Cru still tops in food, service

Courtsey photo Executive chef Shannon Yates, left , with Cru manager Joey Remmington. The palate is a fickle and faithless lover entirely focused on its own desires and pleasures.

That's the best explanation I can supply for why customers abandon a perfectly fine restaurant as soon as a new one beckons.

However, it's comforting to know there are exceptions to the rule. Despite a decided increase in the number of worthwhile restaurants in the area over the past three years, Cru at Bell Tower Shops continues to attract a broad and devoted clientele.

I've dined at Cru numerous times since its opening and can say that, based on my most recent experience, it's firing on all cylinders.

The service staff has clearly benefited from the experience head chef Shannon Yates gained working at The Ritz-Carlton, Naples. A phalanx of well-groomed and smiling servers greets new arrivals as a host or hostess leads them to their table. And it's not just lip service. Their attention to detail is evident throughout a meal.

The dining room is downright sultry: black chairs, tablecloths and napkins, heavily upholstered banquettes with sheer black curtains enlivened by a vivid red ceiling and an abstract painting that covers much of one wall. Tiny lights hang from the ceiling providing sufficient light to read a menu and see your dining companions without any annoying glare.

You'll find no bottomless basket of bread on the table. Instead, there's an amuse-bouche, an intensely flavored tidbit meant to fire the appetite, not sate it with a carbohydrate overload.

I failed to write down the ingredients of this night's offering but recall it included a flavorful bite of ripe tomato bathed in balsamic vinegar, topped with crunchy micro greens on a crisp wafer.

From Cru's wine list we settled on the Chateau de Saint Cosme 2004 Gigondas, an earthy red consisting of 75 percent Grenache and 25 percent syrah, a harmonious blend with distinct black cherry and smoky notes.

It served as a fine counterpoint to the spicy Shan-San roll and Kobe beef meatballs with which we began.

The former is a crisp eggroll filled with imitation crab accompanied by a drizzle of sriracha (a chile-based hot sauce) that spiced up the otherwise mild dish. The rolls are so popular that Yates now markets them commercially. The roll was sliced into six easy-to-eat segments, served in three little dishes. While I'm not a big fan of faux crab, the crunchy exterior and spicy sauce combine to make this a tasty appetizer.

The meatballs were delicious. Kobe beef is best known as the pampered and prized meat created in Japan. This version was from Australia and was just fine. The beef, cooked medium rare, was moist and tender, with a rich flavor of its own, enhanced by a tangy pomegranate-peppercorn sauce.

For entrees, we picked a nightly special - pan-seared yellow-edged grouper with drunken rice pilaf and a roasted pepperavocado tapenade - and a menu staple, paella. The grouper was cooked perfectly as was the rice, which had been made with at least four forms of alcohol. That might sound harsh, but the alcohol evaporated in the cooking process, leaving just a subtle sweet essence. What made this dish, however, was the tapenade with its balance of lush avocado and roasted peppers enlivened by capers and olives.

While the paella contained lots of fresh seafood - mussels, shrimp, scallops, clams and fish - as well as pieces of chorizo sausage, it could have used more assertive seasoning. It was light on saffron and, although the menu indicated it had "a pinch of crushed red pepper," I couldn't detect any.

We finished the meal by sharing a decadent dark chocolate créme brulee that was worth every calorie. This dessert seems ubiquitous these days, but this was an exceptionally good rendition, the custard was creamy with a rich chocolate flavor. The burned sugar topping was thin and perfectly crisp.

This is one place in which the service is as noteworthy as the food. Our server made sure no water or wine glass ever approached empty. He crumbed the table between courses (when was the last time you saw that outside of The Ritz?), made sure we had the proper utensils before the next course arrived, and efficiently cleared away dishes as we finished with them.

That the servers work as a team is obvious. There was no time during our meal that at least one server wasn't standing near the open kitchen scanning the dining room. All a diner had to do was look in that direction and someone immediately headed to the table.

I can't count the number of places I've patronized in which servers who aren't actively working a table gather in a corner to flirt, shuck and jive, forcing customers to resort to either semaphore or charades to get some attention. That isn't likely to happen at Cru.

"Lush wine and pure foods" is Cru's motto, and it certainly delivers both. But it offers something else that's just as desirable and hard to find: A staff that goes out of its way to make sure every guest feels special.

It's a heady and appetizing blend that's obviously struck a chord with discerning diners. n