Great Scott

Scott Carsberg is keeping it eel in a casual makeover of his fancy restaurant.

By Kathryn Robinson

Photo: Lindsay Borden

Intensity redefined Small plates like smoked artichoke with robiolina cheese deliver startling flavor combinations.

Soups are his particular playground. One sweet-corn veloute is poured tableside from a pitcher over a dollop of pistachio pesto, a smear of parmesan cream, and a disc of tomato gelee. Another featured chilled mint-pea soup poured over olive mousse, bits of the cured European ham called speck, and a frozen pea-and-speck cream popsicle. The cream melted and the flavors swirled and married, the olives lending their weird almost-bitterness. Who would know that these flavors and these textures—ice crystals and cream, meat and puree—would complement so mutually?

And so vividly. Small plates being uniquely concentrated compositions of flavor, Carsberg’s skills turn out to be ideally suited to Bisato’s concept—small plates in the style of Venetian cicchetti (small plate) bars. (Bisato is “eel” in the Venetian vernacular.) Flavors on these plates redefine intensity. A slab of polenta is topped with a crust of dense meat ragu that’s more like ragu concentrate—wrung of its moisture, stripped to its essence. Or the halibut rillettes, stuffed into a skinned tomato and served over a brioche wedge with panzanella sauce. As if the rillettes weren’t already exploding with the briny essence of the fish, and the brioche already dense and buttery, and the tomato already flawless enough to get past Carsberg the produce gestapo—there was the panzanella sauce: the classic Italian bread salad, bright with basil and tomatoes, blended and strained.

Like I said: startling.

But something else as well. By the time dessert happens—which it absolutely must, in the form of a lush nougatty semifreddo or the justly legendary wedge of sticky orange confit with chocolate caramel mousse Carsberg wisely retained from Lampreia—it dawns on the diner that her meal was as lusciously satisfying as it was smart. In addition to this being affordable food from Scott Carsberg—remarkably, no little plate costs over $12—Bisato’s is, of all things, comfort food from Scott Carsberg. The maestro’s practically making Caesar salad.

Uh, not. But Bisato’s menu is more straightforwardly crowdpleasing than anything Carsberg has done before. It’s a response to economic times—when the economy tanked he went from drawing up plans for a fancier relocation of Lampreia to the downmarket reinvention that became Bisato—and to his own time of life. Now in his mid-40s, Carsberg admits to liking the steadiness of a less invention-heavy menu, only changing a special or two a night.

Resting on his laurels? I suspect that Scott Carsberg, genius-taskmaster, may be constitutionally unable. The only flaws I encountered in two Bisato dinners were bland, aging Macrina bread (that we, grrr, paid $2.50 for), and oddly stilted service from waiters who seemed . . . Well frankly, they seemed a little scared.


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