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This
Weeks Food Review
The Dining Guide
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Timeless Excellence By B. A. Nilsson
Photo by Leif Zurmuhlen Our first notice of Café Capriccio was the second restaurant review to appear in Metroland, back in 1986. We visited again in 1990, after we’d switched to the current policy of unannounced visits, and found again that the food and service were exemplary. I’ve visited many times since then and have grown friendly with Jim Rua, the restaurant’s founder and original chef, and I’ve even got to the point of helming or helping out with cooking classes in the upstairs kitchen he also oversees. It’s been quite a while since I’ve done so, however, long ago enough that I don’t feel a conflict of interest when it comes to reviewing the restaurant again. And so my wife and I slipped into the place a couple of Fridays ago as if it were just another civilian visit. We put a lot of anticipation into this dinner, sending our daughter to a sitter for the evening (actually, she got to play with her midwife—how many OBs allow that kind of closeness and continuity?), looking forward to a real-live date. What with having the last four of our 18 years together so child-filled, it’s easy to lose track of one another, and so I sat at the bar, awaiting Susan, recollecting our early years together, trying not to notice that time was passing and she wasn’t yet there. I fell into easy banter with the bartender, and then headwaiter Billy Karabin stopped by to swap hellos. Calling Billy a headwaiter is like calling Bjoerling a crooner. Billy is a factotum, an artist whose canvas is the dining-room floor. “He’s been working with me since he was in high school,” says Rua, “and that was many years ago. He’s the guy they come to see. The governor, judges, the man on the street, they all ask for Billy.” I enjoyed a dry sherry. I looked out the window. I watched entrée plates go by. I fell into an unprecedented sense of ease. By the time Susan arrived, a half-hour late, I was too mellow to take umbrage. And who cares? There were reasons; it happened. The house accommodated us. She looked lovely. We glided to our table. What’s important to note is that service here is and always has been absolutely first-rate. You are attended; you’re fussed over when necessary, you’re left alone when that makes sense. It’s as if a collective sixth sense informs the crew, although it’s really a combo of hard work and the right attitude. Not to mention a spirit of cooperation. I didn’t think anyone noticed when Susan left for a quick bathroom trip after she’d been working on her entrée, but Billy was there in an instant to place a cover over her plate. Much of our excellent service came from Mike Folsom, who has been a fixture at the place for many years and is effortless in his attention. He can describe any entrée in mouthwatering terms, and he makes you feel as if you’re a singular genius for ordering whatever it was you ordered. In our case, I started with an appetizer order of risotto with pheasant sausage and wild mushrooms ($8), beautifully prepared by Rua’s son, Franco; the proportions were perfect and the seasoning classically Mediterranean. Having risotto as a regular item is the inspiration of chef Dominick Colose, who has headed the kitchen for just over year, and who manages to preserve the spirit of the café and maintain the favorite menu items while easing in his own personality. His sous-chef, Jennifer Hewes, “brings a lot of French knowledge to the kitchen,” he says. Among many other culinary enterprises, Colose ran the wonderful, woefully short-lived restaurant Theresa’s, in Glenville, before moving to the café. Susan’s starter was a salad of grilled artichokes with tasty soprassata slices, served with roasted peppers on a bed of lively greens ($8). It’s one of those deft combos of bitter, sweet and pungent that is so characteristic of Mediterranean cuisine. I had the fish of the day, an excellent slice of grilled Chilean sea bass served over a dollop of rich tomato sauce, accompanied by buttery mashed potatoes sweetened with roasted garlic ($21). Susan’s meal was a Capriccio classic: eggplant and grilled chicken breast in layers, with roasted peppers and four cheeses (smoked mozzarella, fontina, gorgonzola and pecorino romano), also served with a dollop of the tomato sauce in which it’s finished ($18). Her plate sported a wedge of good polenta, and both were adorned with crisp asparagus. Because we’d seen the dessert tray hovering nearby earlier, we had leftovers wrapped and settled in for a sweet finish. Along with two cups of decaf cappuccino, we chose from the homemade pastries a slice of a spiced apple cake and a very good hunk of pecan-bourbon pie. Although Jim Rua has a much-reduced presence in the kitchen, he’s often to be found working private parties upstairs, and he’s very much involved in the day-to-day running of the establishment. “I’ve got a presence here,” he says, “but I let these guys be in charge of their own spoons.” Yes, I’m favorably prejudiced toward this place, but it’s an esteem the place earned early on and has maintained over the past 15 years of my not-frequent-enough visits. It’s easy to take this restaurant for granted. Don’t. Dinner for two, with tax and tip, desserts and a couple of glasses of wine, was $98.
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Jim Rua ($15 [paper], 169 pp.)
This book is a small astonishment. To read it is to settle in at a table at the best sort of neighborhood place, where you are made to feel at home and fed even better. You are happy, having already devoured a bowl of pasta dressed with the house sauce, a wickedly rich, devilishly intensive concoction of garlic, more garlic, dry white wine, and cream, and are picking at the remains of a platter of braised lamb shanks and sipping the last of your glass of wine. Could anything be better?
Yes. It's the end of a quiet evening, and the impresario of the place himself comes over to ask you how things are. Before you know it, he has joined you for a glass. You find him thoughtful, observant, culinarily knowledgeable, and vastly entertaining--and your small corner table suddenly has the vantage of a ringside seat.
I once thought of asking some favorite restaurant critics to conjure up the perfect local eatery--clam shack, diner, sandwich shop, neighborhood taverna--and it is easier to conceive of Jim Rua's Cafe Capriccio as a fictional creation than as one actually located on Grand Street in Albany, New York. It, he, all seem too good to be true. Yet his self-published culinary memoir, Cafe Capriccio, persuades you that the place is indeed quite real. The recipes have the patina of frequent use, and the text that surrounds, explains, abets them has the rhythm of much-returned-to thoughts:
After fifteen years' experience preparing fish soups, from bouillabaisse to zarzuela de mariscos, I know that these preparations consist of two basic components: the stock, or broth, and the fish which is poached in it. The secret to preparing a praiseworthy fish stew is to select fresh fish, make a good stock, and calculate the cooking time of the various fish so that each is cooked enough and none is overcooked. That's it.
Some of the recipes here may be familiar--pasta puttanesca, risotto with forest mushrooms, ossobuco di vitello (others, like the braised lamb shanks and the pork tenderloin with clams and tomatoes, may not be)--but his take on each dish is such that it gets you to think about it freshly, sometimes to notice that it is worth thinking about at all. Just as importantly, he uses these dishes to show how inseparable is the culinary development of a restaurant and its owner...for his is a tale not only about recipes but of cooks and customers, of intertwining tastes and talents, and, most of all, of the accretion of small details that somehow make everything work.
These details lead to pauses in the story: interjections on how the Capriccio treats garlic, tomatoes, pasta cooking; brief accounts of meals eaten elsewhere; and--a constant thread--that sense of craft that can make a good restaurant meal better than the equivalent made at home. This is where the attention to detail pays off: the right equipment, the choreographed assistance, the instant availability of
a little brown sauce, a splash of marsala, a sprig of rosemary to accompany the planned-for sage, a bit more chopped garlic needed now before the hot oil fulfills its function, some bacon fat, a tablespoon of pesto as a finishing touch.
Jim Rua is a genial, self-confident, curious, occasionally humble guy who relishes good food, good cooking, and good friends in equal portion. His "tale of feasts, fables, foibles, and felicities" delivers stylishly on all three counts.
[Autographed copies are available from the author c/o Cafe Capriccio, 49 Grand St., Albany NY 12207: $15.00 + $1.50 shipping; NY residents add applicable tax.]
Text © 1993 John Thorne
BEST OF CAPITAL REGION, 2001
BEST
OF
The Capital Region 2001
FOOD & DRINK
Best Italian (Gourmet)
Café
Capriccio
49 Grand
St., Albany
An old friend, an old favorite. In the best restaurants, a personality shines through: Here, it spreads from the kitchen to the floor staff, as entertaining a crew as you’ll ever meet, serving imaginative food dressed in hearty Mediterranean spices. July, 2001
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Café
Capriccio
