Dinner at NOPA is awesome.  We enjoyed a late summer/fall menu, which was an embarrassment of riches. It just pushed all my buttons – house cured bacon, wood fired oven, and a deep and abiding love of freshly shelled beans cooked to perfection. The staff was welcoming, and the open kitchen quickly pushed out dish after dish.  I had an inkling that I was going to like it, having become somewhat familiar with their approach to cooking, but I had no idea I was going to like it this much. It’s all about the details.

The tap list is minor, but local.  I enjoyed a Moonlight Lunatic Lager.  Is it just me, or is Moonlight on tap becoming the poster child for locavore places to offer on tap.  It’s only available locally, on tap, and usually your keg is delivered by the brewmaster, Brian Hunt.  His craft lagers offer a great gateway into craft beer, and are always food friendly.

Also good – their full bar. Here is my (almost) Rattlesnake, made with a touch of amaretto.

An amuse of beans.  We were initially unsure if we shelled them or ate them whole (you eat them whole.)  Served with a side of salt, this super simple amuse was a clear warning sign of what was to come: seriously ingredient focused food.

Oven Baked Scarlet Runner Beans, Tomato, Feta, Oregano and Breadcrumbs.  Like a high end chili.  This dish was inhaled by our table of four before it had even had a chance to cool to a less than volcanic temperature.

Wood Roasted Calamari, Spiced Chickpeas, Måche and Romesco. One of the standouts of the night.  The calamari were perfectly roasted in the oven, and fork tender.  The chickpeas were a mix of soft and fried peas, lending a nice textural contrast.  See?  details.

Grilled Pork Ribs and Harissa Barbecue Sauce.  This is a tough one – while they were very, very good ribs, and falling off the bone tender, everything about them screams BBQ… when they aren’t quite BBQ.  Maybe just since they looked like they should have been, my brain refused to accept this reinterpretation as anything other than a variation on perfection. It’s not fair, I know, especially since the menu doesn’t list it as anything other than what it is.

Flatbread of House Smoked Bacon, Corn, Cream and Mizuna. Simply fantastic.  I could eat this every day.  The cream was so thick we couldn’t tell if it was melted cheese or not, and the sweet corn provided a nice balance to the thinly sliced smokey bacon.  The crust also showed that the wood oven isn’t going to waste. It was also appreciated that whoever wrote the menu called it a flatbread, not pizza.

Housemade Pappardelle, Spicy Fennel Sausage, Spinach and Parmesan. The pappardelle was just al-dente, and the sauce was balanced nicely with spicy, earthy notes.

Moroccan Vegetable Tagine, Toasted Almonds and Lemon Yogurt. Another standout – Elianna declared the large green olives, soaking in the moroccan spices her favorite bite of the night. Inside the dark liquid lurked al-dente veggies which had absorbed cooking liquid, but not so much that they lost their own flavors.

And finally, Braised Pork Osso Bucco, Fresh Cranberry Beans and Black Mission Figs.  A nice twist on a classic that plays to NOPA’s strengths (read: pork).  The rich braised pork with nicely balanced  with the wilted greens and beans, creating a surprisingly light dish.

Eventually, these fries were the last thing left on our table.  We had to beg the waitress to remove the half full bowl.  We were entirely too full, but suspect that they may have been laced with local, organic crack.

I’m actually racking my brain for the last time I left a restaurant so happy.   Everything was well cooked, perfectly seasoned, and their ethos of “let the ingredient speak for itself” paid off in a huge way.  The front of the house deserves great credit too.  Our food was delivered fast, dirty silverware was cleared at appropriate times, water refilled, and we felt… comfortable. Even the bar was game when I was a pain in the ass, and order a cocktail off-menu. Once the environment has been setup so well by the front of the house, it leaves it open of the food to really shine – an opportunity it took full advantage of.

Tags: nopa

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009 at 5:15 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.