At Tommy’s, young chef thinks big, takes chances

Massena — In downtown Massena’s Quality Inn, there’s a restaurant called Tommy’s.

Tom Williams opened the restaurant about two years ago. We reviewed it in November 2007. The food was average, the wait staff didn’t quite have it together and the “jazzy blues lounge” atmosphere was pretty hokey.

Rumors were circulating that Tom opened the restaurant with the knowledge that his son, Tory, who was in culinary school at the time, would come work for him after graduation.

A few months ago, some friends gave me a copy of Tommy’s new menu, designed and executed by Tory.

Pan-seared scallops with white wine cream sauce was one of the appetizers. Pear and Gorgonzola salad with balsamic vinaigrette piqued our interest, along with impressive-sounding entrées like walnut encrusted chicken breasts with pomegranate gastrique, French breaded rack of lamb with Dijon cream sauce, and grilled sea scallops with apple cider beurre blanc.

Wow! We’re there.

On a recent bone-chilling weekday night, we were about the only people in the place.

The inviting dining room was warm and welcoming — subdued lighting, candles on all the tables, satellite radio jazz at the right volume.

Jenny was our attentive and informed waitress, nicely dressed with a white blouse, black bow tie and a black apron with Tommy’s logo on it. She had obviously sampled most everything on the menu, gave good recommendations and had genuine enthusiasm for the food.

We really liked the appetizers.

Portuguese-style calamari ($7.25) was excellent. Hand-breaded, lightly fried rings of tender calamari were tossed with kalamata olives, banana pepper rings and finished with a good squeeze of lemon. A creamy, mildly spicy aïoli complemented nicely.

Crab cakes ($7.95) were long on crab, nice and crisp on the outside, and a good portion. The cherry pepper tartar sauce smeared on top was blazing hot — OK if you like blazing hot, but it overpowered the crab flavor. I scraped it off with my fork. Problem solved.

We enjoyed slices of sesame-encrusted tuna ($8.95) served over seaweed salad on top of a crispy fried won ton. The tuna was served rare, the way it should be.

Seaweed salad is interesting. It looks like a dark green version of that fake Easter grass. It has an earthy taste, enhanced with a bit of vinegar and sesame oil.

The French onion soup ($6.25) is made with a trio of onions — Vidalia, red and Spanish — caramelized in a beefy broth. Mellow mozzarella cheese was nicely browned on top.

Entrées come with soup or salad. That gave us a chance to try the soup of the day, chicken noodle, which proved to be better than expected.

The stock tasted real, no doubt made from scratch. The pieces of pulled roasted chicken were delicious. Large chunks of carrot detracted from the appearance, but unquestionably added to the flavor. Small, round BB-sized pasta, “acini di pepe” (correctly pronounced by Jenny), was a thoughtful addition.

Side salads were great, served on chilled glass plates. Caesar had just the right amount of not-too-garlicky dressing clinging to crisp torn romaine, accented with small crunchy croutons.

House salad was everything you’d want and expect: a blend of mixed greens and iceberg, sliced tomato, red onion, cucumber scored and sliced paper thin and croutons topped with a generous amount of crumbly blue cheese.

In what turned out to be a tragic error, the appetizers and salads raised our expectations for the course to come. The entrées, as it turned out, let us down.

A healthy 8-ounce portion of beef tenderloin ($19.99) was covered with a black peppercorn brandy sauce. The quantity of the meat was there; the quality and texture were dubious. The sauce tasted like thickened beef broth with no taste of brandy. The hard-as-a-rock peppercorns — lots of them — were left whole and best brushed to the side.

Salmon roulades with feta cheese and maple chipotle ($16.95) seemed like an obvious choice. It wasn’t. The flavors of the cheese and the maple with the fish just didn’t work. The feta overpowered; the sweet sauce distracted. The frozen succotash and shopworn rice pilaf did nothing to rescue this ill-designed dish.

The winning entrée of the evening (and the top recommendation from our waitress) was mushroom-encrusted chicken breasts with Mornay sauce ($12.95).

Tender and moist chicken was coated in minced wild mushrooms, finished with a cheesy Mornay sauce. Except for the frozen vegetable medley, it was delightfully satisfying, served with a baked potato cooked the way it should be: steaming hot on the inside, seasoned and crisp on the outside.

My entrée was a train wreck. I ordered the French breaded rack of lamb with Dijon cream sauce ($25.95), medium-rare. Eight thin chops arrived strewn on the plate rare-raw. Lucky I like tartare. The jelly-like lamb was topped with blobs of straight Dijon mustard, as though squeezed directly from a plastic bottle. Not my idea of a cream sauce.

I would have sent it back, but it would have been difficult for the kitchen to salvage. Plus we had already waited for our entrées about 20 minutes longer than we should, and it was getting late.

Decent wine, Gnarly Head “Old Vines” Zinfandel from California and a Magic Hat #9 beer from Vermont (from an impressive list of draft beers) and good conversation in a comfortable setting kept us occupied during the wait.

The kitchen was nice enough to prepare a side order of spinach and potato gnocchi for me. It’s on the menu as a pasta entrée. It came out as a huge portion in a big bowl, oversized potato pasta drenched in pesto cream sauce.

I don’t want to sound unappreciative, but the gnocchi tasted a little “off.”

Tory took time to do some custom plate painting, writing “Tommy’s” on the rim of the plates in green food-colored mayonnaise. Perhaps the time could have been better spent elsewhere.

I get a little tired of desserts paraded out of the kitchen on a tray for public viewing. I also worry that I might get one of those desserts that have been sitting on that tray all night long. Worse yet, someone once told me they spray those desserts with hairspray so they stay looking good for hours.

However, we ordered one each of the made-in-house desserts, priced at $5.49 apiece.

Cheesecake lacked cheese flavor and somehow tasted eggy. It was overcooked and dry. Carrot cake tasted more like spice cake, but the classic cream cheese frosting was good. Banana split cake tasted like a banana split, right down to the maraschino cherry bits in the cake. Chocolate peanut butter cake was the winner, a moist Bundt cake with a fudge-like peanut butter frosting.

Dinner for four cost us $144. A bottle of wine and a couple of beers added $25 to the total.

Don’t get me wrong. Except for a few entrée flaws, the food at Tommy’s isn’t bad. It just doesn’t quite measure up what should be expected from an upscale menu, at least right now. A little more time at it, however, and we’re sure chef Tory Williams will make Tommy’s in downtown Massena a fine dining destination.

You can contact Walter E. Siebel via e-mail: wsiebel@wdt.net.

Tommy’s

Located in the Quality Inn

10 W. Orvis St.

Massena

764-1122

Chef Tory Williams has kicked things up a notch or two with his new upscale menu.

HOURS: 4 to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday.

APPETIZER PICKS: Portuguese-style calamari with banana pepper aïoli, sesame-encrusted tuna with seaweed salad.

ENTRÉE PICK: Mushroom-encrusted breast of chicken with Mornay sauce

DESSERT PICK: Chocolate peanut butter cake

Rating: 3 forks