The Up River Cafe

High Tide - Gorgeous water views, a retro cocktail list and some simple seasonal food make The Up River Cafe worth the drive all the way to Westerly.

The Up River Cafe

37 Main Street, Westerly
348-9700
theuprivercafe.net

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GENERAL INFO Open for lunch and dinner Monday through Saturday and dinner only on Sundays. All major credit cards. Wheelchair accessible. Small parking lot. Reservations recommended. 

ATMOSPHERE Ski lodge by the water inside; country club by the water outside.

SOUND LEVEL Tables inside are spaced well, preventing intrusive chatter. Outside, the running river seems to soothe the savage beast, keeping the noise level fairly civil.

RECOMMENDED DISHES Simple food rules: salads, burgers, dessert. A chilled beverage is highly recommended and nearly required.

WINE LIST More than 140 varieties by the bottle (most $30–$45) and nineteen by the glass ($6–$10). Cocktails run the gamut between traditional and contemporary ($6–$8). Wednesdays are half-price wine nights come September.

PRICE RANGE Appetizers $8–$12, entrees $10 (for a burger)–$28, desserts $6.50–$15.

The small town of Westerly comes alive in warm weather, full of migrating visitors and beach dwellers who move in under the summer sun. The neighboring river, which runs its course throughout the year despite the lack of seasonal accolades, might bear a grudge if it weren’t for The Up River Cafe. Its industrial brick walls, heavy wooden beams, and extended patio perch high above the water, offering aesthetic reverence to the tributary that once supplied salmon to the Native Americans.

Three distinct dining rooms, a bar with rustic, leather-bound stools and the captivating sprawl of outdoor dining create a space more homelike than business, and if you’re lucky enough to grab a seat near the water, you’ll undoubtedly wish you could spend the night. All of the rooms have a dressed-down Arts and Crafts feel that draws on nature rather than dominates it. Even the menus, tethered to wooden planks with black elastic, acknowledge the massive amounts of lumber that outfit the restaurant. Traditionally masculine decor (think ski lodge) is tempered by bright bowties, Nantucket reds and a panoply of pastel sweaters slung across shoulders.

It’s no coincidence that the bar dominates the front of the restaurant; drinks play a principal role here. The wine list is more than a hundred varieties deep, many of which are (quite affordable) boutique labels. There are nearly twenty by the glass, including a 2005 Crosspoint Pinot Noir (astutely deemed “a fruit bomb” by one wine expert).

The restaurant also features a rather charming array of cocktails marked not only by frozen grapes, ver jus and maple syrup but also the explanatory taglines (news to me that the Caipirinha was banned by the Ford Motor Company in a Brazilian utopia deemed Fordlandia). If you feel like limiting your entire meal to liquids, you can extend the fun into dessert with a variety of ice wines, Limoncello-laced martinis, raspberry-scented beer or a good old-fashioned root beer float for the prohibitionists.

Chef Terrence Maul, most recently of Providence’s Red Stripe, heads the kitchen and, in contrast to the liquor, his most successful dishes are those with the fewest ingredients. Salads are some of the restaurant’s best options, all of them fresh and light but with some very indulgent components. A radicchio cradled arugula salad ($10) is tossed lightly in lavender (hardly discernable) and mustard vinaigrette, sprinkled with candied walnuts and cubes of Asian pear. A petite skewer of grilled bread and fontina cheese, just holding its shape though threatening to ooze at the nudge of a fork, is served alongside. A basic frisee (salad in name only) is dotted with bacon and a luxurious poached egg that quickly escapes its panko coating and clings to the greens (no further emulsion necessary).

The grilled shrimp salad with haricots vert personifies the restaurant’s strengths. A bundle of perfectly crisp green beans tops butterflied shrimp, slightly smoky from the grill; both are drizzled with vinaigrette and covered with shards of fresh Parmesan and toasted pine nuts. It offers a variety of contrasting textures without overstepping the authority of good taste.

My discontent lies with Maul’s affinity for unwarranted complexity. A few of the starters and most of the entrees seem to have at least one (if not several) superfluous ingredients. Take, for example, the open-faced duck confit ravioli: braised meat is sandwiched between sheets of pasta, layered on top of fennel-accented potato puree, topped with fried potato strips and served in a stock-based sauce sprin-kled with no fewer than three green garnishes: fresh peas, edamame beans and sliced olives. I’m awed by the sheer audacity of the grocery list and disappointed that a simple duck dish developed an unfortunate case of eccentricity.  

Entrees often suffer from the same pre-dicament. Meats and fish are all prepared well: seared on the outside with tender and flavorful interiors. So well, in fact, that any one of them could have been served with little more than a jus and one well-constructed accompaniment. Many, however, get lost in a melange of sauces, dramatic side dishes and excessive frills.

Grilled bistro steak (a teres major cut similar in texture to a filet but with the flavor of a hanger) is sliced and draped on top of blue cheese-asparagus potato “risotto” (cubes of very firm potatoes in a blue-cheese sauce). The asparagus was already overwhelmed by the cheese, but the addition of crispy (a.k.a. fried) mushrooms compelled me to eat the pea tendril garnish just to introduce some lighter flavors into my system.

Striped bass and buttermilk-marinated chicken (the latter boned, rolled and seared) were both, once again, good enough to stand alone. The fish rests on a pea and risotto cake, an edible island in a sea of wild ramp puree. (Stop! Don’t add anything else!) It was also topped with a mixture of grapefruit and hearts of palm, making a lovely and simple dish a bit of a culinary flea-market. (Bear in mind that the sun was still shining, the river was still running and the fruit simply got pushed to the side.)

The chicken, advertised as served with a pan jus, was covered in what could best be described as a demiglace or, at the least, a stock that had been reduced too far and then paired with mushrooms, potatoes and (more) green olives. Since the most straightforward dishes stand tallest (including a superlative handmade gnocchi that should find its way into the limelight), I hope Maul will use the hottest months of the year to let his technique shine while giving his ambition some time off. (My personal desire is that he’ll put a sophisticated buttermilk fried chicken on the menu and sell it by the basketful with his housemade pickles.)

Desserts (prepared by part-time pastry chef Kristen Beaupre) are a welcome play on old-school (as in elementary school) favorites. The “decadent chocolate platter” features a seasonal collection of cocoa confections. (“Too much!” screamed my sated companions whom I promptly ignored, proclaiming myself astute in all matters relating to sugar.) This anthology featured a pyramid of chocolate-hazelnut mousse on a Nestle Crunch-like crust (difficult to break into bite-sized pieces but still tasty shoveled in whole), a brioche-molded cake filled with cream and glazed with ganache (think fancy Ring Ding) and a chiffon “ice cream sandwich” with chocolate-studded cream (Susie Q’s second cousin).

Beaupre’s mango cheesecake lightheartedly hearkens back to a 1970s anomaly by the name of Jello 1-2-3. (Here I have dated both myself and my mother’s proclivity for kitsch. And in case you’re blocking the decade of Waldorf salad and pimento balls, the concoction in question involved pouring Jello and Cool Whip into a blender and waiting for it to create mystical rainbow layers in a glass.) Fortunately, Beaupre manages to keep her homage strictly in the aesthetics as the layers of cylindrical cake progress from off-white to pale yellow to vibrant orange. Basic cream cheese, egg and sugar give way to fruit-infused cheesecake and, finally, to a sweet mango gelee. Playful but still pleasing on a warm night.

Summertime in South County is such a treat that an ideal evening relies on little more than a coveted spot on the patio, a cool drink and food that celebrates the surroundings. With a discerning eye (and a self-imposed limit of a half-dozen ingredients), you should be able to find what you’re looking for on the banks of the Pawcatuck River.