Trunk Show

Sycamore is good enough to lure you to the 'burbs.

by Trey Popp

[ review ]

Mark Stehle COME ON 'DOWNE: BYOB cocktails are a draw at Sycamore, as are dishes like chef Meg Votta's scallop and pork belly entrée.

The first time I ever tried to spend an evening in Lansdowne made a powerful case for being the last. Lured out to the suburb by a visiting friend, my wife and I drove around the area for 20 fruitless minutes before finding a place to hang out. What we settled on was a little brightly lit for my tastes, but at least it was clean and open at night. It was a Laundromat. 

At the time it seemed Lansdowne was destined to stay this way. The borough is dry, so nobody was going to open a taproom. Even the "downtown" crossroads by the SEPTA station, where the R3 stops, seemed sleepy at an hour closer to dinner than bedtime. (To tell the truth, even that Laundromat might have been in the next 'burb over.) Great place for a home with a big yard — but a lousy bet for a meal or a drink.

Yet against the odds, both of those things changed in late June with the opening of Sycamore, a cozy, cocktail-centric BYO on Lansdowne Avenue between SEPTA and Baltimore Pike. It's the brainchild of borough councilman Stephen Wagner and chef Meg Votta, a veteran caterer who was executive chef at Simon Pearce and Montgomeryville's Joseph Ambler Inn before coming back home to Lansdowne for this project.

The 32-seat restaurant was decorated by Wagner's wife, Jennifer, who has kept things simple and autumnal with deep brown walls, a ton of candles and the neatest incandescent light bulbs you've ever seen — they even drew praise from a dining companion who's in the lighting business — which hang bare beneath a pressed-tin ceiling dressed with muted gold paint. Almost half the chairs in the room belong to a 14-foot-long wooden community table that Wagner built himself, underscoring Sycamore's neighborly aims.

So I scheduled a second visit to Lansdowne on what turned out to be the first September evening that felt like the beginning of fall.

Votta's cooking is too varied to pigeonhole, but a splendid charcuterie and cheese plate revealed a chef who's closely tuned to the season — and one for whom shopping is a strong suit. Chilled slices of duck breast were dusted with just enough Chinese five spice to impart a sneaky, savory warmth, but the scent lay over the rose-colored meat ever so delicately — less a heavy cloak than a lace negligee. The converse held true for the intensely smoky slices of smoked pork loin Votta buys from Rieker's German butchery in Fox Chase, which were a revelation in tenderness and bold complexity. Votta says she wants to start smoking and curing her own, but it's hard to imagine topping her current source.

Other standouts on that platter were a wedge of Valdeón — a woodsy Spanish blue cheese wrapped in sycamore leaves — that got a bright counterpoint from a pile of drunken raisins; and a scattering of roasted Brussels sprouts that served as a pleasant reminder of the fall harvest's charms.

It's a doubly good thing that Votta nails the charcuterie, because Sycamore does its BYO cocktails more than well enough to make the restaurant a strong drink-and-nibbles option for locals who want something less than a full dinner. Drinks come to the table in shakers big enough for two cocktails once you've added your booze. I was skeptical how well this would work until my first sip of a pear nectar, lime and rum concoction passed over a martini glass rim coated with salt, cayenne and cinnamon. But the drink was surprisingly well-balanced, and played perfectly off the aromatic rim. The same went for a simpler gin gimlet, which got a restrained but very effective olfactory lift from a stem of cilantro whose leaves poked over top of the ice. (Herbally inclined tipplers will find some other interesting choices, too, like a Tom Collins spiked with rosemary, and the Herb Garden, which marries basil and lemon.)

Dinner itself was a little uneven. All but one of my foursome's entrées were dogged by memories of superior appetizers. Next to Votta's almost creamily tender lump crab cake, which she plates with a vivid brandy crema (and also offers as a main), her halibut over corn and green beans was too much like a weeknight dinner at home. But at least that entrée was colorful. All that accompanied her flatiron steak was a thick stripe of mashed potatoes squeezed from a pastry tube, which gave the dish the profile of something you'd see at a political fundraiser, only with three pats of flavored butter on a side plate. And a cherry-red crown of house-brined piquillo peppers, tasty as they were, still left a plate of salty white chicken breast and bland white grits looking like a manifesto against vegetables. 

Yet Votta's hits outshone her misses. The phyllo crust of her pancetta, goat cheese and caramelized onion tart was masterfully thin and crispy. At the end of a disappointing tomato season, she somehow managed to find some of the tastiest heirlooms I've had, and was smart enough to keep her very good pesto off them and on cubes of ricotta salata instead. And her scallop entrée showed that she knows how to craft main dishes that are every bit as full-flavored as the gingered mushroom phyllo pastry that started things off as an amuse bouche (itself a rare touch for a BYO). A tart dice of green apples topped the sweet scallops, a crisp-roasted slice of pork belly presided over the opposite side of the plate, and between those decadent poles was the perfect antidote to both: slightly bitter braised bok choy studded with mushroom caps.

Sycamore hit the right notes at dessert, too, especially with a wonderful warm chocolate cake — and the chocolate truffles that appeared with the check as an after-dinner grace note. Though our meal unfolded at a notably slow pace, the service was long on warmth, too. That, along with much else about Sycamore, should be a boon to Lansdowne as the sociability of summer gives way to shortening days. It has made their downtown a far better place to drop in on — even it if means that I'm likelier to collect clothing stains than remove them the third time I come.

(t_popp@citypaper.net)

Sycamore | 14 S. Lansdowne Ave., Lansdowne, 484-461-2867, sycamorebyob.com. Dinner served Wed.-Sun., 6-10 p.m.; Sunday brunch served 10 a.m.-2 p.m.; closed Mon.-Tue. Starters, $4-$19; small plates, $6-$11; entrées, $16-$28; desserts, $7. BYOB. Wheelchair accessible.