Thursday, September 20, 2007
Blue 5 hits the right notes
Larry Bly
Larry Bly has plenty on his plate these days. He's got two TV shows on Cox Cable Roanoke. Click ahead for details and showtimes.
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At Blue 5 Restaurant, the food's right on, but it's the other details
that are still coming together.
I know it takes a while and they're getting
there. Even more important, they're working very hard to please. I've been
to this restaurant nearly a dozen times and not once has owner/manager,
Kerry Hurley, or other staff members failed to come around to ask if
everything was OK, or even better, to stop and chat. They're really trying
and it's working.
This is the location of the former Noketown, next to the former Angler's, across the street from City Hall. This building served as the first offices and retail space for
a new business that would be become Grand Piano and Furniture Co., way
back when. The building has fallen on good times and bad, and now good
again. The upper floors are soon to become fashionable apartments. It's
good to see the old building come back to life.
The first time I was seated upstairs on the mezzanine level. While I loved
looking down on the bustling kitchen below, I found it dreadfully dark and
impossible to read the menu (I'm old); and the sound level was deafening.
The second time I was seated on the stage area toward the front of the
house. When my lovely assistant, Kim, ordered a glass of wine, we were
informed that wine could not be served in that area. We'd have to move down
to the lower tables for that. Say what? How stupid could our ABC laws get?
We were 15 feet from the bar, but maybe it's a house rule: "No drinking
on stage." I have no idea.
But these are small problems that the staff tried hard to overcome.
For starts, the chef is French, one of the few plying his trade in these
parts since Eugene Fesquet, many years ago. Chef Richard Henri Todeschini
has created a menu of great selections, handsomely presented on the plate,
and lots of great sauces to make them come alive. This man takes the most
mundane items, sandwiches, soups and other entrees, and gives them a
distinctive turn. I recently enjoyed "The Italian" sandwich, but it's
served cut on the diagonal and is intended to be eaten with knife and fork. The balsamic glaze and olive oil make it impossible to do otherwise, but it
adds a defining touch. One man's "chicken and dumplins" becomes this
man's "chicken & biscuit soup." I've had it twice. I like it that much.
As with many new restaurants, a few things have already been crossed off
the menu. The "Blue Cheese Potato Cake," I'm told, was great when prepared to
order, but didn't withstand the rigors of pre-prep and re-heat. They wisely
decided to take it off the menu, though I begged them not to.
Still offered is the "Swiss cheese Macaroni Pie" (mac & cheese anywhere else, but
better) and behold, it's actually served by the slice, sort of like a poor
man's quiche. It's a great side dish, others being celery root cole slaw
(interesting), homemade Cajun fries, and sweet potato fries (love 'em).
Lunch is kept at a reasonable $7-9 with most falling somewhere in
between. The chef has done an admirable job of making lunch interesting.
Try the yummy lump crabmeat quesadilla with melted gooey cheese and a side
of guacamole -- or the catfish sandwich, done to perfection (crunchy on the
outside and flaky on the inside) served on French bread, topped with
fried onions and remoulade sauce). It had a slightly crunchy
cornmeal texture that I loved.
There's Carolina BBQ on biscuits, a ham &
brie entree with Bechamel sauce, grilled salmon with on a Kaiser bu with a
homemade aioli sauce.
The kitchen gives everything a slight twist, often
using an unlikely sauce or side combo. A friend recently tried the seafood
fettucini, the perfect serving-size for lunch; and at $10 maybe just the
best lunch item of them all: served with shrimp, scallops, mussels and
tomato in a basil & garlic and olive oil white wine sauce. I had to order
up some extra bread (quite excellent breadsticks with butter) to "assist" my
friend in sopping up all that lovely juice.
Everyone's trying to mix it up these days, so restaurants are no longer
calling themselves by traditional names.
Now you have to ask what it means.
In this case, they refer to themselves as "casually elegant," which pretty
much means that you can enjoy "fine dining" without having to cash that
long-term CD at the bank -- and you can dress very casually.
The Blue 5 is all about the blues, music-wise that is. It's manager, Kerry
Hurley's first love, next to eating. Kerry was active in this
year's Blues Festival downtown and the restaurant started off as being
a hangout for many of the musicians who jammed into the wee hours. Live
music is offered Friday nights (jazz nights) and Saturday nights (blues
night).
For those who can't tell one from the other, go either night. The
room is pretty lively and they're working on toning it down. Oddly, those
beautiful original hardwood floors and high ceilings tend to magnify the
ambient noise. Even lunch can be a shouting match for conversation.
Dinner is served Wednesday through Saturday nights, with reservations
suggested. Choose appetizers of blue crab, oysters (baked), mussels
Poulette, Southern roll (stuffed with collard greens, shrimp, tasso ham and
peach chutney), tuna tartar, Thai beef, bake brie, smoked salmon, and
Fingers of the Chicken, to name a few. Soups are always offered, the same as
with lunch. Salads include chopped, Caesar, tomato and mozzarella, spinach,
fennel and orange and iceberg lettuce with blue cheese.
You can get sandwiches and burgers for dinner, or heavier entrees: ribs,
filet with claws, steak au poivre, Cornish nen, stuffed chicken, fried
chicken with collard greens and macaroni pie (loved this one), shrimp and
grits (I've tried this -- the grits are creamy and delicious and the shrimp
plump and tender), ginger sesame tuna, roasted monkfish (bacon wrapped in a
red wine sauce -- it's another winner), grilled salmon and fat sea scallops.
Entrees are in the reasonable range, anywhere from $14 on up to a
seafood/filet combo at $28. If you've been living in a cave (even those
Geico guys go out to bars now) you might not know that these are excellent
dinner prices.
With a French chef at the helm, you'd surely expect desserts to really
shine, and you'd be correct in that assumption. Enjoy a crème Brule, a
raspberry tiramisu, an apple bread pudding with butterscotch sauce,
cheesecake, chocolate cake with Mocha Sabayon, a "Blue 5 Banana split" (just
what you'd think, but with a "twist," which I won't disclose), and a Key
lime square.
Blue 5 seems to have caught on with the lunch crowd. My last few times
there found the place packed and people even lunching at the bar. There is
full bar service, though not on the stage of course. Dinners are building,
though it's a destination in the evenings at the corner of second and Kirk.
BLUE 5 RESTAURANT
312 2nd St.
Roanoke
Lunch: 11:30am -2:30pm Monday-Friday
Dinner: 5:30pm - 10pm Wednesday-Saturday
blue5restaurant.com
