Johnny Ray’s Restaurant, Milford

Johnny Ray’s Restaurant
cuisine: Contemporary American/Fusion
entrées: $17 – $36
address: 1015 Bridgeport Avenue, Milford
phone: (203) 877-2200
credit cards: All major

4 Stars… Special

Most people are drawn to the restaurant business for all the right reasons—but not everyone. Over the years, I have encountered a few brutish, grasping, megalomaniacal sorts and a few party types as well. I’m not here to pass judgment on individuals (I defer that to a higher authority—Homeland Security), but I hope any restaurant I recommend not only is deserving in terms of the dining experience it provides but also is essentially “one of the good guys.” I understand all restaurateurs are motivated by the prospect of making money, but I hope most enter the business because they’re drawn by the intersection of two passions: a love of creating great food and a love of people.

I certainly became a restaurant reviewer because it represented the intersection of two of my greatest passions: my love of trying new food and my love of writing. As a critic, I’m constantly humbled by how creative many chefs are and by how hard I see most restaurateurs work. But just as one hopes people are drawn to the restaurant business for all of the right reasons, one hopes critics are as well. I think the majority of us are, but some are drawn out of a feeling of superiority, out of a desire to pass judgment, to wield great power.

With great power, as Spidey would say, comes great responsibility. I never lose sight of the fact that I’m passing judgment on hard-working individuals who have sunk their hopes and dreams into a difficult business. And as I said, I try to support the “good guys.”

Milford seems to be bursting at the seams with interesting new restaurants lately. One of the most exciting is Johnny Ray’s, which has been open since mid-November, 2007, and I can say without hesitation that this restaurant is “one of the good guys.” Its owners, Johnny Dicrosca, who owns the National Auto Brokers dealership in Waterbury, and Ray Cruciani, who formerly had Carmela’s Restaurant in Branford, just couldn’t be nicer. Combined with cool digs and darned good food, the restaurant has understandably been getting great word of mouth. After I tried Johnny Ray’s on my own, I, too, wanted to give it an extra little boost. But on a website that draws something like 1.75 million hits per month and, more importantly, 45,000 unique visitors a month, my word of mouth should translate into a deafening roar of applause.

On my first visit, as I was being greeted by Jessica, I heard my name being shouted by an old friend at the bar. So much for the restaurant critic’s desire to blend in. But if Laurie Pennacchini, with whom I worked for 10 years at the New Haven Advocate, was at Johnny Ray’s, I knew it was a fun place. Because the main dining room was full, my companion and I were led to a room beyond the bar normally reserved for small parties, where our waitress, Amy, tended to us. On this initial scouting trip, we enjoyed a terrific meal, our conversation interrupted by a raucous group outside that was cheering on a lunar eclipse. I went outside into the cold, joined those baying at the reappearing moon, and fired off a couple of photographs that could be a lunar eclipse, a close up of bacteria on a slide or a smudged windshield.

If the high spirits of Johnny Ray’s clientele hadn’t won me over, the food and drink certainly would have. Crispy New York-style calamari ($9) was probably the best example of this preparation I had encountered, the rings and tentacles tossed with pignolis, capers, cherry pepper and light tomato sauce. The moisture was not enough to defeat the crunch, while the pepper provided just the right amount of zing.

My companion and I decided to share two entrées, doubling our pleasure. Served with asparagus over a bed of caramelized cauliflower, our roasted all natural organic free-range chicken ($19) in an herb beurre blanc was so generous we wondered if the kitchen had misunderstood us and brought two whole orders. It hadn’t. The flesh was succulent and the crisp skin had a great roast flavor. Fire-grilled skirt steak ($22) was equally pleasing, the meat escorted by a trio of sauces: a brandy cream sauce, a bordelaise sauce and basil-infused olive oil. We finished with an apple tart ($7.50) filled with pistachio cream and accompanied by vanilla gelato. My companion wound up taking half of his half serving of chicken home for lunch the next day.

Generosity turned out to be a recurrent theme at Johnny Ray’s. At most eateries, one gives up something in quality in exchange for generosity—a poor swap in my book—but not at Johnny Ray’s. There’s an exuberance that approaches overkill at Johnny Ray’s—and God bless the restaurant for it. For instance, not long after you’re seated you’ll be brought bread, as is common practice in most American restaurants. Johnny Ray’s supplies three kinds of bread from Arthur Avenue in the Bronx plus whipped roasted-garlic-and-herb butter. But it doesn’t end there. You’ll also receive a three-compartment tray with hummus, exceptional olive oil, and a smattering of Spanish olives, cocktail onions and cornichon pickles.

In most high-end restaurants, the complimentary salad has largely become a thing of the past. Not at Johnny Ray’s. With all entrées come a nice mix of greens, julienne carrot, cherry tomato halves and red onion in a pitch-perfect, emulsified red wine-balsamic vinaigrette. This kind of largesse is likely to convert today’s wary consumer into a repeat customer.

As a critic, I feel a restaurant is entitled to charge what the market will bear, and I’m generally critical of other reviewers who take it upon themselves to knock a place for its price. The restaurant that overcharges will die by its own hand soon enough. But as a customer spending his own money, and not a particularly well-heeled one at that, I still look for value. With great food and surprisingly good value, Johnny Ray’s has already earned its way into my starting rotation.

The one area in which I do get exercised about prices is restaurants’ wine lists. I feel every restaurant should have quite decent offerings in the $20s and really nice bottles in the $30s. If a restaurant doesn’t, it’s a deliberate decision to gouge its customers, because there are plenty of nice vintages available at these prices. I challenge any restaurant that says it can’t find any nice affordable wines to email me at this website—I’ll be happy to provide it with a list of suggestions.

More restaurants should have an accessible international wine list ($22-$200) like Johnny Ray’s. Twenty-three of its wines that are available by the bottle are also available by the glass ($6-$13). During my three visits, I tried three different Spanish reds: an Osborne Tempranillo ($26), a Solorca Crianza ($35) and a Tapeña Garnacha ($28). Of the three, get the Garnacha—it was quite affordable and the best among them.

On my second visit, our waiter Rick’s recitation of his favorites dishes following his recitation of the specials again may have verged on overkill, but I appreciate those who err in the direction of effort, energy and enthusiasm. We tried three appetizer specials—all good. A red chili vinaigrette enlivened a yellowtail and tuna tartare ($12) dressed with black sesame seeds, crisp pita bread triangles and chive wands. A truffle vinaigrette was the final touch on a beautifully balanced duck confit salad ($11) with black currants and sliced pear. Irresistible lobster ravioli ($14) stuffed with big chunks of the sweet crustacean and bathed in a sumptuous lobster reduction seemed like an ideal candidate for the regular menu.

From the regular menu, we tried three more appetizers. Hey, judges can’t rule without being presented with sufficient facts, either. Baby artichoke hearts ($9) sautéed with ham, portobello mushroom and grilled squash in a sherry roasted garlic sauce may have been a gooey mess, but it was a delicious gooey mess. Johnny Ray’s took no short cuts, using fresh artichoke heart, good Serrano ham and plenty of sweet roasted garlic cloves. Also incorporating Serrano ham were roasted oysters ($10) stuffed with spinach, Fontina cheese and plantain crumbs in a Pernod butter sauce, a definite improvement on the usual oysters Rockefeller. But the dish that apparently got chef Michael Mastrianni hired was his jumbo lump crab cakes ($14) in a blood orange sauce. A perfect, light, crunchy, plantain crust on the crabby disks bespoke of the chef’s stint cooking at Pamela’s in the Numero Uno Guest House beach hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico, a city with several exceptional restaurants to which I’m no stranger.

Plantain also encrusted Mastrianni’s second calamari appetizer, which we didn’t try, and a mahi-mahi entrée from the menu, which we did. The mahi-mahi ($22) would have done a Nuevo Latino restaurant proud, the thick snowy fillet served in a coconut-curry-peanut sauce with tropical fruit over nutty quinoa. Another menu mainstay, braised beef short ribs ($24) with crystallized ginger and black beans in a barbecue veal reduction were served over a mascarpone risotto. We also tried two entrées from the specials. Pan-roasted sea scallops($28) featured eight (!) large sea scallops in a citrus beurre blanc over perfect mashed potatoes. Perhaps best of all, and that’s a tall order, was a thick cut of pan-roasted venison loin ($30) in a bordelaise sauce filled with goat cheese and crushed pistachios. Nobody leaves Johnny Ray’s hungry, I’m convinced.

Desserts were more imaginative and subtler than one can expect of most restaurants. The crème brûlée of the day ($6.50) was mango and guava, a combination that I feared might land with a resounding thud, but the flavors were beautifully balanced and handled with a deft touch. A giant square of banana and white chocolate bread pudding ($6) lavished with spiced rum crème anglaise proved to be soft, light, moist and delicious. Finally, the day’s assortment of Dolce Amore gelatos ($5) included vividly flavored espresso, pistachio and fig.

But Johnny Ray’s generosity had yet to run its course. It was Palm Sunday, and we were brought servings of the lightest, moistest, best-textured ricotta cheesecake (I wanted the recipe) I had ever encountered, which apparently was made by Johnny’s sister, plus complimentary glasses of Strega, a liqueur which translates “witch’s brew” from Johnny’s hometown in Benevento, Italy, where legend has it witches from all over the world congregate. (Google the website for a kick.)

I returned the next day, St. Patrick’s Day, with an old friend. Good, not stereotypical, Irish music filled the sound system. I couldn’t resist showing this first-time visitor how the wall of glass tiles behind the electric baby grand piano complemented the sheet-like waterfall behind the bar. But the most impressive design feature I showed her was the long, gorgeous, agatized onyx bar, at which many customers like to dine. My companion also appreciated the orange art deco booths and banquettes that made up the dining room, giving it an almost Rat Pack clubby feel. Appropriately, on this holiday, our waitress, Taryn, had an Irish name.

We ordered modestly—like normal people, not reviewers. But of course, I couldn’t resist taking a few notes. After the breads and their fixings and our nice house salads, we shared two entrées. Crisp Long Island duckling ($23) came in a Grand Marnier sauce with roasted sweet potato and broccolini (a cross between broccoli and kai-lan, or Chinese broccoli). No frou-frou array of thin breast slices, this was a hearty half duck, its skin perfectly crisped, its prized fat balanced by the acidity of the orange reduction. Hearing that the chef “cut the New York strips today,” we also tried Johnny Ray’s all-natural organic free-range strip steak ($28), relishing a superior slab of beef cooked just to our liking.

We sampled two desserts, either of which would have sufficed. The first was a delicious fondue ($11) made with semi-sweet dark Belgian chocolate, which came in an attractive red ceramic pot ringed with enough bananas, strawberries, marshmallows and Graham crackers to satisfy Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. Trouble was, I have never liked either marshmallows or Graham crackers (obviously, I was a weird kid) and would have preferred some other accompaniments, perhaps pound cake cubes and apple slices. However, I just loved our second dessert, fresh berries ($9) served in a white chocolate-Grand Marnier sauce with crème anglaise and raspberry coulis.

Since my three satisfying visits, I have been tempted to return to Johnny Ray’s for further research. But who am I kidding? I have obviously crossed the line from impartial observer to satisfied customer. And it’s so much easier to support a restaurant where one likes the management and staff so well.

I guess it can happen in real life and not just the cinema. Nice guys finish first! Chalk one up for the good guys!