Firing Blanks

A lack of focus is holding Avril back.

by Trey Popp

Mark Stehle ORANGE YOU GLAD?: Avril chef Christian Gatti's lamb with curried carrot mousse sees him at his creative best.

[ review ]

Some chefs like to come out of the kitchen to chat up their tables. Some chefs fall into foul tempers behind the scenes. But until I ate at Avril, a new BYOB in Bala Cynwyd, I'd never seen a chef use the former activity to confess to the latter.

It was an apology of sorts, but a telling one. During an otherwise genial conversation over one good dessert and two superb ones, Christian Gatti gave a rueful laugh when one of my companions voiced our disappointment over the disappearance of the very menu item that had drawn us all the way to Bala Cynwyd to begin with. Socca, a peppery chickpea-flour-and-olive-oil pancake that's the iconic street food of Nice but is found almost nowhere else in France, was the one thing Avril promised that I've yet to find among Philadelphia's mounting crop of French restaurants. I make my own in a cast-iron skillet, but still pine for the texture of the stuff old-time vendors scoop out of giant copper pie tins. Avril's Web site advertised socca dressed up with sausage, grilled radicchio and sautéed spinach. The only question in my mind was whether a foursome could get by on a double order.

But our first discovery was that Avril's online menu was out of date. (More than a week later, it still was.) We turned our crestfallen faces to our server in an obvious plea for a special order, but to no avail. He merely added that the crab crêpes had also been 86'd. (Plus the molten chocolate cake, on this not-terribly-busy weeknight.)

"I wish I'd known," Gatti told us an hour or so later. "I would have made some socca for you. But no one wanted to bother me because I was in a bad mood."

Mark Stehle (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Gatti didn't say what had soured his temperament, but after the somewhat maddening experience of dinner at Avril, I can think of several things that might have done the trick. The broad, high-ceilinged space is attractive, with soothing almond-colored walls and a huge window framing Bala's main street. But our first sight upon sitting down was a pair of smudged-up wine glasses and another so dirty we had to exchange it for a replacement that was, as its wielder-to-be declared, "merely gross." Fingerprints marked some of our entrée plates. Meanwhile, our server alternated between absence and cluelessness, neglecting to replace used silverware or open the second bottle of wine perched next to our empty stemware. Weren't there supposed to be sea scallops in the "shrimp and scallop" appetizer, I asked? "They went out of season, so we had to leave them off," he answered. (Unless the National Marine Fisheries Service has it wrong, the commercial fishery for sea scallops is conducted year-round.)

And there was another problem. The socca wasn't the only thing missing from Avril. The restaurant's site also promised a menu "featuring the foods of Nice, Marseilles and the Italian border ringed by the Ligurian Sea," with a particular focus on seafood and "upscale savory pastries." The fact that Gatti's partner (and wife) is April Lisante, a former food editor at the Daily News, made this sound especially promising — what's not to like about the slice of the Mediterranean responsible for the likes of bouillabaisse, daube stews and pissaladiere? But none of these regional touchstones were in the offing at Avril. Meanwhile, the only fresh fish on offer was salmon: either baked in a puff pastry, after the Russian fashion, or — in a heresy that might have prompted beheading in Jacobin times — in place of tuna on a Nicoise salad.

I pondered these mystifications over seared foie gras framed by cherry and banana sauces. The latter fruit is about as far from the Ligurian littoral as you can get, but it lent a wonderfully mellow undertone to the sweet cherry top note. Slightly undercooked liver dented our enjoyment of the $15 appetizer, but I liked the inventive saucing. Unfortunately, undercooking emerged here as a recurring theme. Two entrées featured Brussels sprouts that were practically raw, the potatoes ringing a rich coq au vin were underdone and two of the four roasted beet slices flanking a boudin blanc sausage appetizer hadn't been roasted enough.

When not hampered by lapses in execution, though, Gatti's cooking is full of fresh ideas. His curried carrot mousse, whose cloudlike consistency found playful counterpoint in a crust of walnuts and whole-grain farro, was a show-stealing revelation next to a simple grilled rack of lamb. The deep meatiness of his very tender wine-braised brisket got a welcome lift from more of that cherry sauce. Sometimes, though, ideas overcrowded the plate, as with the deep-fried ball of fennel-scented risotto whose aroma was dominated by a misplaced tuft of dill alongside three seared shrimp and a pea purée.

Dessert was the most successful course, and the one that came closest to fulfilling Avril's stated creed. A crème brülée touched ever so lightly with lavender whispered of Provence's purple meadows. The sweetness of an almond torte reminded me of climbing the ant-lined limbs of a tree in Italy to pick figs so ripe their sides split open as my body shook the branches.

Avril has a lot of things to fix. The kitchen needs better detergent. The servers need better answers. The undercooking must be resolved. Gatti and Lisante need to address the discord between the rather specific expectations they've created and the food they're actually serving. If they can regroup, Gatti has the potential to win loyal customers to this pleasant downtown space. In the meantime, diners should bring their own glassware and leave their expectations at the door.

(t_popp@citypaper.net)

Avril | 134 Bala Ave., Bala Cynwyd, 610-667-2626, avrilbyob.com. Open for lunch Tue.-Fri., 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m.; open for dinner Tue.-Sat., 5-10 p.m.; Sunday brunch served 10 a.m.-2 p.m.; "Sunday Feast" served 5-10 p.m. Soups and salads, $6-$7; appetizers, $8-$12; entrées, $18-$28; pastas, $16-$21; desserts, $7-$9. BYOB. Wheelchair accessible.