Amber's new era holds some promise in Danville

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Dec 15, 2006 | by Nicholas BoerSTAFF

TALK ABOUT an electric melting pot: A Dutch owner hires a Mexican chef whose Southeast Asian accents define the California bistro.

A bite or three of Duck Two Ways ($27), a special on Friday night, proves that it's more than a muddle. Chef Jerry Gomez cures the legs for a day with kaffir lime leaves, oregano, thyme and salt, and cooks them slowly in duck fat for five hours. To serve, he pan- crisps the confit along with the duck breast and plates it with a vivid port wine and raspberry sauce.

"I love that dish a lot," Gomez tells me later.

Me, too.

A bottle of Etude Pinot Noir ($67) is a brilliant complement to the duck. And remarkably, the same grape has enough fruit to stand up to Amber's signature appetizer of Fire Roasted Salmon ($11) -- spiked with fish sauce and curry paste.

Eric Janssen, who took over Amber in August, shows pride in his wine program (he was the food and beverage director at the Huntington Hotel in S.F. for 10 years and most recently sold wine to restaurants). At Amber, he's upgraded the stemware and sought out bottles, both white and red, that can stand up to the assertive seasoning. Pinot noir is perfect, he says.

"It really matches most of our food," he says. "You can have a table with fish and lamb and, really, the pinot goes very well."

I applaud Janssen for giving Gomez the nod. He has been the de facto chef since founding chef and owner Mark Dantanavatanawong suffered a tragedy -- his wife died in a diving accident in February 2005, 11/2 years year to the day after the couple opened Amber, their dream restaurant.

As a new emigrant, Gomez found a dishwasher job at Danville's Piatti 10 years ago, but soon moved on to be a pantry cook with Dantanavatanawong at Star Anise in Walnut Creek and stuck with him for the next decade. At Bridges in Danville, Gomez worked his way up to saute cook and, by the time Amber opened, he was tapped as sous chef.

Having a reliable sous chef is all-important to any chef without one -- burnout is inevitable but sous chefs rarely get

much credit, and they are often overlooked when a chef position opens up. I promoted Reuben Santos from pantry cook to sous chef when I was the executive chef at Casa Madrona in Sausalito. He proved to be the strongest force in the kitchen but, 10 years later, I discovered him still working at the hotel, in a new restaurant, under a new chef.

Perhaps that's because faithfully executing a chef's menus and coming up with new dishes and direction are entirely different skill sets. Defining a new style is now the challenge for Gomez.

In a sense, Amber's menu was already tired before it was printed. Many of the dishes had been developed at Star Anise and Bridges. Few new dishes have appeared since I reviewed Amber about two years ago. And, rather sadly, many still come with inedible garnishes -- raw beet threads and spikes of what taste like dry spaghetti.

Half of our dishes were good and half forgettable. It's interesting to think that if our party of four were instead two parties of two, we could have had wildly different experiences.

A Lamb Rack ($29) was great, served with lightly spiced mashed sweet potatoes and a rich dried-cherry pan sauce. But an overcooked nut-crusted halibut ($26) and underdone pork loin ($21) need simplification.

The halibut is baked, topped with panko and almonds, and then rebaked -- a method prone to drying out the fish (it was deliciously moist, however, when I reviewed Amber in 2004).

The pork loin arrived raw in the middle, yet firm from too long a brine in soy sauce and corn syrup. Brining pork loin can produce supple results, but too much sugar and salt makes it taste like bad ham.

I liked the tiny crab cakes ($12), but found the double-wrapped and deep-fried sashimi-grade tuna ($13) unpleasantly chewy. You could do a lot better at most sushi bars.

The aforementioned Fire Roasted Salmon, served on artichoke hearts and bathed in coconut curry sauce, is still amazing worthy of a prominent place on menu after menu. It's ample enough to order as an entree.

Desserts, aside from a stale Gingerbread Cake ($8), were good, if not quite worth the price. I particularly liked a crumble-heavy individual Apple-Cranberry Crisp ($8).

It will be interesting to watch where Janssen and Gomez take Amber. They both have the talent, but Gomez is still in Dantanavatanawong's shadow. If I were Janssen, I'd stake Gomez to a nice meal out each week. It could breathe new life into Amber's menu.

I can understand why

Janssen fell in love with Amber the first night he dined there. I felt a similar attraction when I reviewed the restaurant in 2001, back when it was Zensai, an offshoot of Bridges. The long, slender and darkly lit dining room, a sleek bar on one side, a wall of windows on the other, is modern, yet cozy in its narrowness.

I really appreciated the

pared-down Asian sensibility of the food at Zensai. Something about busy presentations and garish garnishes rubs rough in a small space. I always thought Dantanavatanawong's one fault was that he worked harder than he had to, making dishes unnecessarily complicated.