Creola’s first menu featured venison chops sprinkled with blackberry spice, a potsticker-like consommé. Panisse— fried chickpea flour batons with kale green aioli. When I visited, he had switched to a menu inspired by the summer dishes of his childhood. Despite the rusticity of the theme, the food was equally elegant: The opening meal included oysters on mignonette with tasso ham, tender oxtail croquettes, and petite cheese dream sandwiches, a Southern precursor to the modern grilled cheese slathered with tomato jam. Succotash has been reimagined as a velvety-rich, chilled corn soup studded with sweet corn kernels and small pieces of colorful tomatoes. On the surface was a swirl of basil oil and a tangle of fried okra strips. The simple presentation of potato pavé — alongside a certain amount of crisp pork belly, gooey caramelized onion and shredded celery, plus a dollop of canary yellow hollandaise made with bacon fat — was a riff on potato salad, and was as fun to nibble on as it was to bring the elements together in a single bite. There was the option of adding some osetra caviar, but I don’t think the earthy, salty, dense dish needed the boost.
In a less personal restaurant, this kind of food—deconstructed, complicated, Frenchified—might make me roll my eyes. But it works here in part because of the creative promise of its supper club conceit. Many restaurants change their menus seasonally, but this kind of orderly revision, from soup to nuts, is rare, especially for a restaurant as small as Creola with its limited staff — just Lagomarsini, a sous chef, a dishwasher, and a front of house staff who are hosts, servers, and porters. Crazy way to run a business? Maybe. With so many new dishes, will there be a few misses among the hits? Inevitably. (This pate in the shellAlthough it looked gorgeous, it was dry and a little bland.) But it also makes the restaurant feel like a project worth investing time in. I know many people who, after their first meal at Creola, decide to return to each new menu, just like you buy season tickets to the opera or regularly check to see what revivals are playing at the Metrograph.