GOUVERNEUR — I'm not quite sure what the criterion is that makes a restaurant a "family" restaurant. But it seems as if every family restaurant I've been to offers unexciting, run-of-the-mill food with a menu that somehow caters to 8-year-olds and 80-year-olds and everyone in between at the same time.
Mullin's Catering and Take-Out opened a few years ago in a small strip mall on Route 11. Reports reached us that the little restaurant served decent lunches and was attracting a bit of a following.
Just recently, it moved to a much larger location about a half-mile down the road, for years home to the Clearview Restaurant. The old Clearview sign out by the road now reads "Mullin's Family Restaurant — It's All Good."
Inside, the bar area is cleaned up and brightened up. The dining room is brighter, too (almost too bright). They kept the '50s knotty pine walls, painted the '70s Z-brick walls white and added an "in" Berber carpet.
They've eliminated breakfast and have expanded their lunch and dinner offerings. Lunches offer an array of salads, create-your-own deli-style sandwiches, panini and specialty sandwiches like sliced London broil, barbecue pulled pork, hand-breaded chicken cutlets and haddock topped with cheese.
Cheese? Burgers and pizzas, too.
Several ambitious dinner offerings certainly don't look like something you'd expect on a family restaurant menu: seafood scampi with shrimp, scallops and crabmeat, beef tips and mushrooms and pork tenderloin medallions, for example.
And that's in addition to the expected beer-battered haddock, breaded seafood dishes, several steaks, chicken Parmesan or cacciatore, and prime rib on weekends.
I'm so tired of chicken wings, mozzarella sticks and jalapeño poppers, I could scream. So we tried two appetizers that would test the talent of the kitchen and make for good sharing: bruschetta and a quesadilla.
Bruschetta ($3.99) had a nice tasty topping, with freshly chopped, bright red Roma tomatoes, garlic and basil. The menu said it was served on toasted Italian bread, but it arrived on a soft, squashed down half of a hamburger roll cut into four pieces and sprinkled with cheese.
It was a Monday, so we figured they might have run out of Italian bread over the weekend. But there is a P&C right down the road that probably had some fresh Italian bread.
Our chicken quesadilla ($5.49) was delicious; a flour tortilla freshly prepared and served hot with a nice blend of seasoned grilled chicken (they also offer beef or sautéed veggies), cheddar cheese, just enough jalapeño and the same beautiful chopped Roma tomatoes that were used in the bruschetta. Sides of sour cream and perfectly spicy salsa were served in those little plastic containers.
Our server was very accommodating, allowing us to first order appetizers before having to decide on our entrées. After reciting several evening specials, she concluded with "and we're out of mushrooms tonight."
Uh-oh. We were noticing at least four dishes on the menu that specifically called for mushrooms. But she said they could make them anyway, just without the mushrooms.
Our orders were in and our house salads came out, along with a basket of round dinner rolls, wrapped in a plain paper napkin, that were super-soft after being warmed in the microwave.
The iceberg lettuce mix — similar to the bagged ones you find in a supermarket with a little red cabbage and shaved carrot, plus the addition of some red onion — was showing some signs of weekend fatigue with rust spots on the lettuce.
I'll bet the P&C had some fresh lettuce.
My "house Italian" dressing was pleasant. I didn't mind the additional 75 cents for the addition of blue cheese, which, at most every Gouverneur restaurant, comes as grated blue cheese rather than crumbled, following in the decades-old tradition of the now defunct Roma Restaurant.
A house Caesar was surprisingly good, with fresh romaine and nice croutons and grated Parm on top.
Roma chicken ($11.99), named after the type of sturdy tomato, not the out-of-business restaurant, we think, utilized chunks of sautéed seasoned chicken and more of those excellent, flavorful Roma tomatoes. The menu said it was tossed with "fresh garlic and basil" and olive oil.
While the garlic perhaps was fresh, there was no sign of fresh basil, a shame because it's in nearly every backyard herb garden in St. Lawrence County right now. And there wasn't nearly enough olive oil in the sauté, leaving the al dente noodles underneath rather dry.
"Seafood Medley" — shrimp scampi, broiled haddock, scallops in wine and butter — priced at $18.99 was a disappointment. Each seafood item was served cafeteria-style in little dishes placed on a larger platter. And everything was served in the same watery lemon/wine sauce.
The haddock was pretty chewy, also showing weekend fatigue with some visible gray areas, and didn't look like it had been broiled. Shrimp scampi, with three good-sized shrimp, had potential, but the sauce was wrong. Even a little garlic would have helped. Scallops were just OK, what there was of them.
While the seafood was a letdown, the grossly overcooked baby carrots were worse. Do you think the kitchen threw them on there for color, thinking no one would eat them? A side of angel hair pasta with its sweet, bright red tomato sauce was much more enjoyable.
Even more shocking was a person at the table next to us complaining that the vegetables weren't cooked enough.
A neat feature at Mullin's is "backyard grillers," charbroiled preparations of beef, chicken or pork. We got the chicken ($10.99), a good-sized portion of chicken breast coated with the same light herb seasoning as the Roma chicken, grilled and set atop curry-flavored rice pilaf.
A colorful, previously frozen vegetable medley came with it — broccoli, orange and yellow carrots and a few bits of sweet red pepper — same veg assortment we've been seeing at restaurants we reviewed the past few weeks.
It's peak vegetable season at farm stands around the north country. Wouldn't you think local restaurant owners would want to support our local growers, plus give their customers some great veggies instead of that crummy frozen stuff?
Pork tenderloin medallions ($15.95) sounded great: "Butterflied pork tenderloin and mushrooms sautéed in butter and garlic, served over angel hair pasta."
We thought maybe they'd surprise us by having someone run down and get some mushrooms from the supermarket, but that didn't happen.
The tender pork was seasoned (same as the chicken, we thought) and lightly sautéed. But there really wasn't any sauce to flavor the pasta. C'mon, throw some butter or oil on those noodles.
It had the potential to be a nice dish, but was dreadfully dry. Maybe the moisture from the mushrooms would have made the difference, but a knowledgeable chef would have made the appropriate adjustments. Or sent someone to the P&C.
Desserts, mostly homemade and priced at $3.50, were generally good. A large slice of mixed berry pie was served warm, decorated with a good amount of whipped topping.
An ice cream-filled crêpe appeared and tasted like it had come right out of a box in the freezer. Two or three fresh blackberries and blueberries and squiggles of chocolate syrup over the entire plate saved the day.
Our carrot cake fan loved the classic cream cheese frosting, but was disenchanted with the cake itself. "Not like grandma used to make — no raisins, no nuts, no cinnamon, no cloves — but a good homemade cake."
Dinner for four with two appetizers, four entrées and three desserts came to $84.
We spent an additional $20 on wine: decent Nathanson Creek Merlot for a little over $3 a glass and Kendall Jackson Chardonnay for a little under $6.
Our waitress was a pleasure. She knew her job and did it well. With a little additional training, she could be an asset to a top-shelf restaurant.
Mullin's may be experiencing some growing pains in its new, larger location.
But we made it a point to try entrées that have been on the menu prior to the move. Most just weren't executed properly.
You can't be all things to all people. If they want to be a "family" restaurant, maybe they should just stick to simple, straightforward preparations of familiar dishes.
You can contact Walter E. Siebel via e-mail: wsiebel@wdt.net.
Mullin's Family Restaurant
1180 U.S. Route 11
Gouverneur
287-0063
This two-year-old Gouverneur eatery, serving lunch and dinner, has recently expanded to the space occupied by the Clearview Restaurant for years.
HOURS: Serving lunch and dinner 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday
Closed Sundays
Rating: 2 and one-half forks
