City Restaurant Week: Ameritage

By GARY SOULSMAN

It's fun to grab hold of the big knife and fork door handles of Ameritage Bistro and wander inside.

It led me to wonder what might be ahead during dinner: big taste, big ambience or big feeling of making a mistake?

For me, none of the above. I left a bit soothed and relaxed by the setting and service, somewhat happy with my dinner choices and confused by the blending of flavors in some dishes.

My first impression is that it was great to see such a prominent Orange Street space being used and to note that there was a friendly vibe to the downstairs bistro Tuesday night.

As you swing open the burgundy doors, you enter an airy and open market, where, if memory serves, the bar of the Brandywine Brewing Co. once stood. Now there's a market with pastries, cheese, olives and more.

Upstairs is an amazingly large dining room. It was softly lit and quiet in the early evening hours when we were there, the walls showing a devotion to the Art Nouveau paintings of Gustav Klimt. With other diners, I could imagine relaxing in the room. But we didn't want to have it all to ourselves. So we settled downstairs, though we also feared that the wood floors would make for a loud time as the crowd began to built.

We were happy to note that neither the noise nor the jazzy background music were annoying. As to the food, here's our scorecard:

- Small dishes of olives cured in olive oil and rosemary. (Great idea, taste fell flat.)

- Dinner roll (Fresh with good flavor. Even better if it had been warmed.) Olive oil for bread (Light and lovely.)

- Warm frisee salad (This frizzy chicory was a revelation with poached egg, diced potatoes and the Italian cured meat, known as pancetta, all topped with a Dijon red vinaigrette. Yum!)

- Bistro salad (The baby greens, orange segments, cinnamon-toasted hazelnuts, shaved prosciutto with citrus-white balsamic vinaigrette. It sounded so good we wanted to really like it, but decided we liked the dressing more with the bread than the salad. Go figure.)

- Steak frites (The grilled flat-iron steak was cooked perfectly and would have been best served hot, rather than a bit cold. But what was the chef thinking with those white truffle Parmesan fries? Do those flavors go together? Double yuk. Left'em all.)

- Chilean sea bass with citrus-shaved fennel and a red onion salad with black-truffle vinaigrette. (A dish that was both hot and cold with flavors that kind of confused us.)

- Bailey's creme brulee (Yes, yes and triple yes. Better than a version we had the night before in the Green Room.)

- Lemon white chocolate macademia nut sundae. (Once again too many competing flavors. The lemon square at the bottom was a nice sweet surprise. But what looked to be white chocolate macademia ice cream was surprisingly dull and disappointing.)

Since I had ordered the sundae, I has happy to find dried apricots and actual macademia nuts with the check. Nice touch.

Overall, given the vibe, attentive service and the pluses on our food scorecard, I would go back - and make a point of avoiding dishes that sounded excessively exotic.

Contact Gary Soulsman at 324-2893 or gsoulsman@delawareonline.com.