Cocktails are great. Let not this steadfast truth go unsaid. And great cocktails, well, they make the angels sing, the stars align, and make Michelle Bachman’s sanctimonious ice-clenched vagina tumble into a lake of fire. Beaker and Flask is a place to partake of such powerful and heavenly imbibements.
On my first visit, I arrived during one of the peaks of service, about 7:30. The focus on the bar scene is evident—the bar stands tall, and runs perhaps 40 feet in length in a sweeping arc across the main dining room. A flurry of activity may be seen through the kitchen pass-through—the sole window of white light in an otherwise appropriately darkened hive.
This is a place where flirtation is orchestrated with a cheerful, if not suggestive, nudge. The low light places emphasis on what your partner is saying, less so on appearance. The smells travel from plates of food, and awaken the senses. The muffled din behind the bar; glasses clinking in a steady hand, ice violently crashing inside a tumbler, liquids sloshing precisely into a veritable galaxy of funky and interesting glasses. Yes, the bar men know what they are doing.
I found both the Two Dollar Pistol and the New Vieux forgivably on the sweet side—the recipes are interesting enough to overlook the extra sugar. I was really fond of the Devil in a Boot, an shadowy doppleganger to the Rusty Nail maybe. Maybe not. Whatever, cocktails are great. The bar is great. Leave it go.
Now then, I had awfully high hopes for the food. I mean I just about expired all over myself to read that crispy pig ears were the very first item on the menu, followed by pretzels, deviled eggs…my culinary chubby had begun.
Pig ears were righteous—crisp, not burnt, pleasantly chewy in the center. Bit of that ‘stick to your fillings’ kinda thing. Especially nicely washed down with some brown liquor. The smoked trout deviled eggs delivered as well. Not dripping in mayo, served chilled. Very nice.
Moving to the right side of the menu is where we encounter some difficulty. Let me rephrase—the food portion of the menu really breaks the crap out of the carefully orchestrated and pleasant spell that the cocktails and snacks have cast upon the happy diner up until this point.
Not to say there aren’t some good things. In fact, most of the items themselves on the menu were at one point, quite remarkable. It’s a hallmark of too many modern chefs to try and show off, when they should simply cook. Or, to put it another way, too many chefs are sticking their perverted little fingers too greedily in the ass of something beautiful. There’s a right way to finger-bang, and there is a very wrong way.
I’m not sure what the desired effect of smoked sweetbread is to impart upon the palette, but it didn’t come through in the batch I had. I couldn’t really taste any smokiness at all. Nor could I taste any seasoning. When you consider the amount of prep that goes into this fussy little gland, it’s hard to conceive they forgot to season them. But they sure did. Indeed, there were claims of a ‘corn bisque’ for the sweetbreads to sit upon. There was no corn bisque. There was, however, a semi-solidified up-chuck of mild yellow spackle. There were also a small handful of cremated fennel ashes, some nicely blistered cherry tomatoes (the savior, riding bravely to the rescue of this twelve dollar disaster). The saddest item of all is the syrupy drizzle of what must have been balsamic reduction thrown with wanton abandon about the plate by Jackson Pollock. Although offal continues to rise in popularity, few know how to do it right.
Onto the quail. I believe that I have never had a saltier dish. Perhaps the salt lick that I tasted at the petting zoo when I was three. Yes, that’s a bit saltier. Again, at one point this quail was lovely. Maybe domestic. Or local even. It could have been from a farm 12 miles outside of Portland. The quail is served with what is, ostensibly, a ‘salad.’ Not a salad in the culinary sense, but in the artistic sense; as in Dadaism—revealing the randomness of modern society. Just a jumble of nouns thrown together thoughtlessly and apparently while the salad maker was under great duress. Perhaps even at gunpoint. A yard sale of dressing-drowned arugula, fennel, and strawberries. And a big glob of dun-colored pesto beside it. I tried combining the different items to unlock the secret that the chef was trying to reveal to me. Perhaps he really was at gunpoint this very minute, trying to send a cry for help through this haphazard pile of food. Try as I might, it still just tasted like over-dressed aruglua, fennel, strawberries, lower-intestinal pesto, and lightly-quailed salt.
I pressed on to the pork cheeks. Oh, yes, more off-cuts fall victim to the zeitgeist of the modern chef. I can almost see her or him standing before the product, boning knife clenched in tattooed hand, quizzically staring, guessing, hoping. And here's the tragedy-- the pork cheeks are very good. What’s unfortunate is that they are quite hopelessly buried inside a cacophony of mediocre accompaniments. Braised-to-death peppers and onions, the braising liquid from which is wholly subsumed by what might at one point have been a nice chunk of artisan bread but which has been rendered cadaverous by the braising liquid being applied to early. What comes to rest on the plate before the diner is a puffy, pulchritudinous, foot-shaped slab of quivering glop. On top of which is a drapery of sad, El Greco, peppers and onions, punctuated by three mildy sour but otherwise un-redeeming calamari tentacles. It’s a mass grave with two nicely prepared pork cheeks hidden within.
I must say I gave in. I could not return for another visit. Nor did the slightly-muted-surliness of the sulking bartenders tug at my heartstrings. They might be excellent mixologists or whatever the kids are calling them, but if you’re doing food at the bar, you need to check in once in a while. Or you could just cull the menu way back and just do snacks and drinks. I might go back for just that, but not for dinner.
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