Dining Review: Amadeus relies on good food, not gimmicks

Downtown's Amadeus restaurant isn't trying to be trendy. Its social media presence is less than pronounced; its menu includes only a handful of buzzwords (two points for “harissa,” one point for "slider"). Amadeus cheekily refers to itself as a “fork to mouth” restaurant: a play on “farm to table” or “nose to tail” dining, as if to say, "We need no gimmick here."

Instead, Amadeus is the kind of restaurant where water glasses are always full, where servers know to let you dine, where you can find the perfect Caesar salad or polenta or any of the dishes that are so unfashionable and yet so unabashedly excellent when taken seriously. You may encounter the mother-daughter ownership team, Diana Ramallo and Alena Stewart, or maybe Stewart's son will deliver your food.

The menu is themeless and large — it fits on one page, but just barely — and most items range from the outwardly simple (macaroni and cheese, risotto) to the surprisingly adventurous (mousse is not often a word I see used to describe a sandwich condiment). Drinks are serious; they’d be half the size at most restaurants of this caliber, and nowhere near as strong.

I would venture to say Amadeus is every food lover’s favorite secret, unassuming on Liberty, where you can always find a table and a relaxing meal.

Of the assortment of happy hour cocktails, I'm most impressed by the simple Scratch Margarita. Margaritas, when kept miles from a blender or bizarre syrups, are at their mid-week finest with little more than lime and tequila. The power of fresh-squeezed juices is not lost on many bartenders here, but not many choose to keep drinks savory or tangy (or really anything but sweet). So far, Amadeus does well.

That being said, saccharine sippers will find bliss among the signature cocktails, from the Marionberry lemon drop to the 50/50 made with equal parts lillet blanc (a fortified wine) and Hendrick's gin. The latter is supremely smooth drinking, but beware, regardless of its sweetness, a 50/50 is still a martini, and the Amadeus portion is more like two.

The Namastea is the grown-up child of a margarita and a Long Island iced tea, with triple sec, vodka, rum, lemon-lime and amareno cherry syrup. It sounds like it'd be unbearably sweet, but instead, it's tart, easy drinking.

Once upon a time, the hot menu item was beef and polenta: brisket or beef shoulder specifically, slow cooked and plopped on a pile of polenta. It was everywhere: seasoned with orange juice and guajillo, rubbed with African spices and grilled, or braised with red wine and trumpet mushrooms. For a while, it was boring, the way hummus is now, the way poke will be in, I don’t know, three years? Maybe I miss it, now that it’s evaporated from Culinaria. But for some reason, Amadeus’s polenta and tea-smoked brisket, tossed in ancho-chili cream sauce with balsamic reduction is so good, it’s the kind of dish I crave after long days. My dining companion wished she'd left some for leftovers.

This phenomenon occurs throughout the Amadeus menu, with dishes like a plain old Caesar salad, an inside joke among real food lovers who quietly shame the spice-abhorring normies who order $20 Caesars at restaurants. The Amadeus Caesar is $4.50 and exceptional, with croutons, curls of shaved parmesan, garlicky housemade dressing and nothing else; no one grilled the romaine, there's no confusing fried egg tossed with the croutons, no one decided to put fish sauce in the dressing (though, let's be real, I bet that'd be delicious). It's just a Caesar salad, and sometimes, that's all I want.

Light eaters should come during happy hour for small snacks and manageable portions of menu hits: the famous bacon and shrimp risotto, for instance. However, the harissa chicken skewers, in a sweet marinade of the North African chili paste, are cooked to perfection, with a whisper of caraway and cumin. The chicken remains juicy, and I find myself often staring at chicken breasts at home wondering, "Can I re-create that dish myself?" So far, the answer is no.

Not all dishes are rave worthy, however: A Korean short rib is a bit muddled, without the pronounced sweetness or fruit of most Korean short ribs. Macaroni and cheese with bacon, while comforting on a classically rainy April evening, tastes no better than my bechamel version.

http://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/life/2017/04/14/dining-review-amadeus-bar-salem-oregon/100328556/