Terra
Restaurant & Bar
1338 NW Hoyt St., 224-2933
Restaurant open 11:30 am-2:30 pm Mon-Fri, 5:30 pm-10 pm daily.
Kids rare. Moderate-expensive.
Picks: The Nigiri sushi, Peking duck roll, lemongrass
clams.
Nice touch: Beautiful,
glamorous space, the bar providing a fine perch for people-watching.
The very name of the restaurant is peculiar. At the top
of its menu, Terra Restaurant and Bar notes that "terra"
means earth. In particular French locales, the features
of the soil, or terra, impart distinctive tastes to the
produce raised upon it. Terra does feature several dishes
from landed creatures (lamb, beef, pork), but overwhelmingly
its menu emanates from marine life: eel, tuna, oysters,
shrimp, clams, crab and a plentiful offering of sushi. Terra
may be philologically challenged, but more importantly,
when you enter these premises you are, culinarily speaking,
on terra infirma.
At least the premises are promising. Inheriting the glamorous,
swank room that Bima once occupied, Terra has wisely chosen
to do little more than paint the walls a deep orange-red
and to fill the long, curvy space with medallions depicting
Shivas and Buddhas of all shapes and sizes, including a
plastic statue of Buddha so enormous it could fit on a Japanese
version of Mount Rushmore. The Buddha's belly is swollen
with pleasure and a smile spreads across his serene face--but
after my visit to the restaurant, I'm not convinced he has
so contentedly dined at Terra.
Terra represents the latest entry in the fusion sweepstakes;
a typical lunch might incongruously consist of a "Buddha
roll" of eel, shrimp and sweet egg omelette, and an open-face
sandwich of soft-shell crab. True, soft-shell crab is not
uncommon in Japan, but it would not be served there as Terra
does, on brioche with wild greens, avocado and tomato caper
vinaigrette. The crab is delicious, but so many toppings
tend to mask the delicate taste of the crustacean. Terra's
sushi is generally fresh and arrives on pretty platters
designed especially for it. But you'd have to be a dyed-in-the-feather
duck to spring for a sushi roll called Oregon Blues. If
the thought of pear, blue cheese and smoked salmon crammed
into a wheel of rice delights you, then go for it, but count
me out. Peking duck and green onions with hoisin sauce is
better, in part because its tastes are not such a departure
from tradition. Innovation has its place, but where sushi
is concerned, tradition exists for good reason.
The dinner menu suggests the restaurant is geared more
to people who like the scene-making that's always been an
aspect of this space, rather than to those who are serious
connoisseurs of fine food. None of the dishes is especially
bad, and presentations are generally appealing, but the
kitchen does not seem to concern itself with the taste of
many of its dishes. One comes away sensing that Terra cares
more for style than substance.
Among the 10 or so appetizers, the seafood salad is dominated
by a buckwheat and black rice crêpe that wraps in
and around a variety of fillings, but the crêpe is
utterly flavorless and cardboard-like in texture. This dish
combines raw fish with greens and is doused in a spicy sauce,
but the tastes never come together with any resolution.
The Tuna Dome is a melange of crab, the ubiquitous avocado
and little chunks of apple mounded together, upon which
several slices of raw tuna are draped. But the tuna must
be extremely fresh for the dish to work. I did not detect
much flavor in the fish, which lacked a characteristic briny
tang, and more importantly, the tuna was a bit mushy, an
inexcusable lapse. The best starter is a deep bowl of small
clams laced with curls of lemongrass. The flavors are strong
here, and the broth is good for enthusiastic slurping. But
pan-fried oyaki are overpowered by an overly sweet,
somewhat gloppy ginger sauce that covers the delicacy of
the leek-and-ginger-filled dumplings.
I sampled two fish main courses and both were somewhat
disappointing. Grilled salmon and uni (sea urchin) sounds
intriguing, especially for anyone searching out new ways
to do Oregon's favorite dish. Sadly, the salmon was overcooked
and dried out, and the uni was hardly in evidence. Spinach
did its best as a filling, but it didn't redeem the entree.
One touch, however, was splendid: accompanying slices of
daikon radish glazed with a sweet reduction of vinegar and
wine that imparted a nutty, almost buttery taste. A filet
of halibut was similarly overcooked, and not especially
helped along by the dollop of green curry laid atop. What
is billed as "Asian ratatouille" turns out to be your basic
version (zucchini, peppers, onions) simply given a sweetish
sauce.
What about the terra? Curried braised beef sounds hopeful,
but again the side proved superior to the main. The accompanying
fried bananas--crisp outside and oozy within--are wonderful.
But, as with the other dishes, the beef was too-well done
and without much taste (the curry sauce seemed more like
an ordinary brown sauce), and the ginger in the rice was
barely detectable.
Five desserts are listed, but the one I really wanted had
been rudely removed from the offerings: sesame blancmange
with green tea syrup (blancmange is a simple cooked
pudding of milk, sugar and vanilla that's chilled and served,
usually with a sweet sauce). Green tea syrup sounds lovely,
but it was not to be. The other four offerings all include
ice cream or sorbet, so I ordered coconut ice cream "with
exotic fruits," which proved so exotic that they never came,
leaving an isolated and banal scoop no better than a dish
of Baskin-Robbins coconut. Terra seems more invested
in its bar, which features splendid exotic drinks that do
materialize (try the "Tokyo Tea," an exquisite honeydew-hued
concoction of melon liqueur and lime), and especially an
excellent list of premium sakes, including several from
Momokawa of Forest Grove, one of only seven sake distilleries
in the United States.
|
