Review: STIR’s cocktails deliver, but the food can sometimes frustrate diners
Just inside the entrance at STIR, hanging on a plank wall above a pair of black leather Victorian camelback sofas, is a display of vintage ice-making tools worthy of a museum. Ice picks, tongs, chisels, even the long saws that were used in bygone days to cut blocks of ice from a frozen lake — the exhibit announces right up front that STIR, a stylish new restaurant and bar that opened last summer on the ground floor of the Bank of America Tower at North Hills, is all about the cocktail.
Or more precisely, the ice in the cocktail. The bar’s claim to fame is artisanal ice made with purified water, frozen in massive 300 pound blocks and cut, shaved, crushed or molded into a variety of shapes. Each shape is chosen specifically to match the cocktails for which it’s best suited — crushed for a Hemingway daiquiri, say, and a single large rock for an Old-Fashioned.
Most impressive of all, the one you’ll tell your friends about the next day, is the ice sphere. Used in a select handful of cocktails (I had it in a barrel-aged Vieux Carré), the sphere starts out as a 2-inch cube that the bartender brings to the table along with an aluminum molding contraption. He places the cube in the mold, which he invites you to touch to demonstrate that it uses only ambient room temperature to do its thing. You watch amazed as, over the next couple of minutes or so, the top half of the mold slowly settles. When it’s done, the bartender removes a crystal clear sphere from the mold and proceeds to assemble the drink.
It’s a drink, I might add, that lives up to the show. The bar boasts more than 300 liquors, and it’s tended by well-trained bartenders. Throw them a curveball that’s not on the list of classic and house specialty cocktails — a dry Botanist martini up with a twist, for example — you can rest assured they’ll deliver the goods.
If only the same could be said of the food, which hits the mark just often enough to be all the more frustrating when it misses. The restaurant touts its oyster bar as a specialty, and typically offers several East Coast varieties from North Carolina to P.E.I. The dozen house oysters I ordered recently (from James River, Virginia) were irreproachably fresh, but every single one was the victim of two egregious shucker crimes: the oyster was still attached to the shell, and the precious oyster liquor had been spilled.
But fried oysters Casino, which inverts the traditional presentation by nestling plump, delicately battered fried oysters in shells lined with a garlicky, bacon-spangled butter sauce, is a keeper. So is a rich, sherry-tinged crab bisque, garnished with an emerald swirl of basil oil. And pan-seared salmon cakes, with just enough binder to hold them together, topped with dollops of citrus dill yogurt and pink curlicues of pickled red onion.
The seafood-centric menu includes a separate section devoted to ceviches, among them a refreshing avocado & mahi ceviche in a classic Peruvian green tiger’s milk marinade. But an otherwise solid entree presentation of shrimp and grits is marred by a too salty shrimp stock sauce.
Venture ashore, and you get tripped up by the opposite problem: too little salt on the burgers in Tillamook sliders. You’re on more solid ground with a different starter featuring fried green tomatoes topped with house-made pimento cheese, green tomato relish and cotija cheese.
Then you stumble again, but just slightly. A surf-and-turf entree pairing of grilled house-cut filet mignon and homemade crab ravioli is solidly executed, but the stingy portion of just two ravioli per serving leaves you feeling shortchanged at $31.95.
You recoup your losses with a dessert called chocolate candy bar, which is lavished with pricy Luxardo cherries and Luxardo whipped cream. The multi-layered candy bar is cut into five sections to encourage sharing. So is the banana pudding cheesecake, though the cheesecake was unappetizingly dry when I tried it a few weeks ago.
Apparently I’m not the only one. General manager Chris Brett says others have voiced the same criticism in sufficient numbers that the kitchen has since tweaked the recipe to make the cheesecake creamier. And, given the proven track record of SquareOne Holdings, which owns the original STIR in Chattanooga (Raleigh is the second location), as well as the perennially popular Carolina Brewery in Chapel Hill, it’s a good bet that overall kitchen consistency will improve with time.
In the meantime, may I suggest a cocktail for dessert?
STIR
4242 Six Forks Road, Raleigh
984-200-8614
Cuisine: seafood
Rating: 2 1/2 stars
Prices: $$
Atmosphere: eclectic mix of rustic and retro
Noise level: moderate to high
Service: friendly, generally good pacing, spotty attentiveness
Recommended: cocktails, crab bisque, fried oysters Casino, salmon cakes, cocktails
Open: Lunch and dinner daily, brunch Saturday and Sunday
Reservations: suggested
Other: full bar; accommodates children; limited vegetarian selection; patio; wheelchair accessible; parking in Bank of America Tower garage, complimentary valet parking.
The N&O’s critic dines anonymously; the newspaper pays for all meals. We rank restaurants in five categories: 5 stars: Extraordinary. 4 stars: Excellent. 3 stars: Above average. 2 stars: Average. 1 star: Fair.
The dollar signs defined: $ Entrees average less than $10. $ Entrees $11 to $20. $$ Entrees $21 to $30. $$ Entrees more than $30.