Javier Conditioning

Style often supercedes substance at a new Haddonfield BYO.

by Elisa Ludwig

Michael T. Regan OUTSIDE THE LINES: The bistro fare at South Jersey's Javier is often solid, but flaws in execution hold back some dishes. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Some restaurants are decorated to attract hamburger eaters. Others look like a $29 rack of lamb.

Javier, a BYO in Haddonfield, N.J., graduated from the rack-of-lamb school. Robert Sanabria, who founded Food for Thought in Marlton and later opened Word of Mouth in nearby Collingswood, opened his latest last winter in an 85-seat dining room on the commercial district of Kings Highway.

The restaurant's decorator has compensated for the cavernous space by plushing it up with exorbitantly spongy upholstered chairs, coffee-and-cream walls, tiny tabletop oil lamps and amber glass chandeliers shaped like branches of leaves. The foyer is decked out like a McMansion parlor, complete with sofa, coffee table and breakfront with china. In this hall of soft bourgeois serenity, there is no such thing as a grilled-cheese craving.

The menu, printed in a challenging-to-read script font, obliges with upscale European and American fare. But there are a few cultural digressions, like the Southwest-inspired crab stack, a round tower of bready crab cakes layered with a darkened avocado mousse and sprinkled with slightly gummy corn salsa. It's tasty enough, though it's not doing Southwest cuisine any favors.

There's also an Asian ahi tuna appetizer, in which medium-rare slices of fish are crusted with black sesame seeds and fanned out on wonton cups over squiggly green seaweed. On their own, the pliant, chewy and crumbly textures make for an unwieldy-to-eat combination, and the glaze on the fish is too scant to distinguish it from the other mild-tasting components. Flavor comes on the side in the form of two cucumber slices topped with crème fraîche and a dollop of sriracha sauce, which improves the experience considerably.

Much of the cuisine here, though, is the crowd-pleasing contempo-food that's ruled American bistros for decades. Clichéd though it may be, goat cheese salad with beets has some unique attributes: a large round of pistachio-crusted chevre (so generous that, in some grocery stores, it might amount to an entire cheese), caramelized onions, grape tomatoes and an odd but not unwelcome sprinkling of soft white cannellini beans. Beneath it all is a layer of thinly sliced, candy-sweet roasted beet medallions that, by the time you get to them, are a pleasant surprise, like finding unexpected change in your pocket.

And is there some pretense in calling squid "rondelles"? A bit; the golden rings drizzled with honey and reduced balsamic, are simply very good, very light fried calamari.

All the while, the service here is mostly amiable and skilled, if a bit nervous. Like the décor, the presentation is carefully crafted, the dishes on gigantic white plates, bewigged with microgreens and painted with bottle-squeezed configurations of sauce. Plates are ceremoniously anointed with freshly ground pepper. Water comes with separate wedges of lemon. Bread, studded with olives, is refreshed.

For some inexplicable reason, a goodly number of entrées come over risotto: mushroom, coconut and artichoke varieties on a fish special, a seafood risotto entrée special.

Given this excess of Arborio, one assumes that it's is a kitchen specialty, and indeed, the chili risotto is the best thing about the pan-seared tilapia. On its own, the fish is brown and slightly dry, slathered with a bland mushroom ragoüt. A golden Kadota fig sauce drizzled with balsamic reduction would make a nice counterpoint, if only it were not inches away from the fish on the opposite side of the plate. But the ruddy al dente rice is creamy, sweetly tangy and speckled with just enough hot-pepper heat.

Watch-band-wide pappardelle are cooked expertly and the lumps of lobster meat are likewise tender and sweet. But the sauce is a thin, oily puddle on the bottom of the bowl.

The aforementioned New Zealand rack of lamb — two racks, actually — is oven-roasted, super tender, perfectly seasoned, and the white bean-dotted wild mushroom ragu and red wine reduction beneath are appropriately hearty accompaniments. But the advertised "white truffle essence" is far from essential; it's a few shades short of being a vague perfume.

Duck confit ravioli, fresh pasta stuffed with salty shreds of meat and tossed with grape tomatoes, are luxurious little pockets of fatty goodness. But you are advised to skip the proffered grated asiago, which is too coarse to melt and too sharp to do any good.

There are, to paraphrase Pee Wee Herman, too many big buts here.

I'm not sure what's going on with the ill-conceived praline basket, a delicate candied bowl stuffed with a heavy mascarpone mousse that's too cheesy for either the praline or the blueberry compote on the plate. Mascarpone is put to better use in a fluffy, luxuriantly creamy tiramisu with a thick, moist, chocolately underlayer.

Delizia, round puff pastry scented with frangipane and embedded with glazed apples soaking up melting vanilla ice cream, arrives to the table picture-perfect, but upon closer inspection, the apples are slightly undercooked. Looks, it turns out, aren't everything.

(e_ludwig@citypaper.net)

Javier

208 Kings Highway, Haddonfield, N.J., 856-428-4220, javiercontinental.com

Hours: Tue.-Sat., 11:30 a.m-2:30 p.m. and 5-9:30 p.m.; Sun., 11:30 a.m-2:30 p.m. and 5-8 p.m.

Appetizers, $10-$12; Entrées, $20-$30

BYOB