The Front Door, Boise
Katherine Jones / kjones@idahostatesman.com
This little room is all dark wood, sepia prints and raw brick – the rich, rosy tones of good winter ale. Top it off with a big artisan beer selection, good tunes and enjoyable food, and you’ve got the ingredients for what my Scottish wife calls a “local.” By that she means an unpretentious neighborhood pub that’s so comfortably woven into a community it feels less like a tavern than a second living room.
The Front Door fits that definition. And though it also fits that vast sinkhole of a category called “casual dining,” the room’s relaxed atmosphere doesn’t reflect a slack attitude in the kitchen. To some degree, that’s because The Front Door still follows the credo of its founder, Dave Krick, owner of The Red Feather Lounge and Bitter Creek Ale House. Krick is known for serving high-quality, local food in stylish, comfortable surroundings.
Though Krick sold The Front Door (and the adjoining upstairs Reef restaurant) in 2008, current kitchen manager Robert Harrelson says the pub hasn’t wandered far from Krick’s original vision.
The Panzanella salad ($7.75), for instance, wasn’t a casual dining afterthought. Made of baby organic greens, shards of basil and slices of whole milk mozzarella, it’s dressed with bold balsamic vinaigrette. (I only wish the toasted cubes of focaccia had soaked up, in true panzanella style, some of that vinaigrette rather than being perched on the salad’s summit like mere croutons.)
The BBQ pork sandwich ($8.75) was also worth a try. A mound of pulled pork smothered in a smoky-sweet sauce then tucked between soft challah buns. It’s a sandwich built for Kansas City BBQ lovers. Usually a reluctant fan of sweet sauce myself, the sour little cucumber and red onion salad that came as a side brought the whole thing together, with help from a great beer.
The Front Door, after all, is a bar with a beer connoisseur’s brain. (I counted 15 beer taps and three chalkboards full of labels like Insanely Bad Elf, Ridgeway Lump of Coal and Hales Wee Heavy.) When I asked what brew would fit that BBQ sandwich, my astute lunchtime server recommended a perfect match: a smoky Rauch Bier ($4.50) by local Sockeye Brewery. (The wine list, I should mention, is far less expansive than the beer and cocktail menu).
Later, our spunky evening waiter suggested the crab-stuffed mushrooms ($8.25). A retro-sounding concoction I’d tend to push toward the pickled egg and fried onion blossom school of bar food, those baked button mushrooms didn’t last a minute. They were stuffed with cream cheese, bits of artichoke hearts, roasted red pepper and a smidgen of real crab.
Still, The Front Door’s primary menu focus is pizza. Not the piled-to-greasy-gastro-absurdity variety, but pies topped with good taste and restraint. They’re not nouveau-chic or overly austere – just honest, handcrafted pizzas with thin, chewy crusts and bright, balanced flavors.
The four I recently tried (all $6.50/small) rival the best pizzas I’ve had in town: The Wise Guy came with Italian sausage, salami, thinly sliced red onion, a little mozzarella and grana pandano cheese over a bracing tomato sauce; the Borgata had, among other things, grilled chicken breast and a white Alfredo sauce; the Godfather had fresh mint and creme fraiche; and the Gambino came with sun dried tomato, feta, kalamata olives and roasted red peppers. All can be ordered in sizes ranging from small to medium to truly massive.
A good “local” should also offer a decent dessert. The Front Door’s spumoni ($4.75) was a layered wedge of pistachio, cherry and chocolate ice cream dipped, at the pointy end, in chocolate. The Double Chocolate Cookie ($6.75) was a soft, fudgy disk topped with ice cream that nearly overflowed its plate.
By the end of the evening, my friends and I were feeling a little stuffed – but also right at home.
For more on this story go to the Idaho Statesman: http://www.idahostatesman.com/foodanddrink/story/1033562.html
