| Bold World Charm |
| By B.A. Nilsson |
| New World Home Cooking |
| 1411 Route 212, Saugerties, 845-246-0900. Serving lunch Sat noon-3, Sun 11-2:30, dinner Mon-Sat 5-11, Sun 4-10. AE, D, DC, MC, V. |
| Cuisine: bold, inventive everything |
| EntrČe price range: $15 (single meanhouse pork chop) to $26 (12-ounce grass-fed steak) |
| Ambiance: colorful and unafraid |
| Let me digress for a moment. There's a fellow a couple of miles away from my home who grows vegetables, and offers a year-round supply of lettuce and herbs. The salad portion of my diet thus has increased of late, and the flavor of those greens is so vibrant, so alive, that I can't help but see (and taste) how pathetically lousy the supermarket lettuce is. |
| Local food is what's best, and that's the starting point of Ric Orlando's clean food philosophy. In the six years since we last saluted his restaurant in these pages, he has taken his love of bold flavors and wrapped it around an approach to cooking that's so seemingly simple that we have to wonder what the hell is sending us into the torture chambers of bad eating. |
| "Actually," he says, "you're probably better off eating at McDonald's than in your local diner. McDonald's gets demonized, but at least they have a degree of quality control you don't see in a lot of local places." |
| Orlando is in his eighth year of business at his Saugerties location; he spent five years just outside of Woodstock before that. And his restaurant has stayed true to his promise, something he articulated even before he left the Albany area to start the place. It quickly became as much of a culture as a restaurant, a place you'd want to visit for the company as much as the food. |
| It would have been difficult to do in Albany thanks to the city's cultural inferiority complex; the greater Woodstock area, with its visiting population of self-assured Manhattanites, has embraced New World with old world vigor. |
| The building sits a few miles from Thruway exit 20, and its low-slung, unassuming exterior hints at what's inside with a large front-yard sculpture of a silver ball suspended from a metal tripod. I take it to be representative of the New World for which the restaurant is named. |
| "We love to cook," the menu proclaims, encouraging you to pursue any special dietary requirements. Low-carb, gluten- or dairy-free, vegetarian or vegan fare is unremarkable here, although, during a visit a few years ago, Orlando did spend several minutes explaining to a teenage vegan friend of mine why her diet was unhealthy for her age. |
| It's a measure of his complete involvement with food that he has studied it down to the chemical level. And that explains his insistence on the worthiness of component products. But there's never a lack of flavor or inventiveness in his approach. |
| Take the stuffed morels ($10), an appetizer we sampled during a recent visit. The mushrooms themselves were harvested in Dutchess County; inside each of the four is a mixture of goat cheese and a pesto made with sunflower seeds. It's an amazing confluence of flavors, on a plate finished with an oak leaf lettuce salad and a tomato-chipotle vinaigrette. The dish is riotously good, yet sports none of the crap typically used to inject or influence flavor. |
| Both the core menu and the daily specials reflect this approach. Orlando is known for dishes like jerk chicken ($18), grilled free-range, grass-fed, locally sourced beef ($26) and brined pork chops grilled and served with spicy meanhouse sauce ($15 or $20 for one or two). |
| "I'm one of those chefs who stays close to the kitchen," he says. "Having me there helps us stay true to our original mission, which is to serve beautiful peasant food and stay in a certain price range, keeping most of the entrČes in the 'teens. As a result, we have people who eat here five nights a week." |
| That's one reason why the specials menu changes frequently; another, of course, is to take advantage of what's fresh. Even something as fundamental as a puttanesca evolves in Orlando's hands into something stirring: Served over DeCecco penne with flaked poached salmon ($17, or $8 for a small portion), it had the bold flavors of organic tomatoes laced with garlic, along with the anchovies-olives-capers trio basic to this dish. |
| A medley of Ric-approved flavors and textures graces los bocaditos ($13 or $7), little bites of chorizo, stuffed grape leaves, smoked mussels, a selection of local cheeses and Sicilian olive crostini to kind of tie it all together. It's the kind of plate to linger over with a glass of wine or beer and some sympathetic friends. And I had the feeling that I could find and join such friends at any neighboring table. |
| Slices of roasted and sweetly glazed duck breast ($20) also had a vigorous hit of spicy heat; served over a crisped noodle cake with a side of bok choy-based kimchi, it was positively invigorating. |
| With a large selection of salads and smaller meals, you can tour many aspects of New World's cuisine in a single sitting. We freshened our palates by sharing a cabbage-based Vietnamese salad ($9 or $6), which was dressed with sprouts, scallions, peanuts and an array of greens, with a tamarind-peanut dressing. |
| Orlando clearly has not only maintained but joyfully enlarged upon his original mission. He offers clean food, slow food, food that celebrates life itself. The cheerful dining room, with its gaudy walls and lavish art, is part of the welcome; the service also reflects this personality. Very few restaurants figure out the secret of running a truly efficient floor, and those that do are usually stratospherically priced. Here you see a combination of a love of good food and a love of people combining to offer a matchless dining experience. |
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