Chef Chris Atamian comes with an impressive culinary resume
Porcini
168 Bay Ave., Highlands
(732) 291-3080
restaurantporcini.com
PRIME PLATE: The filet mignon is a sight to behold and does not need the accompaniment of a grand sauce to please.
You may never be able to catalog, for an outsider, all the specific traits that make up a Jersey girl. But you most certainly will find specimens aplenty in Monmouth County. Is this the Jersey girl nerve center? Or does the Shore bring out the Jersey girl in everyone?
Alexandria Mahon is a bit of a Jersey girl - audacious enough to be co-owner of a restaurant when she still looks young enough to be in high school. Dine at Porcini and you'll likely see her at the door, smiling, gracious, genuine.
Customers, too, are often Jersey girls. One, who is perhaps as old as your grandmother, may knowingly recommend the risotto as the best in the world -- or, at the very least, as the best in her world.
The chef here is Chris Atamian, Mahon's fiance (they will be married in June). Atamian has worked at Restaurant Nicholas, but as far as Porcini is concerned, here's what you really need to know: Atamian is a Joe Romanowski protege.
Every hungry person in Monmouth County loved Romanowski, he was that chef, a guy with high standards, a chef who believed in classic dishes served with the best of ingredients but with no fuss. He was a chef who championed hard work and real food on the table. A dinner by Romanowski at Bay Avenue Trattoria made you glad you were alive.
Bay Avenue Trattoria was shuttered by Hurricane Sandy and Romanowski died of cancer in 2013. Yet, you can witness Romanowski's legacy at Porcini, where Atamian is smart enough to keep the menu to a limited number of distinct, welcoming favorites, a few salads, a few appetizers, some pasta dishes, scallops, chicken and steak. Sauces and accompaniments are familiar -- Marsala, lemon-caper, mushroom-sherry.
The restaurant itself is tiny, crisp but unpretentious. Like it or not, you will participate in your neighbor's dinner conversation. Maybe that's the point.
At Bay Avenue Trattoria, Romanowski managed to take classic recipes, fresh ingredients and make them sing. Atamian has not yet found that level, but the fundamentals are there.
Those homemade potato chips atop the potato-leek soup were a welcome bit of texture; the soup was hearty and mild, if a bit starchy. A mushroom tart with goat cheese was equally mild.
Pastas are homemade and the chef is generous enough with the seafood in the linguini fra diavolo -- scallops, clams and shrimp. The spicy sauce, thankfully, did not overwhelm, yet it held too long to one note.
The filet mignon was a spectacular cut of meat, so much so that we mentioned it to our neighboring table, so much so that it didn't need its smothering of sauce. The dish was served, classically, with haricots verts.
Desserts, a bread pudding and a homemade gelato, were fine enough. Order espresso, because the coffee is tepid and meek. At Porcini, the basics are solid, the potential is there and the ambition of chef Atamian is obvious. Yet we couldn't help thinking the food would benefit from some Down the Shore sass.