Fine Dinering, Anyone? Shelton at the Skylark 2

As noted the other day, chef Craig Shelton, formerly of the Ryland Inn, has landed as "guest chef" at the Skylark Diner in Edison. He has introduced an upscale but modestly priced lunch and dinner menu that supplements, rather than supplants, traditional burgers and salads and the always-available breakfast menu.


That reminds me of a Steven Wright joke, he being the deadpan, postmodern Henny Youngman, master of the one liner. (Wright plays the Wellmont in Montclair next Friday, Oct. 30). Wright says, "I passed a restaurant. It had a sign in the window, said 'Breakfast Any Time.' So I went in and ordered French Toast in the Renaissance." Maybe you have to hear him tell it. Anyway, on to Shelton's menu, which I recently sampled...

Two other journalists and I attended a tasting of the new menu held at the Skylark at 10 am on Tuesday. I skipped breakfast for the occasion. After a welcome cup of coffee, I was ready to perform due diligence, which included sampling the wines that the Skylark’s talented new sommelier, Courtney Smith, had paired with each course. She said that Skylark patrons will be able to try many wines by the glass and even, if they’re gunshy, by the half-glass. And the nice quality wine glasses, by the way, were not just for our benefit but would be what every Skylark customer would receive.

If the rest of me was questionably awake, my tastebuds were r’arin’ to go. (I assume this is a contraction of an old horse term, rearing to go, but the only horses I know are the ones under the hood of my car.)

Vietnamese pork sticks, kind of a Vietnamese version of souvlaki skewers, came first. Shelton pointed out that they were made with real palm sugar, not with common granulated sugar. Nice tangy dipping sauce, good pork flavor.

Next, Thai roasted garlic shrimp. A true eye-opener, probably at any time of day. The shrimp were moist and tender and the Thai spices were bright and lip-smacking. The shrimp were split down the middle but still in their shells. Took a few seconds to strip off the shells, more work than most people are used to before wolfing down shrimp, and you do want to wolf these down.

Shelton allowed as much, about the fingerwork, but said that cooking the shrimp in their shells improves both the flavor and texture.

Hard upon the delicious shrimp came China Town Char Siu Ribs, very meaty and moist and a beautiful burnished mahogany color, not stark red like typical spareribs in One From Column A One From Column B restaurants. Why? "We use real red bean paste instead of red food coloring," Shelton said.

With these three dishes (served withi a 2005 Alsatian riesling that Shelton, the Yale graduate, bless him, described as "very nervous, very steely, almost aristocratic") a point was being made. "Authenticity," said Shelton. "When we’re making dishes from around the world, we’re using the real ingredients."

The next flight began with a thick and richly flavorful acorn squash soup, served in a demitasse cup, with a garnish of dried cranberries and walnuts (the squash "roasted nine hours"). Demurely sweet, this soup really could be breakfast food (beats Maypo).

We’re getting tasting portions. (When I was a kid, dollops and samplers like these were called "no-thank-you portions" and were for when you had to appease your mother by tasting something you didn’t like that she had made, like liver. I found I could handle the liver by smothering it with my mother’s buttery sauteed onions, the more the merrier.)

Where was I? The no-thank-you portions ended just in time, with an excellent full-sized crabcake, "melted" leeks on the side, and a thick pond of handmade tartar sauce, which was to bottled tartar sauce as naugahyde is to genuine calf leather. The deftly browned cake was made with real lump crabmeat, Shelton hasted to note.

Grilled lamb chops, with a tangy dried tomato tapenade, were super succulent. Roasted Maine Cod was moist and flavorful, with an equally good accompaniment of cabbage, clams, bacon and chive butter. The finale: strip steak au poivre, cooked in the Shelton way, that is, slowly, at low temperature. Very tender and moist. Can cure you of the 1800-degree broiler fetish a lot of steakhouses trumpet.

Shelton, who knows his wine, had an interesting point to make about the 2005 Italian merlot these last dishes were served with.

"If you serve a steak au poivre with a wine that has lots of tannins, like a big cabernet, the tannins double or triple the sensation of pepper in the dish," he said. "But the D’Alba is gentle, so it comes across feeling like a big-ass cabernet without the harshness."

The steak came with excellent hand-cut French fries dusted with parmesan cheese. More work for the kitchen, the hand cutting, but that is the challenge Skylark owner Constantine Katsifis says he has fully accepted.

As I mentioned the other day, the Skylark had already embarked on a quality hejira well before Shelton arrived. More professional service was one upgrade. About a year ago, it ditched its laminated photo menu and started printing a one-page daily menu, which allows it to feature more specials and buy meat and fish fresh fresh fresh, not frozen. That approach is being ramped up even more under Shelton.

"The one-page menu allows us to control what comes in the back door," Shelton explained. "The ability to say ‘No’ is the most important power a chef has. ‘No, I’m not going to accept those fish.’ That keeps the purveyors on their toes. So everything is fresh, and what a difference it makes in flavor and texture."

Bottom line: Shelton and Katsifis’ experiment in freshness and sophistication at traditional diner prices (with a few exceptions) is a brave one, and deserves to succeed. For the next six months, while Shelton is on premises and working closely with the staff, bringing them along, the food almost certainly will be as good as we three journalists enjoyed on Tuesday.

The real test will come after he moves on and the staff flies solo. I’m hoping the Skylark will not slip and become the Slylark. Right now there is every reason to believe they have a good chance to pull it off.

Read more From the Editors articles.

By submitting comments you grant permission for all or part of those comments to appear in the print edition of New Jersey Monthly.

Required
Required not shown
Required not shown