Noble American Cookery

With a lofty name like Noble American Cookery, it should come as no surprise that every aspect of this promising new restaurant is steeped with tall ambition and a deliberately haute-Yankee twist.

The space itself is one of the most handsome new dining rooms around. Owners Todd Rodgers, Bruno Pouget, and chef Steven Cameron have transformed the old Gioia Mia into a stylish bi-level haven of urban eco-farm chic. There's reclaimed antique hickory from an old Jersey barn on the floors, a naturally fallen bobinga tree carved into a bar and table tops, clever flip-up cafe windows for an indoor-outdoor community table at the entrance, and skylights upstairs that allow a soft natural light to fill the airy second floor, atop of which a mini-farm garden grows herbs, tomatoes, and veggies for the seasonally inspired menu.

There is a bit of a farmer look to the jean-clad staff, too, whose rolled-sleeve plaid shirts and sparkling, freckled smiles might give the impression they've hired Elly May Clampett to be your server. But this is clearly no episode of the Rittenhouse Hillbillies when the well-trained staff gets down to the details of facilitating your meal. They were savvy and articulate when guiding us through the appealing all-American wine list, the serious craft beers, and the snappy cocktails crafted with retro themes and house-made mixers by the walrus-stached bartender, Christian Gaal.

But they were positively scholarly when it came to presenting the menu, veering into enthusiastic dissections of each dish's myriad ingredients, textural contrasts, and temperature shifts with an air of academic analysis that hinted at food psychology.

"This is one of the chef's more cerebral dishes," said our waitress, touting the rye-dusted sable, a modern riff on deconstructed deli flavors that's so potentially clever, it has "food-writer fodder" written all over it.

But as a lover of good food - not just overcomplicated, showy cooking - the word cerebral is more of a red flag than a sign of comfort, especially with a cook as young and clearly talented as the 33-year-old Cameron, who made his name with Rodgers and Pouget at their now-closed Blue on Long Beach Island.

I knew we were in danger of some run-on cooking from the moment I tasted the composed butter du jour, which twisted the tastebuds in a whorl of honeyed sweetness, potent herbs, and the camphorous prickle of pink peppercorn. There were about two strong ingredients too many, and that was just the butter.

The rye-dusted sable, though, was a juggernaut of overdone cookery. There was one really smart idea - sable fish crusted in pumpernickel crumbs - drowned by a cacophony of other flavors, a yin-yang swirl of pureed green peas and white potatoes, a tuft of microgreens, and an ill-advised finish of cold poached "mussel chowder" scattered on top, whose jarringly deliberate chill (and odd lack of seasoning) unfortunately accented the natural fishiness of the oily sable.

I loved the idea of a wild shrimp tostada, but the poached crustaceans were piled so high atop their tortilla with a salad of shredded radishes, chayote, pureed avocado, and salsa, the whole thing just flopped apart when we tried to eat it. There was an excellent fillet of sautéed Poconos trout with wonderful wild mushrooms, but the pureed cauliflower sauce was so overprocessed that it clung to everything on the plate like white paste. A lobe of seared foie gras, meanwhile, was luxuriously thick, but it never really melded with its garnish - a cakey almond scone, a creamy almond-garlic puree, microgreens, and grapes. No one really wanted to finish it, a first in my reviewing career, and it wasn't a good vote of confidence for a $16 starter.

There's so much to like about this restaurant in concept, from the airy, contemporary look to the unique tulip-shaped wineglasses to its mission of redefining modern American cooking with local, seasonal inspirations. And the plates are so artfully done, I expected to love Noble until the moment my fork put that art into action, only to find so many of the dots just didn't connect. This restaurant certainly has the ability to improve its disappointing rating in my year-end revisits. But for now, the great ingredients and good instincts don't add up enough to culinary success. This may simply be a case of a talented cook trying too hard. It can't be easy to live up to the pedigree of a place that so self-consciously calls itself noble.

Had this restaurant been called Humble American Cookery, it might have been far better off, because Cameron's greatest hits come from the bar menu, where his pig-centric revamps of such country food as scrapple and bacon, which gets minced and reconstituted into a perfectly crisped round chip for his burger, are worth a visit alone.

The house-made scrapple, which I'm surprised more local kitchens haven't tackled, is a spectacular take on the classic, with a splendid crisp on the patty's outside and a soft center that's earthily meaty. There's nothing especially nouveau about this well-minced blend of slow-poached pig's head, chicken liver, and sagey corn meal: It's just good, soulful craftsmanship.

That bacon patty, meanwhile, is an off-beat but clever idea that recasts the ungainly strip into a perfectly round team player for the burger roll. That "burger burger," whose meatiness was deepened by a thin slice of roasted beet layered along with cheddar, is definitely one of my new favorites in town. Speaking of beets, they're also the key ingredient in Noble's ketchup, which is one of the few homemade ketchups I'd actually even want to put on a burger. (No small achievement.)

There were a handful of dishes on the more expensive dining-room menu that worked well enough. The poached white asparagus topped with shaved Oregon truffles, Redmondo cheese, and a deep-fried egg was one of the best, a fine example of good ingredients cast in a simple starring role, but with a twist - a runny yolk that became sauce when we cracked the center. The grilled Portuguese sardines topped with a pickled mop of shredded vegetables were a satisfying Mediterranean flavor, the dusky fish fillets soaking in the tang and crunch of the slaw.

The grass-fed veal flank steak was a bit on the chewy side (and why are we eating heavy potato dumplings in summer?), but the dish comes together for the season with a corn puree and a tomato compote turned exotic with cardamom. The lemony short rib, slow-cooked and then crisped in the broiler, offered a novel textural sensation (an outer micro-crisp, then tender inner-chew), though ours was missing much of a sauce to link that hunk of meat to the decadent mound of creamy onion and rice pudding. A sweetbread set over shaved cucumber noodles with a melting herbed dollop of lemon cream would have been perfect had the pan-fried exterior been a little more crisp.

But there were a surprising number of more serious, elemental cooking flaws here that ruined the centerpiece ingredients of some otherwise promising entrees, which are hard to recommend at $20-plus a shot.

The roasted chicken is brined overnight (too long), and ours was inedibly salty - a shame, since its garnish of morels, peas, and country-dumpling-esque noodles was addictive. I loved the seasonal artichoke ravioli, fava bean, and wild mushroom garnish to the striped bass. Too bad the fish itself was dry and overcooked. My halibut was so overdone that the flesh practically disintegrated into a powder when I chewed, once again wasting a memorable side of purple potato salad blended with shrimp and country ham. A seared scallop appetizer, meanwhile, had the opposite problem, the scallop so undercooked that it wasn't just rare inside, it was chilly. The savory saltiness and crisp of duck confit, meanwhile, was completely lost when the meat was shredded into tiny threads that lent little more than bits of chew to a frisee salad.

Noble's dessert course had some rough spots, too, like a leaden biscuit for the strawberry shortcake, and a birch-beer float that was too thin and tart with overspiced orange sherbet. But there were worthy options, too, from the selection of unusual cheeses (like the soft-ripened "Blu" from Mouco in Colorado), to a moist white-chocolate cherry bread pudding, and a hot chocolate cake that oozes molten peanut custard when we pierced the center.

With its roasted homemade peanut butter marshmallow and berry sauce on the side, this chocolate cake is exactly the kind of dish - with iconic American flavors cleverly reimagined and recast in an elegant, playful form - that Noble American Cookery can make a habit of. I tasted more than enough signs to know this kitchen can do it. But it will need just a shade more creative restraint and some more consistency on the plate before this promising restaurant finally becomes noble in more than just name.