July 29-August 4, 2004

food

Day into Night

INNER BEAUTY: Fitzwater Cafe shines with its seafood, like salmon stuffed with crabmeat, served with rapini and roasted potatoes. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

Saloon's little sister takes its pared-down menu right into the evening.

by Elisa Ludwig

With its tasteful, muted decor and unclothed tables, Fitzwater Cafe looks like a place you'd eat breakfast or lunch. There are no cozy corner tables, no cushy little banquettes that make you want to curl up and overeat in the protective shelter of mood lighting. It has something closer to an Au Bon Pain effect: Light streams in from a wall of windows, reflecting off glass bakery cases filled with salads and pastries and awakening your cravings for coffee and freshly squeezed juice. Indeed, Fitzwater Cafe has built a solid reputation for its daytime offerings. It's surprising to learn, then, that this little eatery also serves a rather respectable dinner.

Fitzwater Cafe shares its ownership as well as a complimentary parking lot with Saloon, the venerable, big-shot hangout across the street, and it seems like you can get the best of both worlds here. The homemade pastas and pastries come from the same kitchen, but instead of Saloon's $145 Chianti you can bring a $10 bottle named for a leaf or a creek. (In fact, on one visit we were offered complimentary glasses of sangria.)

Service is friendly, if a bit uneven. We were brought our sweet roasted peppers and peppery olive oil right away, but the appetizers were not coordinated coming out of the kitchen. (Our server put one dish on the table and was told by another server to take it back and wait until the others were ready.) A warm salad of white beans was prettily arranged with grilled shrimp and heat-wilted radicchio, but the beans, being by nature bland, needed more pep. The tuna carpaccio was also a disappointment. The dish was beautifully presented — pink fish fanning out beneath curls of shaved fennel and caper beads — but the tuna did not taste fresh and a disproportionate amount of lemon juice made the whole thing bitter. A better bet was the arugula salad that came with plumped raisins, poached pears and shaved Parmesan cheese — an unusual but alluring combination of flavors.

The entrees were far more consistent. Flaunting its strengths, Fitzwater Cafe places a heavy emphasis on seafood. A combination of impossibly fluffy homemade gnocchi and big, bold ravioli stuffed with shrimp and crabmeat was a pairing of pasta genius. Also remarkable was the squid ink linguini tangled with shrimp, calamari, mussels, littleneck clams and half-dollar-size scallops. The garlic and white wine sauce was rich and velvety and the seafood was cooked to perfect tenderness. Whole orata (aka sea bream) came grilled and was filleted tableside and served with fresh herbs. The fish, mild and flaky, might be overwhelmed by the accompanying tomato-olive sauce were it not served separately. This way, with a little dipping as you go, it's a complementary match.

Fitzwater's long list of specials usually includes at least two fish entrees, and we tried one, salmon stuffed with crabmeat. Nary a bread crumb could be found in the stuffing — just generous chunks of lump meat. Garlicky rapini and roasted potatoes rounded out the plate nicely. When we ventured out of the surf and onto the turf we were less enthralled. Chicken sauteed with shitake mushrooms and topped with melted provolone sounded benign, and it was to a fault. The meat and mushrooms were tasteless and the white wine demi-glace was gummy.

There were more bumps in service as we wound down, but it was easy to forgive, particularly when the server listed from memory an endless number of desserts, each more tempting than the last. In keeping with the sunny morning vibe, the coffee was excellent. We didn't try any of the tempting miniature tarts and cakes in the display case but the man-size coconut cake was moist and sweet, with giant shredded flakes embedded in the icing, and a standard cheesecake had a perfect, smooth finish. We also sampled the warm chocolate souffle with a molten center, which came topped with vanilla gelato. Molten chocolate desserts abound these days, but this one was lighter and milder, lacking the bittersweet overload that makes such concoctions difficult to consume in large quantities. We had no problem polishing it off.

Sure, Fitzwater Cafe is stripped down, a little casual, but it is also very affordable. For those of us who didn't have the good sense to buy Microsoft stock back in the day, this is our kind of pleasure, our own little dividend, if you will. You get all the trappings of the boys' club — quality food, a pleasant atmosphere, free parking — without the deals and stinky cigars. And thankfully, the seafood ravioli doesn't know the difference.

FITZWATER CAFE

728 S. Seventh St., 215-629-0428

Mon.-Fri., 7 a.m.-2 p.m. and 5-9:30 p.m.; Sat. and Sun., 8 a.m.-2 p.m.

Appetizers, $5-$11; entrees, $12-$23

BYOB. Wheelchair accessible. Smoking is not permitted. Reservations not accepted. Cash only.