Shiso fine: a dinner at Perilla

If you read this post I wrote a few weeks back, you'll know that I have a great fondness for shiso leaves, which, until just a few minutes ago, I'd forgotten is also called perilla. By coincidence, Sarah and I had dinner at the new restaurant Perilla last night, and I'm happy to say that it quite made up for my "oyster letdown" I wrote about in my previous post.

Perilla, at this point in time, is still only famous for one thing: its executive chef is Harold Dieterle III, winner of the first season of Top Chef. We don't often go to restaurants run by celebrity chefs, which can be pricey, pretentious establishments with good if not great food to match. But Perilla, situated in the West Village, turned out to be neither pretentious nor exorbitantly pricey (entrées, but for one exception, top out under $30).

We didn't have a reservation, so when we arrived at 8:00 PM on a Saturday evening, we were told that there would be a one-hour wait for a table for two. We left our name and spent the next half-hour wandering around the Village, which tends to resemble any given Main Street in any given College Town, USA on a Saturday night during the school year (except in the Village there are way more stores with names like Birthday Suit and Pink Pussycat Boutique). At one point, we browsed through CDs at a dingy record store called Disc-o-Rama, but the smell of reefer was giving Sarah a headache (I think it had more to do with the fact that she was hungry). We left, but not before I noticed that even here, amidst the ganja haze, there was a section with Christian music. I mean, they had the album Shout to the Lord, which came out when Hillsong was still part of Integrity Music, back in 1996! You can't even find that in a Christian bookstore in Tennessee nowadays.

We went back to Perilla at 8:30 and decided to have a drink at the bar while waiting for our table. The bartender, a friendly and accommodating young lass, let us try three different wines before making our selections (Sarah ordered the crisp and well-chilled Grüner Veltliner, I the earthy Montepulciano in anticipation of eating red meat). I don't remember when restaurants began to chill their red wines -- perhaps they've always done it -- but I love that they do.

Finally, at 8:50, we were ushered into the dining room and seated. Here's the thing about the menu at Perilla: at first glance, the list of entrées doesn't knock you out. Nothing seems particularly original or extravagant; it's all pretty basic, and all quite American. There's the requisite strip steak, roasted sea bass, roasted chicken, grilled lamb loin, sautéed skate wing, etc. There is a roasted duckling, uncommon, to be sure, but who hasn't had duck before? At that point, I said to myself that everything had better taste really good. I mean, knockout good. If you're going to serve basics, serve them right.

Here's what we ordered:
Appetizers

• Spicy Duck Meatballs, with Okinawa yam gnocchi, water spinach, and a raw quail egg
• Crispy Rock Shrimp Salad, with baby mizuna, piquillo peppers, and a mushroom soy vinaigrette

Entrées

• Summer Truffle Ravioli, with sheep's milk ricotta, and forest mushrooms and peas
• Grilled Angus Strip Steak, with escarole, bacon and a sweet onion-horseradish sauce
• Faro Risotto (side dish), with an artichoke confit, parmesan and chili-grape salad

Dessert

• Black Mission Fig and Plum Crisp, with Tahitian vanilla bean ice cream and spiced streusel

[This is turning into a full-blown restaurant review, but whatever.]
The spicy duck meatballs were standout. The result is that Sarah now likes eating duck, a surprising and welcome development. The ravioli was also good, coming with white and green asparagus (not listed on the menu) and a wonderfully refreshing citrus flavor, even if the peas were slightly undercooked. The risotto was uncanny -- it was richly flavored with butter and parmesan cheese, yet didn't taste or feel heavy. The steak was much the same -- cooked to a perfect medium-rare temperature, with even the last bite as good as the first, and topped with a whole red onion. The only off-note was the bacon bits served under the steak; too indulgent and overpowering. When I order steak, I want to taste the flesh of a cow, not the skin of a smoked porker.For the first time in perhaps years, Sarah and I wanted the exact same dessert item, so we shared the excellent fig and plum crisp, a fantastic concoction with too little ice cream and more plums than figs.
As for the decor, Sarah didn't particularly care for the mod chandelier that hung over my head, but the restaurant is tastefully and sparely decorated, and expertly straddles the line between cozy and contemporary, especially the bar area. The tables for two in the back, where we were seated, are quite close together, which made it easy to see what your neighbors had ordered. The dating couple next to us, enamored by the ravioli on our table, asked more than once what we were eating. They later admitted that they were skipping dessert entirely and living vicariously through us, too full of steak and duckling and wine.

I understood completely.

More about Perilla:
Perilla Restaurant - Official website
Frank Bruni's New York Times review
The New Yorker review
Time Out NY review