Pan Handled

Sauté's food is cool and gimmick-free.

by Trey Popp

Jessica Kourkounis YOU'VE GOT QUAIL: Sauté chef/co-owner Nicholas Cassidy creates some inspired main courses, like quail perched atop Swiss chard with brandied cherries.

Sometimes, the best thing about being a food critic is precisely what we ruin for everybody else: the pleasure of going to a restaurant not knowing what to expect. Nothing's been vetted. Celebrity has yet to saddle the chef. It's like walking into a movie knowing only the title. Triumph or flop, at least the plot hasn't been spoiled by the previews.

Sauté, a Front Street BYOB that opened in February, may not have a name that would lure me to the multiplex, but it gave me a double dose of that feeling.

The first time it was because I broke my cardinal rule. Usually, I won't go to a place until it's been open at least a month. Longer, if I'm reviewing it. I turned up at Sauté on Day Three.

According to Genesis, God took longer than that to create fish and fowl — much less a decent way to cook them. And that was at His pace. Would chef Nicholas Cassidy be up to the challenge? Stuck by the Delaware at dinnertime, I threw caution to the wind and decided to find out.

The opening pair of appetizers suggested that caution would have done better in a windbreaker. Hamachi ceviche should have played to Cassidy's strengths — he used to cook at Alma de Cuba. But despite the intriguing mix of jalapeños, pears, walnuts and pink lemonade, the revved-up sugar content of the latter rendered the dish one-dimensional. Same went for the butternut squash ravioli accompanying some tender escargot, which was unnaturally sweet.

My date and I despaired. Our candlelit table next to the dark, timeworn cupboards of a vintage bar back couldn't have been more romantic. But if sugar was going to serve as a culinary crutch, the entrées we'd chosen did not bode well.

Then the mains completely shattered our expectations. Sea scallops rode atop a barley "cassoulet" that was actually much lighter than the name suggested. Its nutty profile got a mouth-puckering lift from braised red cabbage and smoked cherries that were more tart than sweet, perfect for the buttery scallops. Meanwhile, a plate of meaty short ribs over celery root purée bore an inspired tuft of truffled pea shoots. Using those wispy, featherweight greens as the vehicle for truffle oil set up a beguiling contrast of airy texture and earthy flavor. Little white grapes added understated bursts of tangy sweetness — an inventive and balanced complement to what was otherwise a deeply savory creation.

Dessert was a chocolate torte of outsourced manufacture, decorated with thick chocolate tracings that had congealed into floppy tubes. Yet we left looking forward to coming back. Service had been friendly, the atmosphere relaxed and those main courses were knockouts.

Opening inconsistency, that old hobgoblin of brand-new restaurants, was not surprising — but many of the ideas in Cassidy's cooking were. Some of his entrées had sounded chaotic and even outlandish — striped bass with gratin potatoes, lardons, peanut and plum emulsion, mushrooms and mustard greens? — but now I wondered if he was the rare chef who could throw those kinds of knuckleballs for strikeouts.

So six weeks later we returned, expectations again uncertain — especially when we discovered that a new menu was in its first night.

What a difference a month and a half can make. The first test was a shrimp starter served over shaved fennel slathered in orange-oregano marmalade. Last time around, marmalade would have set off an alarm bell, but this time it was properly restrained, letting the classic citrus-fennel combo play second fiddle to shrimp that growled with grill smoke. Fried sweetbreads were a little plain, but came with an exquisite yet down-home medley of white beans, chorizo and meaty hedgehog mushrooms dressed with just enough veal jus to give it depth, and just enough tomato vinaigrette to zing your taste buds to attention.

The entrées ranged even more widely over the flavor spectrum. Bronzino came over a creamy artichoke-fontina purée, topped with a broccoli rabe whose bitterness made no apologies. Four quail halves perched on a mound of baby Swiss chard, surrounded by an eggplant purée that got some chewy heft from wild rice and the right admixture of sweetness from several brandied cherries.

Dessert — now made in-house — featured an unusually light but delicious chocolate and peanut butter bread pudding. A pistachio-spiked chocolate mousse was oversweet, but that flaw is easier to stomach at a meal's end than its outset.

Cassidy's cooking is creative but not self-conscious or gimmicky. Anticipating a menu that changes every couple of weeks — and summer produce on the way — I look forward to tucking into more of his ideas. This may be the year of the blockbuster steak house, but Sauté is a reminder that nothing has the power to surpass expectations quite like a modest BYOB.

(t_popp@citypaper.net)

Sauté | 775 S. Front St., 215-271-9300 | Hours: Mon.-Thu., 4:30-10 p.m.; Fri., 4:30-11 p.m.; Sat., 10:30 a.m.-2 p.m., 4:30-11 p.m.; Sun., 10:30 a.m.-2 p.m., 4:30-9 p.m. | Appetizers, $7-$12; Entrées, $16.50-$28 | BYOB