‘Who’s Bev Eggleston?” I asked the Aldea waitress about a pork chop bearing the name. “That’s the farm,” she replied with a hint of an eye roll. Then, as if we weren’t sufficiently charmed, she elaborated, “Not the pig.”
Contrary to ancient wisdom that a new restaurant needs time to find its groove, many hot places tank after six months. Critics and boldfaces briefly keep the crew at battle stations, but once the scene moves on, the floor coasts and the chef flees the claustrophobic kitchen for the airier confines of the green room.
Aldea took a loftier road. It opened in 2009 to appreciative two-star reviews for chef/co-owner George Mendes’ suavely urbanized take on Portuguese/Iberian classics. But today, it’s even a better restaurant than that — a seamless fusion of muted luxury and “flavors on steroids,” as my guest put it, from the warm “welcome back” at the door to the last morsel of Valdeon cheese.
The pleasure unfolds in plushly understated, tablecloth-free surroundings. Four mellow-lit spaces — among them, one with a counter facing the open kitchen and a mezzanine that’s anything but Siberia — are washed in a neutral palette extending to gray shirts worn by the well-drilled waitstaff. But the air of reserve ends on the plate.
Aldea has more in common with the refined Portuguese takes of long-gone Pico and recently reopened Alfama than with the often rugged version of Newark’s Ironbound. Make that lots more.
I hope Mendes doesn’t take offense if I call his menu Iberian lite. (Small plates $8-12, appetizers $12-22, mains $27-32). He worked at great restaurants in Europe as well as at the original Bouley, and French discipline and modern-American taste inform his work at Aldea as much as nods to the lands of its inspiration. A soft-cooked egg, dreamily merged with spring peas and mushrooms, evoked ABC Kitchen more than a creaky farmhouse, which is not necessarily a bad thing.
Certain less compelling choices could turn up on menus anywhere — skate wing and diver scallops without a whiff of exoticism, for example. But innocent-looking cornbread presaged surprises to come. Bacon-rich, devoid of cloying sweetness, it had us begging for more.
Mendes extracts the deepest flavors from raw materials. A routine-looking terrine concentrated duck and pork to a revelatory intensity.
Sea-salted Chatham cod isn’t bacalao — the fish is quick-cured, seared à la plancha and given a quicker turn in olive oil aromatic with garlic, thyme and bay leaf. Yellow bell pepper sauce spiked with fresh jalapeño plants a fleeting Basque kiss on the fish, fava beans and fingerling potatoes.
Arroz de pato, a house signature with a rough-hewn look and texture, proved an aristocrat in peasant garb. Toothsome Calasparra rice with sofrito accommodated duck in three distinct, thoroughly cosmpolitanized forms — skinless and fleshy done sous-vide, lightly seared à la plancha and crackling, roasted skin.
Pastry chef Shelly Acuna’s desserts revealed flavors as vivid as Mendes’ — among them, chocolate cinnamon tart with honey-lavender ice cream and citrus. They were rivaled for sheer fun by complementary grace notes that punctuated every meal.
Amuse-bouches and pre-dessert palate cleansers typically drain a kitchen’s energy on items nobody wants. But Aldea’s changed my mind. They included pea purée transformed into sorbet with fresh grated horseradish I could eat before or after any meal and, most entertainingly, “caipirinha sandwiches” resembling macaroons.
“You sort of slurp it all at once,” the waitress advised. It packed a refreshing burst of cachaca granite and lime between coconut meringue wafers — as pleasing a note as any in a restaurant with sweet notes to spare.
scuozzo@nypost.com