Avila's menu tantalizes the taste buds

Jared and Bronwen Carpenter always planned to name their first child Avila, after the California beach town where he proposed to her. And so they did. Last November their restaurant, Avila, opened in Wallingford with the Carpenters at the helm and Alex Pitts at the stove.

Carpenter, just 27, piggybacked a culinary degree from Seattle Central onto his bachelor's degree in business finance. Pitts, 35, worked most recently at West Seattle's Spring Hill.

At Avila (pronounced AVE-ila), they work collaboratively to create what they call a "nondenominational" menu. Their cerebral style of cooking is freewheeling yet grounded in solid technique. A read-through of the menu tantalizes; sampling it is never dull but sometimes begged the question: Is this culinary exuberance or creativity run amok?

Pitts takes the lead during service; Carpenter expedites. They each have a hand in baking the impressive breads: challah, whole wheat, sourdough and more. Those are put to good use on the soup-salad-sandwich lunch menu, and dinner begins auspiciously with several thick slices, still warm, served gratis on rough wooden slabs fitted with a pot of sea-salted butter.

Seated at the kitchen counter on the lively mezzanine I watched a cook shuck fresh oysters for escabeche. Lightly pickled in white wine vinegar and grapefruit juice, the bivalves hobnobbed happily with cilantro, pink grapefruit, sheer ribbons of fennel and fine threads of red pepper.

It was a giddy mouthful, but their accompaniment landed with a thud: three sticky sweet rice balls — refugees from a dim sum cart.

Lamb is baked in hay, though I'm not sure why. The rosy slices of rolled boneless leg meat benefit most from its garlicky yogurt marinade, least from a bold though bitter black sesame sauce. I could identify the roasted vegetables (carrots and turnips) but not the pale seemingly solid cone rising above them. As it turned out it was polenta, dense as cream cheese, wrapped in a sheath of feuille de brick, a butterless pastry dough.

Why put crab-stuffed salmon steak and rich white Riesling sauce on a plate next to a short stack of chickpea pancakes layered with white asparagus and black truffle sauce? Each element is so good on its own, and yet the sum of the parts comes up short.

Chicken and "slippery dumplings" is a busy dish, too, but it's a more coherent whole that embraces a moist, bronzed breast, classic chicken-and-duck-liver boudin blanc, caraway-infused, cabbage-wrapped sauerkraut, Brussels sprouts and flattened sheets of dumpling dough slick with foamy porcini gravy.

Headcheese with sauce gribiche and fried pickle sandwiches also makes complete sense. Think cold meatloaf, elevated to sublime heights, sauced with pickley, herby mayonnaise, and three dainty, dill pickle-packed sandwiches made with ricotta-herb bread that tastes like melted cheese when it's toasted.

At brunch I fell hard for warm beignets and tender potato-and-scallion-stuffed pierogi, coppery, pan-fried dumplings served with a savory onion-rich pan sauce, sour cream, chopped dill and chive oil.

Deep-fried duck egg tops a macho remake of eggs Benedict. Cracking the breadcrumb-coated "shell" sends yolk cascading over "chip beef" — shaved bresaola that tastes like classy pastrami. A house-made muffin forms the base of this Fantasy Island set in a sea of firm white Controne beans simmered in red-eye gravy.

Those dishes appealed in a visceral way; others were more of an intellectual exercise. Or put another way: Brunch was like reading Hemingway; dinner was David Foster Wallace. Clearly the wait staff has had to do some homework.

Fanciful resin light fixtures dress up Avila's ascetic décor, as does the oversize white dinner ware. The floor is polished plywood and the walls are mostly bare while the Carpenters seek just the right art.

Some tables are finished with blackboard paint, which entertains youngsters who show up for family-style Sunday Suppers when the weekly changing three-course menu offers entrees like fried chicken or meatloaf. At $10 each for adults, $6 for kids, it's affordable and accessible. Like J.K. Rowling in paperback.

Providence Cicero: providencecicero@aol.com