terms of beer, which was disappointing, but a colleague of mine and I ordered a bass. Wow, it was awesome when it came out. Ice cold. That is something that should never be looked past. For me, all cold drinks should be on the very precipice between frozen and liquid state – I’m talking 4 degrees celcius (where water actually starts to expand because it doesn’t know whether to be in liquid or solid state). So, the Bass was amongst the most delicious beers I’ve had – I know it’s a bass so I can’t rate it too highly, but the ice cold temperature made me think I would be in for some treats that evening.

I decided to be adventurous that day and instead of getting a boring salad, I ordered myself the Sardines stuffed with bread crumbs and pan fried in EVOO (frying it in EVOO I thought would be weird, but I gave it a go), a spicy Bucatini all’Amatriciana, and a filet mignon in cream sauce. How did I get three things you ask, am I an over-eater? No, I’m not. I was very happy when the menu said that one could order half size entrees of the pastas, so I decided to do that. I think having a meal with more courses is a terrific way to indulge in the taste of chef, it’s more difficult to hit a home-run, but one gets a better indication of the success and weaknesses of the chef.

Do not be alarmed, my minions, there will be negativity in this report.

Before the food came out, the true test of the restaurant was upon us. The bread and butter portion. How do some many restaurants manage to get this wrong!? Do the owners or chefs, or waiters NEVER eat out? There’s one rule and a few pointers to the bread and butter act: 1)Do not have cold butter, it makes it darned near impossible to spread the butter often leaving the patrons with portions of the bread that have too much and too little butter on it! 2) To improve the experience, have a variety of breads – sometimes I’m in the mood for a roll, sometimes a flatbread, shake up the texture waiter! 3) if you want to wow me with the portion either bring out warm bread (not room temperature) or have the butter in a little dish.

Moving on, the first course comes out and lo-and-behold, my sardines have arrived. Presentation was ok, nothing particularly resplendent – it was three sardines surrounding a small mesclun salad. I ate into the first sardine with unabashed fervor, not because I was hungry but rather because I was anxious to have sardines that didn’t come from a can. Well, they were “eh”. Not bad, but not great either. The flavor was lacking. I don’t know what it is with New Haven, but there are some restaurants that cook their food and the end result is flavor, some have an end result of a high temperature, and some are neither particularly warm nor flavorful, what gives!? My supertaster taste buds will tell you the Sardines were not salty enough and I couldn’t taste the lemon on the sardines. Sardines 4.5-5

Other appetizers included a salami and roasted red peppers on grilled bread. The salami was kind of like what you get at the supermarket deli counter, I won’t even talk about it. The red peppers...well, the peppers were good but the bread was a disappointment. Why disappointing you ask, was it flavor, texture, look, what? It was the look and the temperature. The damned bread had grill marks on it and it wasn’t even hot. That’s like blatantly lying to me. I’m going to figure it out, if I don’t eat the bread I will at least touch it to see how hot it is. Honestly, don’t try fooling me L’Oricio.

Antipasti aside, here comes Nostri Primi – my pasta. Wow, this was good. It took a while for the heat to set in, it wasn’t too hot, but it had a bit of a kick, which is always welcomed. The meal had a good earthy flavor with rich pancetta and onions. This was a hit. I even had the group taste it after I was done. They all liked it. I would give it, individually a 6.5-7.5

Now I was excited again for my main course, the filet.

And out it comes. Thusly, disappointment sets in. “Where’s the steak”, I mutter to myself. It was sinking underneath the cream. Figuratively sinking and drowning. To make matters worse, mine was amongst the first that came out, so I had to wait while everyone else got their meals. This is bad because while it waits, under the hot cream, it’s actually continuing to cook from the residual heat of the rest of the meat.

Then I cut it open. Oh FUCK! Now I’m pissed. This is garbage. I ordered it medium. I wanted to see some pink or if I was lucky a little bit of red. What I got was medium well to well done. See the link = http://www.goodcooking.com/steak/doneness.htm . You’ll notice the difference between medium and medium well. Well damnit, I got medium well.

So I suck it up and continue to indulge, scratch that, I continue to eat what’s on my plate. It honestly felt like I had ordered heavy cream with a sprinkling of meat. I could barely eat it the taste was so overwhelmingly creamy and the cream covered the steak. It wasn’t even like it was dark cream, no. It truly was white-as-day heavy cream that covered my meal.

We then got dessert, which was ok, nothing special. Ooh, a brownie cake (what am I five years old?) with coffee ice-cream or something equally as cliché.

Overall, be careful what you get from this place.

Overall experience 6-6.5 (the bucatini is what set this meal apart)