Swanky Days are Here Again
Or, at El Gaucho’s new Eastside steakhouse maybe they never left.
Just then no fewer than four waiters sallied up to our table, one pushing a cart and the others setting down our appetizers, and I blushed to discover how luxurious it felt to be serviced by four gentlemen at once. Down came the crab cakes, a standard variant—light on the crab, too heavy on the salt. Down came clam chowder, lovely, wearing its bacon on its sleeve. Down came lobster-stuffed ravioli, tender and sweet, scattered on top with briny, brilliant orange roe. Down came tenderloin diablo, in which moist loin nuggets swam in a Stroganoff-like sauce, winningly electrified with a mild current of habañero pepper.
Monsieur Tableside sprang into action on our Caesar, adroitly smushing anchovies into mustard in a big stainless steel bowl, narrating as he worked. The spectacle transfixed us—El Gaucho, for all its adult pleasures, thrills children—and produced an admirable salad, nicely modulated, sharp with garlic. But I wondered about the “show” presentations—and not just because our neighbor’s Caesar put a waiter’s posterior indecorously close to my face. They have an ad hoc, little-of-this-little-of-that quality, which left me wondering, as I took a bite of the Salad 410 (an homage to Victor Rosellini’s first restaurant), if it was supposed to be this bland.
The vagaries of tableside prep come into keenest play when the preparation in question is on fire. El Gaucho’s stock in trade is meat, and in my two visits most of it was flawless—from a dry-aged New York, lushly marbled, to a hazelnut crusted rack of lamb whose flesh melted away in my mouth, to a seared half-chicken whose crisp skin yielded an interior of improbable tenderness. The flaming brochette of tenderloin made its ostentatious entrance, with M. Tableside splashing on the 100-proof and taking out a few arm hairs for Queen and country, but its resulting burnt spots compromised the finished product.
No fewer than four waiters sallied up to our table, and I blushed to discover how luxurious it felt to be serviced by four gentlemen at once.
So vivid are the theatrics, diners don’t think of El Gaucho as a plain meat-and-potatoes restaurant. But that’s what it is. At times, too plain. If I hadn’t put the forkful of skillet hash browns in my mouth myself, I might not have known they ever got there. (At El Gaucho you order shareable sides to go with the à la carte meat entrées. Stay with the nutty wild mushroom risotto if you like rich accompaniments, or the glorious mac and cheese, especially if you have a kid to please. Or the baked potato, if you think you might enjoy a handsome waiter asking if you would like his fluffing services. No shame there—as long as you don’t beg him to feed you.)
But in the end, El Gaucho is about food the way the QE2 is about transportation. When I asked later about opening a restaurant like this in times like these, MacKay shrugged philosophically: “Where better in the country than Bellevue?” Indeed, what this address scores for MacKay is a pool of relatively wealthy neighbors, in a less-recessed part of the country, with very few competitors, and Microsoft just up the stairs. Not bad.
What El Gaucho scores for MacKay’s customers turns out to be even better. For the diner, all the lavish excess, against the pinched prudence of our new economy, registers as more than a splurge—to me it felt almost healing. The painstaking service and historical rootedness anchor the opulence in authenticity, imparting instant gravitas to a city that could frankly use it. It’s swanky, yes, but heartwarmingly swanky. The restaurant where generations of Bellevue scions will squire their prom dates has more than good boyfriends for waiters. It has a soul.
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Published: March 2009
