Home Cooking So Good, Only a Restaurant Could Do It

In her first review as interim critic, Melissa Clark visits Lola’s, whose produce-driven cooking is familiar but lifted by brilliant twists and tweaks.

This is Melissa Clark’s first review as an interim restaurant critic, along with Priya Krishna, for The New York Times.

My first thought as the waiter slid a plate of stir-fried noodles in front of me at Lola’s was, I can make this at home. Noodles seared hot and fast with vegetables, a dash of soy sauce and a cube of Japanese curry? For even a moderately motivated home cook, that’s just Tuesday.

It took a single bite to prove me wrong.

The handmade noodles, golden from fresh yolks and earthy from einkorn flour, were wide and springy, with a nutty chew I’d hardly ever experienced, let alone achieved. The curry sauce buzzed with turmeric and freshly ground spices. And the whole thing was topped with ginger-marinated pole beans, silky bok choy and crispy browned morsels that turned out to be fried Yukon Gold potatoes — a nod to the soft tubers typically found in a Japanese curry, but taken to a crunchier extreme.

Each bite built on the previous one, by turns savory, tangy and succulent, creating a quietly mesmerizing crescendo. It was the kind of dish any home cook could relate to, with its homey noodles and farmers’ market vegetables. It’s just that most of us could never reach this high.

Nearly the whole menu at Lola’s is like that. Comforting and familiar, it’s based on the kind of local, seasonal produce I always cook with — yet energized by acrobatic twists and tweaks that pivot gracefully from a solid technical grounding. There’s a BLT, topped with the ripest, juiciest summer tomatoes imaginable, then bolstered by sweet and tangy bacon jam. Roasted carrots spiced with garam masala are spooned over a rich yogurt, and accompanied by warm, fluffy naan. Wilted vinegared cabbage, as soft and ruffled as a lady’s handkerchief, is draped gently over coconut okonomiyaki.