photo: Chris Shields

This Old House, Updated
By B.A. Nilsson

A long-planned, well-executed refurbishment has paid off in many respects. The Century House has a venerable history, first as a mid-19th-century house built on land originally sold to Stephen Van Rensselaer. In the middle of the 20th century, the O’Hearn family bought the property and opened the restaurant, and it’s still run by family members who have honored the building’s past by preserving its unique Federalist character. While the conference center is a more modern addition, it salutes the old house’s character. And a meal in the tavern dining room harkens to an older, easier-going time—even on a bustling Friday, as my family discovered during a recent visit.

With banquets humming in rooms nearby and distant, with the dining room almost filled, we still couldn’t have received a more hospitable greeting or more attentive service. It’s a bit of a surprise to be seated at a wooden-topped table in what’s clearly meant to be a white-linen establishment, but it’s part of a new, less-formal personality the restaurant has adopted.

And the tables themselves are beautiful, custom-made for the Century House by Amish craftsmen who mixed old and new wood in the process. Because the tables sit on a newly-laid wooden floor (itself from an old Connecticut tobacco barn), the tables are cleverly sound-dampened with acoustic foam.

Homemade bread is immediately served with tapenade and butter rosettes. Juggling the bread and your oversized menu can be a challenge, but at least the menu kept me away from the bread for a while.

The restaurant hired chef Kevin Conway close to a year ago; a veteran of such places as Chez Sophie and Pearl, Conway has an excellent way of reimagining old favorites, which is especially good in a place like this, where the entrées run to the traditional.

Filet mignon ($23), for instance, gets a shiitake mushroom demi-glaze; rack of lamb ($26) is brushed with mustard and bread crumbs. Veal osso bucco ($22) is there, one of Conway’s signature dishes, which I would choose in favor of the veal Oscar ($21)—the latter, with tougher-than-expected meat and the barest dribble of Hollandaise, didn’t come together in flavors despite the addition of lobster meat. And the promised garlic mashed potatoes were replaced by cold roasted potatoes.

Another problem dish was the roasted duck ($22). Served over overdone wild rice that was free of any seasoning, the breast portion of the duck was raw on the inside. When we showed this to our server, it was whisked back to the kitchen and corrected, but it’s enough of a time-sensitive dish that by the time of its return we were ready to wrap it for take-home.

“That shouldn’t have happened,” said manager Colin DeMers, who, as part of the family, has worked at the restaurant in various capacities for 21 years and recently became a co-owner. “We try to take care with every dish that goes out of the kitchen, and I’m glad they corrected it for you.” He sounded so unhappy about it during our conversation that I’m going to have to go back there for dinner some time and try it again—he assures me the problem was unique.

Which I can believe. Another entrée we sampled during the visit, tortellini Maribou ($17), was a wonderful array of pasta with Mediterranean flavors, set off with artichoke hearts and olives and the pine nuts of a pesto, and it was terrific.

As were the unusual appetizers, like vegetable vol au vent ($6), a medley of mushrooms, peppers, eggplant and squash over puff pastry with goat cheese, and a portabella mushroom crepe ($6) in a chive-flavored beurre blanc.

On another visit, everything that emerged from the kitchen was superb, starting with the Martha’s Vineyard lobster chowder ($9) that justifies its price with a generous helping of the aforementioned meat in a creamy rich base—and I do mean creamy. The Century House filo roll ($6) wraps spinach and chanterelle mushrooms in filo pastry and tops it with a pesto cream sauce, rich enough to stand alone as an appetizer.

Salads are available à la carte, but the Caesar salad ($3) and spinach salad ($4) are larger than their prices suggest. I’d skip the app and start with one of them if you have a salad craving.

Seafood risotto ($20) presents shrimp, crab and lobster portions over a creamy (love that cream!) bed of rice, finished a little more al dente than I would expect but flavored magnificently. And the pan-seared sea bass ($19) was all it was promised to be, with a moist, tender inside, crispy skin, excellent flavors enhanced by the saffron-infused cream sauce, all of it drizzling into the elusive mashed potatoes that awaited below.

Service was very friendly and we felt rarely neglected. During the Friday visit, the duo English Garden performed Beatles covers and worked very well in the room. It’s a far cry from the fusty Century House of old, and is well worth a look both for banquets and any special-occasion meal.

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