It's not female horsemeat from El Bulli – Adria Mare

That’s Adria Mare, as in seafood from the Adriatic Sea, with a healthy dose of related pastas and risottos on the menu. The owners are from Split, a resort town on the Dalmatian Coast, where I spent a couple of great weekends back in my college days. Representative of the region, their commitment to seafood is obvious.

One writeup of this restaurant (in a very widely-circulated free weekly that has a lot of Readers) criticized it for having a décor reminiscent of seventies-era Red Lobster. It didn’t bother me, but don’t go looking for anything vaguely resembling sleek, hip or trendy.

We started with two appetizers. Or at least we tried to. They forgot to bring the olive paté we ordered, but the feta cheese tarts (four to a plate) were a near-perfect appetizer – little chunks of cheese in a slightly bready tart shell with a piece of hard-boiled egg and some tomato – all discrete pieces set inside the tart shell, with a little vinegrette on top. It wasn’t finely chopped and mixed, which I expected. This was better. And with the large portion sizes generally, we really didn’t need the second app.

Entrées included Sailor’s Special Risotto, a somewhat thick risotto, filled with lots of little bits of virtually everything that’s alive in the Adriatic, and lightly topped with a garlic-oil sauce. It made for an interesting experience. Unlike the discrete pieces in the feta tart, you got bits of each kind of seafood in every forkful, and you couldn’t identify specific species, but instead got a rich, seafood-y flavor throughout. I can’t recall ever having a risotto (or a pasta for that matter) taking this approach, but it was an interesting alternative to what I usually see in a mixed seafood dish.

Our other entrée was sautéed octopus, an amalgam of potato and octopus pieces, formed with a ring mold – surprisingly mild/subtle flavors, but nice nonetheless.

As a side, we had Swiss Chard. They cooked the chard on the stem, yielding lush, nicely garnished leaves attached to stringy stems. Since it’s been so long since I’ve been to Split or that area, I can’t say if that’s authentic or not; when I cook chard, I take the leaves off the stem and cook them first. But I’ve never been able to garnish chard like they do at Adria Mare.

At the moment it’s BYOB, making it especially reasonable. Shared appetizer and entrée came to about $20 pp.

Overall, not great, but interesting, and for me at least, well worth the visit. I’ll probably be going back.

Adria Mare is at the corner of Broadway and Balmoral.

Just had another great meal at this place, and I'm sorry it doesn't get more recognition.

It may seem like I'm shilling for it; I'm not, but it was empty tonight, and it doesn't deserve to be.

My octopus patty was tasty, and different from any octopus preparation I've ever had. (Sorry, I didn’t take pix, but it was My friend's salmon was excellently cooked - a little beyond seared, but not overcooked/dried out at all.

And the olive crostini was great, too.

I think their problem is that they promote themselves as Mediterranean; I think they might be better off going with the more distinctive “Croation Seafood” angle..

It's still BYOB.

Anyone else tried it?