Fine dining on the Cape
Restaurant 902 Main
South Yarmouth, Cape Cod
Dining in the city gets more and more casual. Fine-dining icon Jasper White opens lobster shacks; French chef Jacky Robert goes from Maison Robert to his laid-back bistros; and even the new chef of the Four Seasons’ Aujourd’hui, William Kovel, promises a less ‘‘special occasion’’ experience than his predecessor.
So Restaurant 902 Main is kind of a time trip. Surrounded by pancake houses, miniature golf courses, and taffy stores on congested Route 28, the little restaurant doesn’t look imposing from the outside. You wouldn’t be surprised to find a pizza joint, the former tenant, still inside. Instead, the hostess, one of several in black cocktail dresses and pearls, greets us, soothingly promising our table in minutes.
On an August Saturday in high season, the dining room is filled with a sedately dressed crowd — no cutoffs or Bermuda shorts and quite a few sports jackets. Four women crowd the tiny bar at the front, eating dinner and chatting. Oriental carpets line the polished floors; flowers are everywhere; hurricane lamps flicker; linens cover the tables. A young couple hold hands as they talk to their waiter.
By the time we’ve been seated and are opening our menus, we’re feeling pampered. The wine list offers enough flexibility to match our mixed meat and seafood needs. The waitstaff is attentive and smoothly efficient, and there are sweet touches such as ginger ale served in a tall flute to give a little fizz to the nondrinker among us. As we sip the first offering, a tiny shot glass of chilled cantaloupe soup shot with champagne, I ponder why these days you find the fine-dining manners that once marked the customs of the city now on the touristy side of the Cape.
Gilbert Pepin, who owns the restaurant with his wife, Kolleen, says in a phone interview that they have always worked in fine dining and knew that’s what they wanted. He had been a private chef for some time, after working at the Regatta at Cotuit, one of the area’s other formal places, so when they decided to open in April 2003, they had definite ideas about what they wanted their first restaurant to look like. The current trend in china — oversized white plates, often with bowl-like shapes — wasn’t for them. They haunted the Sandwich Auction House, buying up Limoges and other antique table settings. Sometimes, he says, a dish may require a plain plate, but they love to use the delicate, floral patterns as often as possible, especially for desserts.
The tableware fits the ambience, borne out in the first appetizer we try, a layered vegetable terrine. Thin layers of eggplant, tomato, zucchini, and yellow squash are wrapped in a red pepper shell. The flavors subtly register on the tongue, garden-fresh and light. Pepin obviously embraces the creed of using local products — he says that he goes to the Hyannis Farmers’ Market each Wednesday and that someone from four nearby farms stops by regularly with produce.
In fact, the most appealing of the summer appetizers are variations on salads, each one bountifully filled with vegetables. A warm duck confit salad has plenty of moist, slightly salty, shredded duck. But what we all search for as we share are chunks of beets in multiple colors, green beans the thickness of knitting needles, and other salad goodies. Another dish features a sizable slab of Great Hill blue cheese, pillows of greens, and cherry tomatoes from CapeAbilities farm. At this very beginning of the tomato season, these oversized cherries explode in the mouth, promising bigger treats later on.
Before the entrees arrive, we pause for an intermezzo of champagne granita. If you recall that the amuse-bouche was also tinged with bubbly, you’ll realize that this offering seems deja vu. Although most of the other niceties of fine dining are welcome, this seems unnecessary, especially when the flavors are so similar. Besides, Pepin avoids one of the common missteps of dining out: that chefs often squander their talents on appetizers and deliver pallid main courses.
Instead Pepin’s entrees are finely crafted, with the quality of the meats and seafood bolstered by well-made sauces and accompaniments. Grilled swordfish gets a topping of yellow zucchini and basil oil, a side of arugula, and an underpinning of a rich, buttery risotto. The fish has a perfect texture, moist and melting on the tongue, and the kind of flavor that is possible only when it’s super fresh.
A mixed grill of beef tenderloin, loin lamb chop, and veal is deliciously sauced with a port wine sauce. Grilled yellow beans add to the presentation. They also give color and a hint of smokiness to pretty little Australian loin lamb chops, the best I’ve eaten in a long time.
The showstopper is a lazy lobster and scallop dish, one that Pepin says he can’t take off his often-changing menu. With a 1-1/4-pound lobster out of the shell, beautifully seared scallops, and risotto laced with truffle oil and oyster mushrooms, there’s no doubt after a bite or two that this is over-the-top rich. But so delectable. Luckily, baby spinach and some snow peas cut through the sweetness of the shellfish and creaminess of the risotto.
There’s an old-fashioned feel to the desserts and not quite enough variety. Pepin plays creme brulee as a classic, and it’s a beautifully made version with just the right, very thin crackly topping and a hint of liqueur in the custard. A chocolate trilogy of mousse, chocolate chunk ice cream, and a dense cake solves the chocoholic urge. I’m left wishing for something crunchy and some better coffee.
Still, I can’t help but smile as Kolleen Pepin and her hostesses tell us goodbye. The civility of fine dining lives on in the most unexpected places.