Cafe Vicino, Boise
Chris Butler / cbutler@idahostatesman.com Scallop on mashed sweet potato with cilantro pesto.
I don’t pretend to make a subtle statement when I choose lunch at Cafe Vicino over Guy Fieri’s “Kulinary” road show, scheduled for later the same day. I love T-shirt firing bazookas and Metallica blasting over fat speakers as much as the next guy, but Food Network’s Fieri and his cooking-show-on-steroids ain’t my cup of tea (or tequila shooter). In fact, I’m peeved Food Network, and it’s cable brethren have so effectively eclipsed the quiet, contemplative side of cooking with a nearly 24/7 culinary carnival.
Cafe Vicino is a refuge from all that bombast, peroxide and choreographed competitiveness. The walls here are a soft white, austere; the furniture dark, comforting; the room full of hushed conversation, piano jazz. A woman sits alone at one table, reading a hardback as she leisurely spoons tomato basil soup ($4/cup, $6.50/bowl) to her lips. At a lesser place, she might feel uncomfortable, rushed. After all, it’s busy. Instead, she’s a picture of serenity.
I like the tomato basil soup myself, a puree made pink with a splash of cream. But today I order a house salad ($6.50). It’s another example of Cafe Vicino’s gift for making the understated delicious. The chopped romaine, the creamy olive- and caper-studded dressing, the sprinkle of feta – no-way it would win an Iron Chef competition, yet it hits the tongue like a minor revelation. (In my Food Network universe, balance trumps bombast every time.)
The tomato-based broth of the cioppino ($14/lunch, $23/dinner) tastes like summer. Its warm, burnished flavor is spiked by shards of just-tender fennel, pleasingly chewy rounds of squid, clams and fresh sole accompanied by a shatteringly crunchy garlic crouton. There’s a finishing swirl of butter in there that pushes the dish from mere soup to something special.
I’ve had several other satisfying dishes for lunch here. The white bean and prosciutto soup ($4/cup, $6.50/bowl) and a sandwich of balsamic marinated portobello mushroom topped with roasted red pepper and pesto aioli ($8.25) were both worth lingering over. In addition, the lunch menu has several other sandwich options, and both the lunch and dinner menus offer pastas including cannelloni, fettuccine and ravioli.
Cafe Vicino (“vicino” means “neighbor” in Italian) sits across that packed parking lot from the Boise Co-op and has become, over its nearly three years, a North End institution. Run by long-time Boise chef/restaurateurs Richard Langston and Steve Rhodes, Cafe Vicino seems to have settled into a confident and well-earned maturity. Like the exceptional wait staff, the place is polished.
Though a few dishes have lingered on the menu since the beginning, most remain fresh. Way back when, I tried the grilled shrimp on risotto cakes with basil cream sauce ($11). Today, I still find those skewers of paprika-and-chili-dusted, grilled shrimp atop Tater Tot-like rice croquette disks (but both creamier and crunchier than any Ore-Ida tot) just as fun to eat.
At a recent dinner, though, I was less enamored of the New York steak ($29) accompanied by a Gorgonzola sauce which the menu calls a “souffle.” The beef, although cooked to order, had little depth of flavor and was utterly overpowered by the intensity of that blue cheese sauce.
The pear and mascarpone tart ($6.50) brought the balance back. Its just-sweet flavor perfectly matched a sauce of caramel and the reduced liquid used to poach those pears.
I can see how the Guy Fieri crew might find all this balance and restraint a little staid, and there are those few dishes that seem to rest a little firmly on Langston and Rhode’s laurels. But if cooking and eating must end in competition, I’ll raise my fork for Cafe Vicino. It’s still one of Boise’s best restaurants.
For full story at the Idaho Statesman go to: http://www.idahostatesman.com/dining/story/1020672.html
What an enjoyable piece of writing. Food and atmosphere sound amazing, too. I was at the “Kulinary” Road Show. I wish I’d gone to Cafe Vicino instead.