New Potsdam eatery offers upscale fare

POTSDAM — Even in a village filled with great eating establishments, there's still a big buzz when a new restaurant opens.

Julian's, a new fine dining restaurant in downtown Potsdam, officially opened New Year's Eve. Over the years, the Market Street location has been home to a popular Indian restaurant and various other eateries.

It's a charming, elegantly simple dining room, physically not much different from any previous incarnation. A half wall divides the room down the center. Mahogany-looking beams criss-cross the high ceiling. A good mix of classic jazz played at the right volume throughout the evening.

There's no bar, per se, except for a small service bar with three stools toward the back. It's obvious they don't want a college drinking crowd. They're intent on serving upscale creative cuisine, and their menu sure backed that up.

For appetizers, there are cherrystone clams baked with sausage, spinach and cheese; tenderloin tips with a salad of tomato, basil and mozzarella; sesame-encrusted tuna and marinated grilled lamb chops.

Entrées include roasted duck, stuffed pork tenderloin, pan-seared sea scallops, braised beef short ribs, shrimp stir-fry and potato-encrusted salmon.

Dry-aged steaks appear to be the specialty, dominating a good portion of the menu: beef tenderloin, New York strip, sirloin, steak au poivre and tenderloin medallions en croute.

This is our kind of eating, for sure.

We were seated in a cozy, half-moon-shaped booth, great for conversation and great for easily sharing our food. It was a not-so-busy weekday night. Our server, Allison, promptly introduced herself and her waitress-in-training, who she called her "shadow."

She rattled off a list of tantalizing specials, but we decided to stick to the menu.

Allison started us off with a basket of beautiful crusty bread accompanied by a tasty dipping oil — lots of herbs, easy on the garlic, just the way we like it.

The sesame-encrusted tuna appetizer ($8) can be prepared with tofu instead of fish ($6). We took that option.

The tofu was nicely cooked — neither mushy nor dried out. It's served with wakame, a delicious seasoned seaweed salad, and a soy-ginger vinaigrette that complemented perfectly. In fact, it was a perfect appetizer — tasty and not overly filling.

Marinated grilled lamb chops ($7) were not quite as perfect. Allison suggested the temperature recommended by the chef, medium rare. The chops arrived rare, and we were OK with that. But they were so very thin that the rare meat took on an amorphous look. They just weren't visually appealing.

However, the salad underneath was very nice — arugula and red onion dressed with a Saranac pomegranate wheat beer reduction, the sweetness of the beer being the perfect foil for the bitter greens.

We were really looking forward to their signature appetizer, clams alla Julian ($7), cherrystone clams on the half shell topped with chorizo (spicy Spanish pork sausage), spinach and Gruyere cheese (similar to Swiss).

Instead of complementing the clams, the topping smothered them. The stuffing on our three clams would have been sufficient for a dozen. And the stuffing wasn't that great — too many powerful flavors that didn't really work well together.

There were two homemade soups the night we were there: Southwestern chicken and curried pumpkin bisque.

The colorful Southwestern soup was a generous-sized bowl chock full of finely diced chicken, veggies and beans with classic Southwestern seasonings. It was not too spicy, even a bit bland. We added a little salt, which helped, but it really needed some hearty chicken stock.

The bisque seemed promising on the first spoonful, but soon the curry and the overuse of pumpkin spices overpowered any taste of pumpkin. And it had a murky brown look rather than the appetizing bronze color you'd expect from pumpkin.

Julian's steaks are offered with or without their "house rub." The beef tenderloin filet, also known as filet mignon ($25) is available with or without "reserve marinade."

We asked Allison about the marinade, and she brought out a sample. It tasted like sweetened soy sauce with Worcestershire, we thought. We like our beef plain anyway, so we ordered the unmarinated filet.

It was a fine quality piece of meat, tender and lean, cooked beautifully. But somehow, the marinade we didn't want was there. Miscommunication somewhere.

A side of mashed potatoes was pretty average, except for big floppy stalks of rosemary sticking out (I've never seen floppy rosemary, have you?). Rounds of zucchini were enjoyable, except for the ones swimming in the reserve marinade.

Allison told us potato-encrusted salmon ($17) had a nice grated-potato coating. And again, she told us the chef prefers to cook it medium-rare. We were fine with that.

Too bad some of the edges of the potato crust were a little burned. It was set atop a huge pile of grayish mashed potatoes. Zucchini was nice. Saffron cream sauce mentioned in the menu somehow disappeared into the excessive amount of food on the plate.

Roasted stuffed pork tenderloin ($16) was just OK. The pork was cooked right, still tender and moist. The portobello and bacon stuffing was good, too. But like the lamb appetizer, it was sliced too thinly, the stuffing falling all over the place and the meat lacking visual appeal.

It came with linguini with roasted garlic sauce, according to the menu. If the garlic had been roasted properly, it would not have been bitter tasting as ours was — more like someone took a shortcut and shook granulated garlic on the pasta.

We were so excited to see paella ($26) on the menu, a traditional Spanish dish of saffron-infused rice combined with a variety of meats and shellfish. There's not a restaurant in the north country that offers paella and does it right.

Unfortunately, there still isn't.

Despite being loaded with a generous amount of seafood (clams, shrimp, scallops, squid and lobster) along with chorizo, it was a flop as far as flavor went. Where was the vibrant yellow-colored saffron rice that's such an important part of paella? There was some white rice in the bottom of the bowl swimming in a muddy brown, watery-tasting broth. That was it. Sorry, this was a big disappointment.

Desserts are made in-house and average a little under $5 each.

The fruit in the fruit tart was nice, but the crust was a disaster. It was too doughy, quite undercooked beneath the fruit. Homemade vanilla bean ice cream was enjoyable, but surprisingly light on the cream flavor.

Chocolate mousse was a nice presentation, piped into a tall martini glass. The chocolate, however, was a little bitter, almost like they used unsweetened chocolate. Crème brulée was OK, once you smashed your way through the burned (way past caramelized) sugar topping with the back of your spoon.

Our service team was friendly and attentive, but could still use a little more polish. Entrées arrived before the table was cleared. We all seemed to run short on one utensil or another throughout the night. "Shadow" pulled the "food auction" bit — having to ask who ordered what dish — the cardinal sin of service, in my book.

There's a nice selection of wine by the bottle and the glass. We enjoyed two of their house pours from Mondavi, a Cabernet and a Pinot Noir, fairly priced at $5 a glass.

There's a fine line between everyday dining and fine dining. Julian's is on the right track but not quite there yet.

Too many of the dishes just had too much "stuff" in them, too many flavors that didn't work together. Classic dishes (the paella, the crème brulée) were simply not prepared properly. The menu read great on the page; it lost something in translation by the time it hit the plate.

Dinner for four, excluding wine, came to $151 before tip. The restaurant serves dinner only, 4 to 10 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday.

TIDBITS

My apologies to the Schulz family, founders of Shulz's Fastidious Foods in Croghan. Norm Shulz's daughter called from Indiana to let us know that their family name was spelled incorrectly in the review of the restaurant two weeks ago.

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

Julian's

38 Market St.

Potsdam, NY

274-9300

Menu on Facebook: http://tiny.cc/TudxB

A new restaurant in downtown Potsdam serving "creative American cuisine" in a comfortable family setting.

HOURS: 4 to 10 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday

APPETIZER PICK: Sesame-encrusted tofu served with seaweed salad and soy-ginger vinaigrette

ENTRÉE PICK: Beef tenderloin filet

DESSERT PICK: Homemade ice cream

Rating: 3 and one-half forks