The fact is, her dinner wasn’t as good. Nobody’s was. A grilled pork tenderloin came paired with a corn, Walla Walla sweet onion, and pancetta salad that lacked any relationship with the meat: It might have been any side dish. The pan-roasted chicken was tenderly prepared and dotted with morels, but not elevated by its pattypan squash and local green beans. An appetizer of Spanish ham and potato croquettes arrived in a splash of red pepper coulis with a pretty ring of chive-parsley oil, but desperately wanted flavor. These were perfectly edible dishes that never added up to more than the sum of their parts. Crow, by contrast, traffics entirely in more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts food.
It’s a fine line between food that’s simple and food that’s simpleminded. I agree with Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, whose definition of hard-core porn—“I know it when I see it”—has served as my own highly scientific bore-o-meter for decades. (All right, nitpickers, make that “I know it when I taste it.” Justice Stewart was reportedly blind as a bat when he penned the opinion that outlived him in infamy, so let’s not get too literal.) Some of Betty’s dishes achieved the right kind of simplicity, revealing the acumen that arises from restraint. A two-beet salad was a thoughtful composition of musky reds and goldens with toasted hazelnuts and big chunks of sweet stilton. A robust-grained, big-flavored smoked trout rillette—original, satisfying—was served with toasted-walnut salad, horseradish cream, and a smear of good mustard. A crostini trio featured one topped with a minty pea puree, one with tapenade, and one with red pepper puree and goat cheese. A bowl of hearty Mexican posole was thick with white hominy and plenty of ham.
But here’s the qualm I haven’t been able to shake since my third visit to Betty: that our posole was good more because posole’s good than because Betty is. The cooking left no overriding impression. Only one dish, the steak frites, left us plotting a return. Desserts were unmemorably fine. The servers, hosts, and busers attending us were accommodating without rising to any level of excellence. Betty, bless her, turns out to be the original Plain Jane.
Goodness knows, it’s not easy coming up in the shadow of a popular big sister—especially one with boobs as big as Crow’s. Perhaps the little maid should borrow a page from big sis’s playbook. One reason Crow works so well is the hugely satisfying contrast between the homespun simplicity of the fare and the rich urban buzz of the surroundings. Betty, aside from its glossy clientele, offers no such contrast.
But the bigger reason for Crow’s success is that the homespun, simple fare happens to be extraordinary. The thing about Betty, to flog that sister metaphor one last time, is that she’s plain underneath it all too. Take off her Coke-bottle glasses and let down her hair—and she’s still no raving beauty.
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Published: September 2007
