By the time we walked through the door at ¡Pasion!, the temperature outside had dropped to well below freezing and flurries had begun falling from the sky. The unseasonably warm winter we'd been enjoying had come to a resounding, aggressive end, and rather than accept it as the natural course of things-it, was after all, the end of January-I decided that what I really needed was a good dose of warm-weather, Latin-inspired charm.
And while there was plenty of charm - I invariably get the feeling that I'm on the tropical set of a James Bond film every time I'm here - I'm still not sure that ¡Pasion! provided everything that I needed from a culinary point-of-view. Much of the food was quite good, but there were just a few too many glitches marring the experience to have taken me out of my mid-winter blues as completely as I would have hoped.
The meal began positively enough, and the trio of malaga taquitos was just right: Two-bite mini-tacos were the perfect size for sharing, even if their crispy texture meant that whoever got the second bite was left with a crumbling mess. They were good enough, though, that a minor detail like that didn't matter. We probably shouldn't have shared them, anyway.
All three of them-succulent marinated rabbit with black radish, trout with citrus crema and pasilla chile molé, and barbecued eel with avocado sauce and cucumbers-were simultaneously hearty yet light on their proverbial feet, but it was that last one (the eel) that was truly remarkable. Most of us are so accustomed to the eel we're served at sushi houses-aggressively smoky, slightly too sweet-that we tend to forget that this is actually a rather versatile ingredient. Here, Chef Pernot gives it new-and much-needed-life.
The only problem up to that point was the service. Though our waitress was friendly, and earnest in her efforts to explain the menu, she was absent for long stretches of the meal. By the time we had finished off the last of the taquitos, we'd already been there for about 45 minutes.
Things started looking up with Ms. Martini's entrée, the pescado a lo macho. The grilled striped bass was tender and flavorful enough on its own, but the accompanying shellfish escabeche and black bean puree were the real highlights of the dish. There was a certain depth to pescado that I hadn't expected, and that turned out to anchor it all nicely.
But the cochinito, a plate of pulled meat from a suckling pig with slices of ciabatta, bean stew, and a poached egg, was less successful. The flavors, all deep and rich, needed a hit of acid to brighten them up; the focus was too intensely centered on the bass notes of the dish, and as a result, it was rather one-dimensional. Which is unfortunate, because the flavor of the pork itself was excellent.
Dessert was a nicely sweet plate of Buñuelos, deep fried, chocolate-filled donuts-more like beignets, really-with a side of jackfruit sorbet. The combination of flavors was like a more tropical version of the chocolate-and-orange-peel treats that are so popular this time of year.
All told, with two glasses of wine, tax, and tip, the meal came to $115.91-not too bad at all. But I can't shake the feeling that my meal at ¡Pasion! lacked the very quality evident in the name. The food was generally very good, the service was friendly, and the space was as dramatic as ever. But the handle on the front door of the restaurant is an oversized exclamation point, which promises something more than that. Passion may be intangible, but it's key to the success of any restaurant. And ¡Pasion! needs more of it these days.
