Newport, Rhode Island Dining - December 2008














After a difficult drive through snow-blanketed Connecticut and Southern Rhode Island, Cafe Drake and Mother nestled into a cozy table at the wharfside Black Pearl, decked with nautical prints and narrow windows offering glimpses of the wintry weather outside. The justifiably famous Clam Chowder ($5 - small cup) did not disappoint, as each spoonful brims over with fresh tender clams and creamy, rich slow-cooked comfort. Far less successful were the mains: two chilly scoops of tuna on toasted English Muffins who saw the broiler only long enough to re-congeal the plasticity of American cheese slices, masquerading as a $10 Tuna Melt, and a Lobster Salad ($19) sandwiched between dry slices of croissant - adequate but inferior to any lobster roll sampled roadside in Maine or coastal Massachusetts. Decent but pricey wines were sipped by the glass ($9 per gulp for Australian Shiraz).

Salas Restaurant is a real locals-only neighborhood near-dive situated on the second floor of a saggy clapboard on Thames Street - and very competent in their limited speciality of old school Italian standards. An impressively-priced Sapphire Gimlet ($7) certainly started things off right - fishbowl in size and mighty as the raging sea outside in potency - and a house salad was decent, if perhaps too basic. Still, Eggplant Parmigiano ($12) was cheesey and gooey and tender and everything the dish should be, and sides of pasta with tart, homemade marinara were excellent and perfectly cooked.

The Frances Malbone Inn - our home away from home in Newport - served "tea buffets" daily, bursting at the seams with sideboards groaning . . . Mother loved iced spice bars and we both enjoyed good vegetable quiche, chocolate pound cake, an assortment of cheeses and tomato and mozzarella bruschetta. Complimentary breakfasts were not as enjoyable, though soft-scrambled eggs in pastry shells with mushrooms were tasty and warming on this coldest of New England jaunts.

Cocktails were suitably festive in the kitschy-pretty splendor of Tucker's Cafe, a jewel box confection of glossy black walls, crystal chandeliers and thrift-store treasures (think pink-shaded Geisha figurine lamps, think 50s-era abstract oil paintings). Dinner down the icy street was sublime: The White Horse Tavern is America's oldest continuing operating tavern, and in many key ways, architecturally unchanged since it 17th-century opening. Dining in front of a hearth-sized open fireplace, we tucked into a quirky but tasty Oregon sparkling white ($38 for the bottle), luscious Butternut Squash Soup with curry oil ($7), escargots in puff pastry ($14), huge and melting sea scallops ($42) and a duo of seared duck breast and duck leg confit with mashed turnips ($39). As tasty as the grub is White Horse's ambiance of wide-slat wooden floors, low beamed ceilings and glowing candlelight.

A lovely side trip took us on a scenic drive to Little Compton, RI to sample the many delightful wines of Sakonnet Vineyards.

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