Long Island Restaurants

Emerson's Restaurant

About 50 diners squeeze into Emerson's Restaurant. Join the party.

Enter the bright, new spot via the alleyway arch on Deer Park Avenue, and you'll find festivities under way. Local appetites already have discovered the cooking of chef-owner Pierre Rougey.

Rougey, who taught at the French Culinary Institute and cooked at Raoul's in Manhattan, presides over a charmer, colored in hues of ripe strawberry and deep cream.

There's some polite artwork, including a Paris street scene, complete with Eiffel Tower. But Rougey's fare brings in accents French and American with equal flair.

His avocado-and-crab salad, with tender meat ringed by slices of the buttery fruit and balanced by some tartness from segments of grapefruit, is a refreshing and satisfying opener.

It's matched by a meaty, slightly crusty crab cake, atop black bean salsa, and drizzled with a chile-sparked aioli.

Spring pea soup, light, cool and brilliantly green, benefits from a squeeze-bottle flourish of lemon-chive cream and crisp bacon strips. But the house's vichyssoise, the classic, chilled potato-and-leek soup, arrives underseasoned and more pasty than rich.

The house salad, with good greens and tomatoes, is respectable enough. But consider Amy's salad, with frisée, spinach, caramelized pear, walnuts and blue cheese.

Rougey excels with an entree of short ribs and grits, a refined rendition of a country favorite. The "6 hours slow braised" short ribs are nearly minced, and layered on and under a puck of abundantly cheesed grits, all of which rise on a foundation of sauteed spinach.

Just as flavorful is the "pork filet mignon," rounds of hot-smoked pork loin encircling a disc of chive-mashed potatoes that's crowned with sliced Port-poached plums.

Rougey's delicious union of seared halibut and Provencal-style stew of fresh artichokes stands out. But pan-seared branzino, with braised cipollini and a coulis of Thai basil and peas, could convert you.

Risotto with peas and shrimp, however, doesn't harmonize. They're like separate ingredients. The advertised preserved lemon and nutty Asiago cheese must be hiding.

Vegetarians, and anyone else, should enjoy the bamboo steamer full of spring selections, ready for a spoonful of sauce vierge, a vinaigrette-like dressing with minced tomato.

For dessert, Rougey goes tropical with pearl tapioca cooked in coconut milk, served with a banana fritter. His crème brûlée has no hint of the expected hazelnut, but it's still commendable. The flourless molten chocolate cake with coffee sauce and vanilla ice cream tastefully spills out on cue.

And profiteroles, puffs filled with vanilla ice cream then covered with chocolate sauce and toasted almonds, are a little treat.

Just like Emerson's.

Reviewed by Peter M. Gianotti, 4/9/06.

Hours

Assessment

Cuisine

Major Credit Cards Accepted

Price Range

Reservations

Wheelchair Access