My fourth Restaurant Week dinner found me at John Davenport’s on the nineteenth floor of the Omni New Haven Hotel.
We parked in the hotel’s parking garage, where restaurant guests can have their tickets validated for up to three hours.
At times in my life, to fight the weight gain that comes with my love affair with food, I have taken to avoiding elevators. I used to climb the nineteen flights of stairs when I visited earlier incarnations of the restaurant in the Omni Hotel. My friends Mark Collins, Frank Suraci and Tadahiro “Haya” Hayasaka, first drinks already half consumed, would laugh at me as I arrived breathless, sweaty and red-faced at the lounge.
I still regularly climb the stairs to my fourth floor Hamden apartment, and I hike frequently on Sleeping Giant, but I wasn’t feeling sufficiently virtuous at fifty-two years of age to take on the Omni Hotel challenge—I took the elevator. My companion, Nicholas Simpson, probably could have done the stairs like nothing. Nick has enlisted in the navy, and in just a couple of weeks, he will be preparing at Great Lakes Training Center north of Chicago, ultimately destined for long stretches of duty aboard a submarine. Hey, at least the prohibition against women serving on subs will soon be withdrawn.
Nick and I were warmly received by the receptionist,
and then led to our seats. I made sure to snap a couple of photographs from on high before the light completely faded. Here you see the view looking straight down upon the New Haven Green (which reportedly was laid out in 1638 and is one of the oldest in New England) and its three historic early-nineteenth-century churches,
and here an expanded view past Kline Biology Tower (where my father, a neurophysiology professor, worked for two decades) all of the way to the Sleeping Giant, whom you can see is resting peacefully on his back.
I also snapped a couple of shots of the dining room teeming with contented customers.
John Davenport’s has a wine list that is both enlightened in its selections and accessible in its prices. There were a half dozen of my favorite vintages that I rarely encounter. The one I chose was a beautiful soft red with ripe berry notes, a 2005 Abadia Retuerta Rívola, Castilla y León from the “Golden Mile” that parallels the banks of the Duero River and is acclaimed for producing some of Spain’s best wines.
The right wine was a great start. So was really nice bread
escorted by both plain and herbed butter.
We tried all but one item on John Davenport’s Restaurant Week menu. Good thing my young friend Nick was actually trying to put on a little weight for the Navy. A soup and two salads made up the starters. John Davenport’s lovely roasted corn soup topped with chive crème fraîche had a rich corn flavor and just a hint of natural sweetness.
A romaine salad with hard-boiled egg, smoked bacon and Caesar dressing was noteworthy for its freshness and balance.
But I might have liked a salad of organic greens with aged Manchego cheese in a truffle vinaigrette even better.
There were four main dishes, of which we tried three. The one we didn’t get to try was natural chicken in a whole grain mustard demiglace with porcini potato purée and cipollini onions. The dishes we did try included crispy-skin salmon served over thick coins of potato with red miso and frisée in a lemon vinaigrette;
a thick Hatfield Reserve pork chop in a red wine reduction with grilled apple, sweet potato and a vegetable medley;
and a Maine lobster macaroni and cheese with the sharpness of Parmesan holding in check the sweetness of mascarpone.
At last, we had reached the desserts. We enjoyed a nice creamy New York-style cheese cake with mixed berries and raspberry purée;
a light chocolate mousse with strawberry;
a molten chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream;
and a steaming cup of coffee.
And now, let me begin to roll the credits… Let me mention Lucien Harton III, the restaurant manager, and on-duty manager John Barlow, who took excellent care of us throughout our meal.
Let me also mention executive chef Jeremy Martindale, and John Beecham, who was the on-duty chef during our visit.
Isolated hotels may have captive audiences, but John Davenport’s has to compete with the entire vibrant and varied dining scene that is New Haven. Based on what I witnessed during this visit, the restaurant is doing so quite nicely.
John Davenport’s, 155 Temple Street, New Haven, 203-974-6858