Now in its thirteenth year, Natasha’s remains the best-lamped restaurant in Portland. On one wall, wide lampshades cling like beetles; in the front window, colored glass dangles like spiders. Everything looks good under them — the room, the brick, the soft chairs, the crushed-glass tabletops, the food, your company. For those who prefer natural light, Natasha’s offers one of Portland’s nicest and most expansive patios.
The more important question is if the cuisine illuminates. In thirteen years any restaurant is going to have its ups and downs, especially as chefs come and go. While the menu has always shown the influence of owner Natasha Durham, different head chefs have run the kitchen to different effect over the years. There seemed to be a general consensus that 2005 was not a great year for Natasha’s. Ideas had gotten a bit stale and execution seemed to be inconsistent.
This year a new chef seems to have set things right. Most recently of Havana’s in Bar Harbor, Jesse Souza has the talent and experience to reclaim Natasha’s old strengths even as he takes the menu in new directions. His years working with Thai chefs in California will help him build upon what has always been Natasha’s most prominent strength: the integration of Asian influences into European fine dining. His experience with Latin American cuisine at Havana’s and several restaurants in the Miami area promises to add some new influences to Natasha’s cuisine — though the menu we tried July 4th conveyed them mostly through the prevalence of grilled meats. Souza even has experience cooking food for spectacular lighting, as he cooked at the Paragon restaurant in Berkeley, whose patio offers a wonderful view of the sun setting behind the Golden Gate Bridge. My sister and I used to go there for drinks and snacks at sundown whenever we could.
While at Paragon the food deferred to the view and the restaurant’s style, at Natasha’s Souza is producing dishes that will not take second billing even to the loveliest décor. Among the appetizers, the crab and lemongrass shumai seemed more like a carefully wrapped package than a thrown together dumpling. Sweet chopped shrimp was topped with minced lemongrass and packed into just enough wonton to hold it together. The “grilled” in grilled scallops really meant something — they were a lovely brown on top with some crunchy streaks of black — but they were still tender and not a bit overdone. The thin asparagus was prepared just as simply and just as well. Both were served over a simple and lovely risotto.
A salad of watercress and spinach was the best salad I have had this summer. Chunks of moist strawberry and bing cherry, along with slices of apple, played off the slight bitter of the greens. Impossibly soft balls of chevre lurked about, but best of all was the crunch added by the sautéed pistachios.
The Cambodian Hot Bowl, an old Natasha’s standby among the entrees, is back in a new incarnation. It was the fish sauce that came on the side that made this dish, helping create a broth that was deliciously tangy, limey, and spicy. Bathing in it were crispy rice cakes, silky tofu, sour herbs, and crunchy cabbage and radish. A paella, served in a huge bowl brimming with rice and seafood, had much less broth. Mussels line one edge while scallops, shrimp, and clams occupy the middle. You could taste the briny ocean with each bite, but I think my favorite bits were the salty, chewy pieces of chorizo that spotted the dish.
