If you want Trudie to be romantic, as the pink and sheets suggest, there’s a romantic restaurant out there: a dirty Martini, a plate of oysters, a delicious strip steak slathered in marrow fat. But it’s also a casual restaurant, good for a burger and a beer with a friend or an early dinner with the kids – my three-year-old and I were mesmerized one evening by the old tube TV mounted above the bar, broadcasting classic movies with flickering warmth. It’s also a bit kitsch: the bathroom, filled with baseball memorabilia from the eighties and multicolored party lights, gave me haunting flashbacks to the many bar mitzvahs I attended in my youth. Families flock to get seated early; As the evening approaches, dates and double dates take over the tables. I’m not quite sure what kind of restaurant Trudie thinks it is, or wants it to be, or exactly how it wants me to feel, but – oddly enough – that uncertainty turns into its own wonderful thing: a bit of balance, a bit of firmness, a not-quite-emulsified mix of crisply ironed and comfortable.
The menu is a similar mess. You’ve got comfort food items that speak to the “Taverna” part of the restaurant’s name, like huge, fluffy pretzels dotted with salt, or big pigs in a blanket wrapped in pretzel seasoning. But there’s something more sophisticated going on in the kitchen, evident in dishes like swordfish in a pool of late-summer pepper and watermelon gazpacho and potato pancakes extravagantly garnished with dill and cucumber creme fraîche and sprinkled with orange bubbles of smoked trout and flying fish roe. This is of course a latke, even if it’s not called a latke on the menu. Trudie’s is the least overtly Jewish of the couple’s three restaurants, but the menu is woven with motifs of American Jewish cuisine: egg noodles, cucumber salad, miles of schmaltz, even drippings floating on top of a Martini. One of the things I like most about these venues is that they play with memory and tradition without being hokey or ridiculous or—the worst possible restaurant sin—maudlin. Trudie’s offers snow crab, three marshmallow white claws served chilled over ice, and a little dijonnaise for dipping. This is a preparation taken directly from Miami Beach fixture Joe’s Stone Crab; While completely unconventional in almost every respect, it is arguably the most Jewish restaurant in the city’s history, at least as far as Philip Roth is concerned.
A sherry cobbler.
The menu, overseen by chef Mike Cain, largely plays the hits. One night, knife held over a steak, I stood to watch a plate of fried chicken pass through the dining room, polished and shiny next to a pile of roasted potatoes. A scoop of dill-flecked white and green creamy cucumber salad (a recipe from Adler’s other grandmother) and what I would discover when I order the dish on my next visit was a thick, onion-sweet chicken sauce served with a gravy boat that had just a hint of tangy, vinegary flavor. Best of all was the lamb schnitzel, perhaps the restaurant’s biggest swing. Schnitzel is generally the province of lighter, more tender meats (your chicken breasts, your veal pies). But the lamb version, pounded thin, breaded and fried, served with a sweet tangy blackberry sauce, with a confetti of whole blackberries and mint leaves, was bright and whimsical, a symphony of strong flavours. It reminded me of a dish that might be found in a flamboyant and slightly sinister Mitteleuropa folktale, and a bit of a cowboy-style chicken fried steak.
Portions are hearty, but it would be a mistake to skip the side dishes, wide selection of salads, cooked vegetables and other odds and ends that showcase some of the kitchen’s surest work. You can whip up a meal that consists of an utterly dreamy bowl of garlic-fried Rancho Gordo butter beans, paired with Schmaltz Fried Rice, sparkling and toothy, and garnished with crunchy chunks of gribenes, and maybe just a bright, sunny vinaigrette to cut through all the richness. Rotisserie-cooked cabbage wedges in a wonderful anchovy-rich vinaigrette could perhaps stand up to the heat a little longer. (So can the service, which veers slightly on the alien side of welcome some nights.) Also save room for a banana slice with cracker-infused ice cream or a slice of cake, three towering layers of carrot sponge with coconut filling and heavy cream cheese frosting. The whole restaurant is in one slice: sweet and not-so-sweet, fortunately a little of one thing and happily a little of something else. ♦