Café Lena
2239 SE Hawthorne, 238-7087
To celebrate the 10th anniversary of this "restaurant for all the senses," Café Lena has a revamped menu, introducing a "four course feast." Serving in courses implies leisure and indulgence--the entrée shouldn't arrive before the salad is finished, before the soup bowl is off the table. By dessert, customers should know they've been catered to. As a feast, they should be sated, plump and tipsy, empty wine bottles scattered, forks traded, finishing each other's plates. Dessert? It's part of the package; go ahead, over-indulge. Take it home. It's so decadent. That's the feeling I was looking for.
Cafe Lena advertises being open until 11:00. Unfortunately, the staff had every plan of closing at 9:30 the night I visited. They told my dining party this at 9:45, explaining why all courses came to our table essentially at once, why we found ourselves in a rapidly accumulating clutter of half eaten salads, cooling soup, and entrees. We'd barely begun a bottle of wine and were asked to chose dessert. The server's ride waited outside. We headed into a spring night, our dinner in boxes, the wine corked and in a bag.
The meal, finished at a friend's apartment, was lovely. The salmon special was served with capers and a light sauce that was fresh yet rich. It came with a generous helping of delicate basil rice, and garnished with lightly steamed asparagus. Chicken For Charles Bukowski is recommendable, with red peppers, tender chicken, and cream sauce. The tossed salad is made of the same lovely curls of mesculin we've come to expect from Lena, enhanced with the surprise of toasted, sugared walnuts. The second salad option is heartier, with wild rice, chopped vegetables and sweet currents. The desserts are wonderful and basic. Chocolate cake, cheese cake, coconut cream pie.
It's rumored that decades back mobsters forced NY restaurants to garnish every plate with parsley, a nearly-useless green, to build up investments in the parsley industry. The tomato vegetable soup, sprinkled to excess with dry parsley flakes, hints the mob may have a finger on somebody at Cafe Lena.
