Long Island Restaurants

Elk Street Grille

A bar-side, black-and-white photo of the Original Elks Hotel and Restaurant invites you into the 1930s, when steak and seafood shared top billing.

Today, that means Gorgonzola-capped filet mignon and tuna sashimi.

This is the Elk Street Grille, veering more New American than traditional, a renovated restaurant that almost seems sleek. And there's a new fireplace.

One of downtown Port Jefferson's little landmarks, the reborn establishment is still a very hospitable joint, with genial and accommodating service. More important, the food is better.

A starter of "spicy ahi tuna sashimi" points the right way. The fish is rosy and rich, flanked by pickled ginger, finished in a honey-soy reduction, set on greens.

"Sicilian calamari" doesn't exactly deliver the taste of Palermo or Taormina, but the ringlets of fried squid are tender enough, accompanied by a sauce advertised as angry but actually on the even-tempered, friendly side.

A jumbo shrimp martini suits the Elk now, as it did for a long time. But the house's crab cakes are pretty dry, even with an orchestrated boost from charred corn-and-tomato salsa and chipotle-wasabi mayo.

The fresh mozzarella with roasted peppers is standard. Lobster bisque needs more flavor than it gets from an artful swirl of crème fraîche. The truly devoted can choose almond-crusted brie cheese, with an intrusion of "raspberry port sauce."

Elk Street prepares a juicy filet mignon, under a mantle of Gorgonzola cheese. The dish doesn't need its "port wine demiglacé." The chewy grilled T-bone steak, prefaced "Tuscan," is about as far removed from the classic bistecca as Port Jeff is from Florence.

But "smothered" double-cut pork chops, covered with sauteed onions and mushrooms, are very good. The competition comes from a peppery, seared rack of lamb. Roast duckling, with a raspberry coulis, materializes dry; its partner of truffle risotto, pasty.

Consider the sesame-crusted, rare ahi tuna a follow-up to the sashimi appetizer. It's rivaled by pan-seared, wild Atlantic salmon, with roasted garlic-wilted spinach and a balsamic glaze.

Leading the finales are a sturdy, New York-style cheesecake and a tasting of sorbets. The chocolate "lava cake" improves with vanilla gelato. The dreary, overdone pecan pie can't be rescued.

Instead, sample the crème brûlée -- a dish that came long before the Original Elk itself.

Reviewed by Peter M. Gianotti, 3/16/08.

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