Arcodoro & Pomodoro is really little more than a Sardinian set of Siamese twins that provides elegant fine dining and casual but lustful meat-picking with pizza under one valet awning. Yet this genetic aberration's dual personalities are as striking as they are similar. Everything on the menu is available in each incarnation, except pizza is offered only in the more casual Arcodoro.
Stephen P. Karlisch
Door No. 1 or Door No. 2? The menu's pretty much the same--good--at either Arcodoro or Pomodoro.
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(214) 871-1924. Open daily 5:30 p.m.-11 p.m. $$-$$$
Mozzarella Pomodoro: $10.50
Portobello mushroom/polenta/Gorgonzola: $9.50
Carpaccio with foie gras: $15.50
Ceviche: $14.50
Lamb ravioli: $18.50
Medallions of veal with wild mushrooms: $19.50
Risotto, squid ink, prawns: $18.50
Linguini su barchile: $17.50
Tiramisu: $8.50
Italian custard: $8.50
2708 Routh Street
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Sardinian selections on the menu in both spots are called out in blood red, and there aren't many of them, a fact that suggests a tight kinship among Italian cuisine. In fact, it's hard to tell by looking at the Sardinian creations how they differ from Northern Italian grub, but there is a difference. The restaurant's promotional material says Sardinian food, spawned and nurtured on the mountainous island of Sardinia off Italy's west coast, is the "cooking of farmers, shepherds and fishermen: a simple rustic cuisine bursting with flavor and texture." What they forgot to include in this sensorial roster is aroma, the kind that strikes you in the nose like a set of postgame hockey pads.
When a pair of Sardinian entrées was dropped off at our table, we were hit with a cloud of sea stench so stern, we thought it would send our digestive plumbing into rapid rewind. It's fascinating to consider that the aromatic differences between Roquefort cheese and a set of aged sweaty gym socks are negligible. Yet one makes you retch while the other can make your mouth water.
The funny thing about these Sardinian entrées was how the stink fog cleared when we lowered our noses to the plates; all we could detect was a clean sea-spray after-scent. The risotto al Nero con gamberi alla griglia looked like a globule of spilled crude oil that had trapped a pair of shrimp. A mound of risotto, stained blue-black from squid ink, served as a pedestal for a pair of grilled shrimp and a sprig of dill. The shrimp were as succulent and meaty as they come and literally sweated flavor. The smooth risotto flaunted a frail tackiness and delicate briny flavors that make this merging of grain and marine life such a compelling bond. No stink here.
Maybe that stink came from the linguini su barchile, an outrageously simple bowl of linguini sautéed with clams, skinless tomatoes and garlic. Only on our visit, the clams were substituted with mussels that ringed the pasta at the bowl's edge in a tight vertical formation mimicking a disciplined unit of Roman legionnaires. The mussels were tiny plump bulbs redolent with flavor, and the pasta strands had just the right amount of give on the dentures. But the subtle treatment that set this dish apart was a dusting of grated bottarga, the dried roe of gray mullet. This illusive but potent brown soot settled on the pasta and the edge of the bowl, lending the dish a briny piquancy that picked up where the mussels left off.
The differences between these twins show most strikingly in the architecture. Located in the spot that was Baby Routh before it was Cedar Street (a dumpy watering hole with a nice patio and a swell circular driveway for see-and-be-seen valet rituals), Arcodoro & Pomodoro is roughly the same merging of the more formal Pomodoro and the casual pizzeria/bar Arcodoro that existed at its old location on Cedar Springs, albeit with a little less demarcation. Arcodoro is a piazza replica with red clay tiles on the sloping roof over the bar, a wood-burning pizza oven in the back, street lamp sconces and a ceiling upholstered in bamboo poles hovering over a spectacular chandelier that seems to replicate olive branches or the foliage of some other agricultural commodity. Sometimes through the ear-rending din of beautiful-people prattle, you can even make out a note or two of the arias bellowing through the sound system.
The Pomodoro side of this restaurant is a bit more placid. The huge colorful fresco-like mural on canvas was ripped from the old location and transplanted here among the Fourtuny lamps that hang overhead. Just outside the entrance to the formal dining room is a pair of private dining rooms: a four-seat "chef's table" situated in a wine cellar; and the "Cork Room," a little cove with wine racks and a ceiling covered in tiles made of cork, one of Sardinia's top agricultural exports.
Between the two dining rooms is a glass case stocked with distinctively blown bottles of grappa, that fiery swill distilled from fermented grape pomace that was given cache in the '80s when some wise merchant decided to bottle it in artful bottles and ply it to yuppies.
Overall, the new digs fling a bit more romance and verve than did the old. And the food tastes better, too, although this might be a psychosomatic phenomenon.
What isn't a figment of the imagination is the service. It's tight, efficient, nurturing, and the waiters know the menu, even if an accent here and there makes ingredients such as "a splash of citrus" sound like you're getting a dish seasoned with French car parts.
