Lydia Shire is Scampo's secret ingredient
Lydia Shire needs a doppelganger. Or a Mini-Me. Or even a hologram. The Locke-Ober chef opened Scampo in the Liberty Hotel in April, just months after opening Blue Sky in York Beach, Maine. Two new restaurants, one on top of the other - how's she supposed to be everywhere at once? It's like having twins. You can pay attention to one, but what's the other doing while your head is turned?
When Shire is in the house, Scampo comes alive. She makes the rounds, a familiar figure with a pouf of mahogany hair, a black chef's coat, and a smile. There's plenty of kissing. Posses of people who look like former Italian film stars meet and greet and laugh and drink. The hair in the restaurant is fantastic - beehives, bleached blond helmets sprayed into place, and many shocks of white against tanned skin.
The place looks swell: brick walls, dangling copper-colored bubble lamps and real copper accents, curved white leather booths in the corner that positively demand bottle service. Behind the shiny orange, U-shaped bar, skilled hands mix strong and perfectly balanced Negronis and excellent Italian mojitos, which are made with prosecco. (Oddly, there's only one prosecco on the wine list, but seven French sparklers. The list in general is surprisingly unItalian for an Italian restaurant.) In the center of it all are pizza and tandoor ovens from which swell-smelling pies and breads issue with regularity.
And when Shire is in the house, the food tastes pretty swell, too. The fancifully named elephant ear walking, a bread almost as thin as a poppadum, arches like a bridge and is topped with tomato and melted cheese. It's like two great snack foods, chips and pizza, merged into one. A classic tomato, mozzarella, and basil pizza is a doughier, chewier creature. It doesn't live up to the best wood-fired pies in town but is still delicious.
Spaghetti dishes arrive at the table hot and al dente. They continue to cook in their sauce, though, so al dente is soon all done. There are seven versions, all available gluten-free, from Bolognese to "e Scampo." This does come with more than one (tiny) shrimp, never fear; in addition to being the singular form of "scampi," the restaurant's name means "escape" in Italian - lest we forget the Liberty Hotel used to be a jail, difficult to do when sitting beneath a giant poster that says "Crime doesn't pay." The classic aglio e olio reminds us of the virtues of simplicity. The garlic, oil, and hot pepper flakes coat each strand of pasta, no one flavor outweighing the other. Thinking about it, I'm craving it again.
A section of the menu is devoted to a fairly firm house-made bufala mozzarella. It's a lovely combination with peaches and pesto made with pistachios. For a creamier take, try the burrata served on little toasts with tomato and anchovies. The flavors are bolder, offsetting the rich cheese.
Lobster ravioli can be boring, but here they're served in a Southeast Asian-inflected sauce, perfumed with coriander and lime leaf. If the handmade pasta were silkier, this dish would be even better. A more classic presentation is the brick chicken, which the server explains in so much detail, it's a good thing the brick the chicken was cooked under is not at hand. He then explains why the swordfish is pink (it's so fresh!), what kurobuta pork is, what wagyu beef is, how the baby lamb is prepared, and how to use a fork.
OK, just kidding about the last one. But the epidemic of menu over-explanation sweeping the nation's restaurants must be stopped! If guests look befuddled - which we did not, or at least no more than usual - a simple "Do you have any questions about the menu?" would be more to the point. (It also would be nice if entrees were delivered to the right diners and we didn't lose our waiter to the wiles of a tableful of blondes for a large chunk of time.)
At any rate, the chicken's good, if not exciting. Split and pressed flat, all juicy meat and crispy skin, it sits by itself on the plate - a little salad would make the bird look less forlorn. (The dish also shows up, served with mashed potatoes, at Blue Sky, a restaurant that aims for Maine in the same way Scampo does for Italy.) That kurobuta pork chop is good, too, charred on the outside and rosy on the inside, served with a green onion tart. And the baby lamb is truly fantastic (and should be, for $43). Roasted whole al forno, it's a Saturday-night special - Friday nights a suckling pig gets the same treatment. On the plate is a piece of meat from each part of the lamb - some bites chewier, some bites stronger in flavor - plus tiny, sweet spring vegetables.
For dessert, a round of ricotta cheesecake is creamy and light, served with so-so mango sorbet and berries; lemon ice is tart and refreshing.
But when it's not Saturday, when there's no baby lamb, when it's, say, Wednesday and emptier and Shire's nowhere to be seen, Scampo's food can plummet from very good to mediocre. The house-made mozzarella isn't quite as fresh. A plate of the cheese with prosciutto and figs offers exactly 1 1/2 mozzarella slices, a small crime when the dish is filed under "house-made mozzarella." Artichokes are ruinously over-fried and served with hummus, a strange flavor combination that might come off better if salt were in the mix.
Pappardelle with beet butter, poppy seeds, and crisped short rib is an attractive concept, not least because it brings back memories of the perfect beet chitarra with short rib and candied ginger that Shire cohort Susan Regis served at Pava in Newton. (Regis was opening chef at Blue Sky; Mario Capone from Locke-Ober is now executive chef at Scampo. Shire finds talent and keeps it close.) But this beet pasta lacks magic. The bright pink pappardelle are undercooked in spots, and there aren't enough poppy seeds to make their presence known. The short rib is fine. But without a counterpoint - ginger, lemon - to lift it, the dish is bland.
Pizza with mushroom duxelles and homemade ricotta is on the greasy side. The ricotta has the texture of sour cream, and the duxelles - a savory mixture of chopped mushrooms - has good flavor but an oddly dusty texture, the kind of black, gets-stuck-in-your-teeth substance that could ruin a first date. And several otherwise tasty pasta dishes are marred by the giant pools of butter in which they float. The bread, however, is still very good, particularly the ciccio, stuffed with robiola, ricotta, and fontina.
So which restaurant is the real restaurant? Both. You can take your chances; for Scampo at its best, it might be worth it. Or you can wait for Shire to get a Mini-Me.
Devra First can be reached at dfirst@globe.com.
