Alison Cook: Restaurant Review | |
Steak Wallace at Fernando's Latin Cuisine is a butterflied
beef tenderloin topped with lump crabmeat and XO brandy cream sauce and served with white rice and asparagus. Mayra Beltran: Chronicle | |
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Oct. 10,
2007, 6:00PM
A little offbeat, a lot of charm
Fernando's Latin Cuisine blends Old World service with timeless food By
ALISON COOK
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle
TOOLS RESOURCES Fernando's Latin Cuisine 14135 Southwest Freeway,
Sugar Land, 281-494-9087 Hours: 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays; 5:30
p.m. till, Mondays-Saturdays Credit cards: all major Prices: starters $5.95-$9.95; entrees $15.95-$34.95; lunch entrees $10.95-$26.95 Reservations: suggested on weekends; walk-ins welcome Noise level: quiet to moderate Web site: fernandosrestaurants.com Get more details about and leave your own
review of this restaurant. Sugar Land tortillas!"
announced courtly waiter Juanito as he set a basket of baguette slices on the table at Fernando's Latin Cuisine. He has probably used the sly
joke hundreds of times, to the same effect; we cracked up. This was one of many charming moments at the surprising Fernando's, a Latin Continental supper
club that asks you to enter a time warp worthy of Disneyland, and rewards you handsomely if you manage to suspend your disbelief. The South American-inflected
fare at Fernando's can be delicious, the service Old World and doting. On weekends, it gives Houstonians one of the few
remaining opportunities to dine and dance to live music. When readers ask me to steer them to a spot for dining and dancing, I scarcely know what to tell
them. Now I do. "Live
music" at Fernando's may entail nothing more than an American Idol
wannabe singing to a backup tape. But as the evening spools on — abetted by owner Fernando Echeverria's lively,
tablehopping ministrations and the softening effect of a good Casa Lapostolle Cabernet from Chile — the grab bag of
songs grows positively endearing. Want a Texas two-step? A Latin ballad? A Sinatra standard? A rock 'n' roll oldie?
You got 'em. Set
this improbable entertainment against the backdrop of a dark-wood-paneled gentleman's library, low-lit and spacious, the
former digs of Ruth's Chris steakhouse in Sugar Land. It's cushy and comfortable, with service to match in Juanito and Raimundo, two gentlemen who
have the aplomb and courtesy you'd find in veteran New Orleans waiters. They're the kind of guys who take their profession
seriously. They
deliver dishes that possess their own brand of offbeat delight. Any of the churrasco-style beef dishes can score here, from
the simple carne-asada steak basted in a garlicky, parsleyed chimichurri marinade, to the baroque-sounding Steak Wallace. The latter is topped by an
XO brandy cream sauce and lump crabmeat, with rosemary thrown in for good measure. It sounds risky in the extreme; few chefs
can bring off a surf 'n' turf successfully, especially if they complicate the enterprise with a potentially suffocating
cream sauce. Yet
at Fernando's, the pinkish brandied cream is sprightly stuff, confined to one end of the thin grilled steak; and the lump
crab is nothing more than a rich, zippy accent. It's brilliant, against all odds. My one sorrow about the nicely chargrilled, rosy-centered
beef slabs served here is that they come with an array of pleasant vegetable-and-starch sides that include one lonely piece
of fried sweet plantain (aka maduros). One piece? How cruel can you be? It's a lovely piece of fried plantain, too: soft and caramelized, with a
bit of tartness underlying the sweetness. I took one bite and asked Juanito to bring me a side dish of maduros and charge
me whatever he had to. For $4.95, I got a sufficiency. This should be a menu option. I've enjoyed every fish dish I have sampled at Fernando's,
starting with a simple, lovely meunière-style treatment of corvina, a South American fish that is somewhere between
sea bass and snapper in texture. The kitchen barely films the fillet with batter, then sautés it perfectly and finishes
with an exhilarating, white-wine lemon-butter sauce. And therein hangs a tale. Echeverria was once employed by the short-lived Houston branch of Paesanos, a San Antonio Italian
restaurant famous for a near-miraculous dish called Shrimp Paesano. Its shellfish, which were baked with a flour coating, got a garlicky buerre-blanc
sauce of incredible sophistication: It was so beautifully emulsified that it looked like satin froth on the plate. I still
venerate the dish, and the sauce. Fernando has kept the secret sauce, even if he doesn't get the shrimp right anymore. The corvina profits mightily, but the camarones
here, dipped in flour and baked in the oven, have emerged twice as chewy, and as discouraging as can be. If Echeverria could somehow retrieve the secret
of making the shrimp pearly and succulent, he would be hailed as a culinary hero and archivist par excellence. At least by
me. Some dishes
at Fernando's sound risky and require a tough balancing act. Corvina asada, grilled and embellished with — get ready — tomato,
cilantro, onion, crawfish and jalapeños in a Cabo Wabo tequila and lime sauce, sidesteps chaos neatly and emerges as
a lively pleasure. So
does the grilled chicken breast Tropical, topped with coconut milk and cilantro, processed (ouch!) artichoke hearts and a
fillip of Fernando's trademark lemon-wine-butter sauce. It actually works. So do tiny first-course empanadas, along with crisp little yucca cakes laced
with crabmeat and garnished with very ripe, emphatic pico de gallo. A sultry black-bean sauce underneath helps out, too. Ceviche one Tuesday evening,
with Fernando nowhere to be seen, was the only real disaster of my three visits, here: mushy and woeful, as if it had sat
marinating in its juices much too long. A classic, anchovy-kissed Caesar salad took the sting out, though, and left me thinking how nice this
ubiquitous dish can be when it is not overburdened with creamy dressing and Parmesan cheese. Desserts? They can be fun, from baby empanadas
folded around tart guava paste, then sided with vanilla ice cream, to voluptuous iterations of tres leches, including chocolate. The wine list could stand some
improvement, however. There
are several appealing South American reds, including the aforementioned Casa Lapostolle Cabernet and a Terrazas Reserva Malbec,
but too many of the selections are safe same-olds. With more adventurous South American and Spanish choices, the list could rock in tandem with the
food. And it should. This
place is such a delightful throwback that I found myself wanting it to be even better than it is. What made me particularly happy about this
place was that Echeverria's first restaurant, Los Andes in Greenway Plaza, seemed to lose its way in the 1990s after opening
with much promise. On my final visit — at which time I swore not to return — I remember a succession of dishes
that broke down under a welter of ingredients and general busy-ness. Here, at Fernanado's Latin Cuisine, Echeverria seems to have gone back to
his simpler, old-fashioned roots. It works. And for anyone searching for an updated taste of Houston past, it is worth an
expedition to the not-so-wilds of Sugar Land. dine.features@chron.com |