Your Standard Evening
By Michael Anderson and Anthony Lowenberg
Ah, so many blandly entertaining headline possibilities, so little time. This month’s review is of Standard. Its former incarnation was housed in Deep Ellum, in an exposed-brick, neighborhoody-type of place. The new space is much more SoHo, or what Texans fantasize a SoHo restaurant should be. If it were really in SoHo, it would be loud beyond belief, you would sit down at 9:00 for your 7:30 reservation, and there would be twice as many tables, crammed up so close against each other you could swear the dude at the next table just breathed on your date’s/spouse’s/we-don’t-wanna-know’s neck.
Instead, the new Standard is an inviting place, with cool blue, grey and brown colors and tables and banquettes appropriately spaced apart, so any down-neck-breathing can be handled with the skill and care it deserves. Ok, that last sentence was a little creepy. Moving along, we were seated within five minutes for our 8:30, Friday night reservation, but not before instantly being offered and served a couple of martinis and Compari’s. The restaurant was crowded too, a good sign of things to come.
That would be the end of prompt service, however, and before we get to the food, which was fantabulously splendsome, let’s get the negatives out of the way. First, don’t criticize us for making up words like "fantabulously" and "splendsome." We write the reviews, so we get to make up the words. Second, the restaurant had only been open a week when we were there, and while the service was friendly and knowledgeable, man, did we have to wait a long time between courses. Granted, we were probably not the most approachable group, what with our fierce arguments over the proper sauce to serve with cocktail weenies (true story!) and who would win in a bare-knuckled kickboxing match, Posner or Scalia (Scalia, by a decision; Posner is quicker but Scalia’s got the size. Plus, he goes duck hunting with the referee). Ok, so service was slow, but we think the new staff will work out the kinks by the time this review comes out – this definitely did not seem like the type of place where slow service would fly. One other thing to note – unlike the other places we've reviewed so far, the food here is not cheap. Appetizers and desserts are between $10 to $20 and entrees range from $20 to $30.
Now to the impressive array of food: Starters included cream of asparagus and watercress soup, which was just slightly spicy and filling enough to almost make us not notice how long it was until the entrees came out. Shrimp pancakes weren't especially memorable (what were we talking about? Oh yeah!), but corn fritters with pancetta were crispy and perfectly cooked. For entrees, the house specialty that fans of the old Standard will recall is the braised and shredded short-ribs ($28), molded into a cube and served on top of the bones, with a side of pureed white beans. This is one of the best dishes in town, in our opinion, and is worth a repeat tasting. Standard is also heavy on fish dishes, including sea bass "swimming" in a sea of pearl onions, peas and lentils ("Swimming" was in quotes because the fish was not really swimming as it was "cooked." "Cooked" was in quotes because quotes are cool.). We also tried the halibut – Why, you ask? For the… I'm sorry, but we've used up our quota of bad jokes for this column – which was another winner served in a creamy coconut curry Thai sauce. The lamb chops, although served in a tasty, tangy sauce and cooked perfectly medium rare, had been sitting out for a while, likely due to the long wait before serving, and suffered as a result. All of these dishes paired nicely with a $32 bottle of Frei Brothers cabernet. For such a fancy schmancy place, Standard has some very reasonably priced wines, and by reasonable we mean the mark up is only 400% (which means four times the normal price for you non-math majors, I mean attorneys, out there). Dessert included a chocolate cake with a passionfruit reduction, but the real stand out was the Madeleine cakes with caramel sauce and ice cream. Unlike the lamb chops, these came fresh from the oven and were outstanding.
All in all, once the service kinks are worked out, Standard will be a special, if pricey place that we hope lasts in the fickle Uptown/Up-pricey restaurant game. On our Standardized five gavel-rating system (you know you saw that coming!), Standard gets four gavels. |
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