Can a restaurateur from the past restore the reputation of a restaurant once viewed by many as Vero’s finest?
That’s the big question these days on the barrier island, where Rip Tosun, a longtime Florida restaurant operator best known locally for Monte’s, has come out of retirement to take over what had once been his nearby South Beach rival, Maison Martinique.
For years under the stewardship of the late Chef Yannick Martin, Maison Martinique had been one of Vero’s top restaurants – a pricy place, to be sure, but certainly its classiest and arguably its best.
But a revolving door of chefs in recent years, coupled with inept management and diffident service, led to many expensive dining disappointments. So now comes Tosun. Can he turn Maison Martinique around?
One of his first moves in taking over the restaurant that occupies the ground floor of the Caribbean Court Hotel was to bring in Chef Dave Gould, another culinary veteran, to preside over the Maison Martinique kitchen. Clearly a step in the right direction.
When we arrived for our reservation at 7:30 on a Saturday evening, Tosun ushered our party of four to a table just inside the Bamboo Room, the larger of Maison Martinique’s dining areas.
The room was more than half empty, but this table would leave one of us hanging out into the entry hallway and two of us staring at walls. Really? “Well, we’ve been busy,” Tosun tells us. “If you want to wait a few minutes, we can clean one of the other tables.’
After about five minutes, we are shown to a considerably better table by the windows. (A well-dressed couple that was next to arrive also objected to the same table, but finally wound up agreeing to sit there. That’s simply no way to start an evening of elegant dining.)
For starters, I then chose the Chateau salad ($12), my husband opted for the escargot fricassee ($16), one of our companions decided to start with the hearts of palm salad ($12), and the other picked the crab cake ($16).
The salads were very attractively presented. But the crab cake appetizer was a crazy portion for one person, and the escargots were insane.
The two crab cakes, mind you, were very good – but the portion was larger than the crab cake entrées we have had at many Vero restaurants.
And the chafing dish filled with escargots – baked in an extremely tasty brandy garlic cream sauce with forest mushrooms – exceeded the number of escargots you expect to find in an appetizer by a factor of at least three.
For entrées, I ordered the baby New Zealand lamb chops ($38), my husband chose the Dover sole ($40), one of our companions opted for the veal porter house ($40), and the other chose the day’s catch du jour, Chilean sea bass ($42).
The lamb chops, pan seared with fresh rosemary and chopped garlic, were excellent, as was the thick-cut porterhouse pan seared with fresh rosemary and topped with a wild mushroom blend and rosemary infused demi-glace.
The sautéed Chilean sea bass was a thing of beauty, and the Dover sole filet – pan sautéed with butter and fresh lemon, and topped with a fresh tarragon and watercress sauce – was also a fine rendition of this dish.
We finished the evening with two desserts – a bourbon bread pudding that was OK, and a plate of chocolate covered bacon that may have been the best ever!
Dinner for four with wine came to $360 before tip.
Is there a bottom line here? The food is still pricy, but on the whole once again very good. But while our young server was eager to please, the restaurant lacked the polished, white-glove service one associates with fine dining. Hopefully, better days for Maison Martinique lie ahead.
I welcome your comments, and encourage you to send feedback to me at tina@verobeach32963.com.
The reviewer dines anonymously at restaurants at the expense of Vero Beach 32963.
