Forget about fries - fine dining's newest potato trend is cakes and pies

Nation's Restaurant News, August 28, 1995 by Florence Fabricant

Mashed potatoes continue to reign supreme alongside the main dish. But recently the dinner plate has welcomed potato cakes and potato pies. And unlike their mashed cousins waiting in the wiwngs for the entree, potato cakes also show up for the first course, often as the crisp underpinning for smoked salmon or caviar.

At Anago Bistro in Cambridge, Mass., for example, Scottish smoked salmon is served on warm potato cakes with red onion, capers and chives, for a near classic array of components. Tatou in Manhattan makes a similar statement with smoked salmon and black bread plus potato-dill pancakes.

The treatment is grand indeed at Grand Cafe in San Francisco, with a combination of smoked salmon, sevruga caviar and creme fraiche on rosti potato cake. Rosti, a pancake made of shredded potato, may be the only Swiss dish, aside from fondue, that has made it into general circulation. Colors in Manhattan specifies rosti potatoes with its herb-grilled chicken breast and green peppercorn sauce.

But rosti or not, there is no consensus concerning which main dishes are paired with potato cakes. Beef, lamb, veal, chicken, fish and game are all candidates with potato cakes as running mates.

Steak and potato cakes appear as simply as the grilled prime sirloin with Maytag blue cheese, potato cake and roasted shallots at Tavern on the Green in Manhattan. Or the wood-grilled shell steak with potato cake at Victor Grilling Co. in Victor, N.Y. Top of the Sixes in Manhattan serves filet mignon with glazed shallots and potato cake.

A more creative concept is the potato and eggplant tart mated with the wood-grilled filet mignon at the Lenox Room in Manhattan. And alongside the grilled marinated skirt steak at Sonoma Grill in Rutherford, N.J., are sweet potato pie and salsa.

Leg of lamb and potato cakes are on the menu at Lilly's La Peche in Louisville, Ky. Grilled pork chops come with potato cakes and applesauce at Perry's Downtown in San Francisco. Also in San Francisco, at Socca, a crispy potato-leek cake complements the grilled pork chop with honey and sage. And at Moose's, another San Francisco spot, a potato-leek cake is the partner for a veal chop with a three-beet salad.

At 540 in Manhattan, potato-zucchini cakes enhance the portion of pan-roasted guinea hen.

Fish dishes increasingly are being given potato cake treatment. At Arizona 206 in New York seared Atlantic salmon with a mixed citrus salsa is served with rosti potatoes. The skillet-roasted wild salmon at Boulevard in San Francisco picks up the complex flavor of a baked pancetta potato cake, while at Oceana in Manhattan the seared John Dory comes nestled on a potato galette with summer vegetables and braised leeks.

Potato cakes are offered as sides. A nicoise potato cake is the a la carte vegetable at Cassis in the Chicago Radisson. Oysters in Corona del Mar, Calif., suggests a side of potato pancakes with sour cream and chives.

And on some vegetarian menus, the potato cake actually is given a starring role. At Something Different in Indianapolis a shredded artichoke and potato cake with wild-mushroom skewers and charred Vidalia onion coulis is one of three vegetarian main-dish suggestions.

Given the popularity of the potato cake, can the rice cake be far behind? Sonoma in Philadelphia has come up with a daily refried risotto, with a different topping du jour. It's a variation on the "risotto salto," or fried leftover risotto of the Veneto region of Italy, and a creative bit of recycling, to say the least.