Last year, we were pleasantly surprised and pleased with our first visit to the Ship’s Inn on Fair Street, a pleasant basement restaurant which we found elegant and understated.  Perhaps Chef Mark Gottwald had the night off, or perhaps the crowd got ahead of the kitchen, but this visit wasn’t as successful.

We arrived at 6:15pm, when things were still quite quiet, and placed our drink order and our dinner order. The drinks and the starters arrived fairly soon, before the crowds did. But by the time our main courses arrived, the restaurant was packed and deafeningly noisy. Conversation was nearly impossible, probably because of the low ceilings, and the chairs got increasingly uncomfortable during the meal.

The serving staff was professional and courteous, but the food was far below what we had expected from our previous visit. Almost every dish seemed to be accompanied by a similar, somewhat sour brown sauce.

Our order of Oysters Mignonette ($18) was six ample oysters on ice, with a small bowl of mignonette sauce in the middle. Mignonette sauce is just a mixture of red wine vinegar, shallots and pepper, but this one just seemed to be vinegar, and you were misled by the amount in the bowl that you should dip the oysters in it. That is too much vinegar:  the sauce is best drizzled or dropped on the oysters: otherwise it overpowers them and your sinuses.

The other starter was their seafood chowder ($12), the only non-brown dish, and it had ample pieces of some kind of seafood in it. But, while it also had a lot of potatoes and was made with cream, the chowder was thin (more soup like) and, oddly, included pieces of tarragon, imparting an unexpected flavor. It didn’t seem to really be a chowder.

One of our entrees was Paillard of Wild King Salmon ($39) with balsamic and Malbec reduction. It was served with two little warm lettuce leaf towers with carrots, celery, lettuce pieces and a few mushrooms. Really lovely presentation, but low on actual flavor. Likewise, the accompanying brown sauce was pretty nondescript, and didn’t really seem to go with the salmon. The salmon itself was very tender and not at all over cooked, but also oddly flavorless.

Finally, and brownest of all was the veal scaloppini citron ($34) with house made spinach and egg fettuccini. The ubiquitous brown sauce went a little better with the veal, which consisted of a 3 huge sautéed slices of veal, relatively tender, and served with a carrot puree and a spinach or perhaps kale puree. The downside of this dish is the visual effect of these huge brown veal slices and only a limited amount of the very good fettuccini. The plate presentation was simply off-putting.

Finally, we let the waitress up-sell us a chocolate soufflé ($12.50), which was delivered soon after our meal was cleared. It was a perfectly standard, undistinguished soufflé that any of us could make in our kitchen, with nothing to recommend it.  The waiter poured the sweet cream sauce into the soufflé as expected and we dug in. It was fine, but nothing exciting.

While there was nothing really wrong about our visit other than the deafening noise, there was nothing really right either. Everything was sort of bland and OK. With two glasses of wine and tax, but before tip, the bill was $164. We found that kind of high.

We had the great pleasure of again dining at Topper’s restaurant, which is part of the Wauwinet hotel in Nantucket. Chef Kyle Zachary has put together a superior , creative menu and the dining room has far away the best service on the island. You can order from the menu a la carte, but you will do better if you order the prix fixe 3-course menu for $90: appetizer, entrée and dessert. You also have the option of the 6-course tasting menu for $125, and can order $105 in wine pairings to go with it. In either case, you will be eating the finest food on the island.

The Wauwinet is some distance from downtown, with Wauwinet Rd off Polpis Rd about ¾ of the way to ‘Sconset. You can drive there, take the shuttle from in from of the Federal St Information Center, or in good weather take a free motor launch across the harbor.

Since we last visited, the Wauwinet has expanded the dining room, serving both on a new covered patio and added a glassed in dining area. You now enter through the patio dining area and can dine inside or on the patio itself. While Nantucket dining has become quite informal in recent years, Topper’s is one of the few places where you would be comfortable wearing a jacket. It’s an elegant white-tablecloth restaurant with a host of staff to tend to your needs.
Soon after we were seated and had placed our drink order, the waiter arrived with an ice bucket containing two screw cap vials. Not shades of Walter White, but a small sampling of a delicious gazpacho. You just unscrew the cap and chug the tube of soup.

Then right after that, a waiter brought two “eggs” of butter, one plain and one salted to use with the basket of delicious breads he brought with him.  All this before we’d even placed our order!

We chose the $90 prix fixe menu, and while there were 5 first courses (vegetables, risotto, foie gras terrine, poached egg and cured King Salmon) and 5 main courses (butter poached lobster, Wagyu Beef,  Milk Fed Pork, grilled halibut and roasted eggplant) we both ended up ordering the same two items risotto and Wagyu beef.

The risotto is formally described as “Carnaroli Rissoto “Fruits de Mer”; Maine Sea urchin, Jonah Crab, wild Gulf Shrimp, Bottarga, and Brown Butter emulsion. But the description doesn’t do justice to the beautiful presentation of risotto rice full of pieces of seafood, partly covered with a creamy sauce and decorated with chives. Carnaroli rice used in this dish is firmer and longer grained than the usual Arborio rice used in risotto and made the texture much more interesting. Every bite was exquisite.

For our main course, we ordered the 7X Ranch Wagyu Beef: Sirloin and Short ribs, with swiss chard, chanterelle mushrooms,  cipollini onios and potato “gratin.” This elegant dish had a $15 supplemental charge, but was well worth it as the short ribs wrapped in chard were meltingly tender and flavorful and the sirloin fresh and tasty.

Before dessert, they brought us a complimentary pre-dessert: a tiny bit of a delicious coconut tapioca pudding topped with apricot jam, served in a little egg cup.

And finally, the dessert. We ordered a Chocolate Parfait they describe as Maracaibo Chocolate Bavarian, Hazelnut Crunch, Mascarpone Ice Cream and Hot Chocolate Sauce. But in this case, the presentation is everything. They bought out a parfait class covered with a white disk, which turned out to b white chocolate. The waiter poured the hot chocolate sauce on the disk, causing it to dissolve and collapse into the parfait, in a clever piece of culinary theater. Needless to say, every bite was worth it: a crunchy mixture of chocolate, cake and ice cream that you hoped you would never get to the bottom of.

But this wasn’t the end. Before the check, they brought out a plate containing squares of a raspberry gelled candy and crunchy pecans covered with chocolate.

Clearly there are very few restaurants like this: it is considered the top restaurant in New England and one of the very best in the country. It also has a Grand rating from Wine Spectator.

The bill, as you might expect was about twice what we paid at other restaurants so far this year. For two meals, 3 glasses of wine, one  coffee and one tea, the check with tax but before tip was $282.50. The Wauwinet illustrates what a truly fine restaurant should be like, and also how few of them there are.

The Nantucket restaurant scene was abuzz when Chef Chris Freeman sold foodie destination restaurant Oran Mor to popular island local Ned Claflin and his sommelier partner Jon Tacinco this winter. Both are graduates of the Culinary Institute, and Claflin had worked at several island restaurants previously.

The new Oran Mor opened in May, and by June had finally put their menu on line. With all entrees in the mid to high $30 range (the Angus Beef Duo is $50) this is not an inexpensive restaurant. Starter courses range for $14 to $21.

For many years, this was one of the island’s finest restaurants. With the new owners, it has a long way to go to reach those heights. The décor of the restaurant is much the same, but the table tops have been refinished in a more appealing lighter color. Other than that, even the paintings are the same.

We visited Oran Mor Wednesday night, when they weren’t particularly busy, it seemed. We were greeted by a young man in a white T-shirt, who hopped down from the high table where he was typing into his Macbook. He went to the reservation stand and told the hostess which table to seat us at. We quickly ordered 2 glasses of wine ($15 each for a pretty good Pinot Noir), and placed our food order when the wine arrived. And then…nothing. We sat at the blank table looking at our wine glasses for nearly 20 minutes, wondering if there was going to be any bread or other little amuse bouche. Nope.

Finally we asked the busboy if there wasn’t supposed to be bread. This led to a piece of Kabuki theater we’ve decided to call the “Catch-22 Bread Policy.” The busboy explained that there was bread, and it was free, but that we had to ask for it. “And we were to know that, how?” That question went unanswered. Soon after that, our waitress came by and we again suggested that there should be bread provided. She stonewalled, saying that it was restaurant policy that you had to ask for it. Shortly after that our first course arrived followed by the busboy with the bread.

The bread was 5 tiny slices of cold, dryish bread cut from a baguette, and one warm roll that was actually very good. They even brought butter. We split the warm roll, since there was only one. Shortly after that the young man in the white T-shirt came to the table to explain their bread policy. It turns out this was Tacinco, and he said that they were throwing most of their bread away uneaten, so they decided to only provide it on request (but not tell anyone)!  We believe if you price your entrees in the high $30s, you can afford to include the fricking bread!

We ordered the Beet Rosace ($16), made up of smoked beets, pickled beets, hazelnuts, dandelion, parmesan, yogurt and mizuna. It was colorfully presented, and mostly rather good, but had some patches that were extremely sour, perhaps the mizuna.

Our other starter was a half portion of Lobster Gemelli ($19) with chanterelles, corn, leeks, lobster cream and tarragon. It also seemed to include some shaved parmesan. While you may think Gemelli is a Smurf villain, it is actually a twisted tubular pasta, and probably designed to soak up sauce. Not here, though, since the gemelli was tough and undercooked, and the lobster a bit tough. And somehow, this was a really colorless dish that could have benefited from a colorful veggie or herb. As it was, it had all the eye appeal of a tuna noodle casserole! Except for the tough pasta, the flavor was quite good with a rich and interesting taste.

For our entrees, we ordered the Honey Peking Duck ($38) and the Roasted Berkshire Pork Chop ($39). The duck was actually duck breast with duck confit, farro salad, peaches, sweet and sour cabbage and glazed Hakurei turnip. We didn’t find but a bit of confit, but the duck was delicious and went well with the peaches and cabbage. The white crunchy turnip was an outlier.  The only trouble is: this isn’t Peking Duck. Peking Duck comes with crispy skin, moo shi pancakes, scallions and a sauce, usually hoi sin based. This was none of that. It was just roast duck breast, although very good, just not Peking.

The pork chop was another story. It was tough, dry and overcooked, and except for a bit of meat near the bone just wasn’t very good.  It was served with fresh corn polenta, formed into a buttery little cake, roasted carrot, spring onion and supposedly mustard jus, but it wasn’t apparent.  It simply was not marbled sufficiently to cook as a chop, and it dried right out. It was served cut into long rectangles, and the chef should have know it was really tough when he cut it up. There were some weird black crunchy things under the pork, and we asked the waitress what they were. She said “rhubarb,” but we didn’t think that was likely, so she took my roll plate with one on it and ran off to the kitchen to ask. She came back to tell us they were purple carrots. Maybe so, but with no carrotiness about them.

If you look at the pictures of the meal, all the platings suffer from really dull presentations and overall colorlessness. In the case of the ill-fated chop, the whole plate was black and brown. Needless to say, we didn’t order dessert. The check with 3 glasses of wine ans tax but before tip was $168.

Overall, this was a pretty disappointing meal, and we think you’d better give them a year or so before going there, so they improve their cooking and service.