Stuffed Cornish game hen; "Grandmother's spinach salad" - red onions, grapefruit, bleu cheese, lemon vinaigrette; pear tartlette with port wine reduction

(photo: Rose Mattrey)

Favorite restaurants are like old friends. You spend some of the happiest times in your life with them, and you mourn their passing with no small pain in your heart.

Last year, I said good-bye to my favorite restaurant—Just Pasta—when we stopped by for a farewell cocktail last New Year’s Eve before heading to the Hourglass Restaurant for a fabulous dinner. In May of this year, it was time to bid farewell to the Hourglass. This past year, I also mourned the passing of the Ya Ya Bayou Brewhouse, the Royal Pheasant—for the second time in a year—and Romanello’s Roseland, with which I first became acquainted when I moved to Buffalo in 1969.

Fortunately, 2005 has brought with it some new personal favorites: Shango, Amarylllis and O’Connell’s Hourglass. And now to that list I’ve added The Coda at 350 Pennsylvania St., across from Kleinhans Hall, following a visit last Thursday.

While this is The Coda’s second reincarnation in the past decade in terms of a restaurant with that name operating on that site, it was my first visit to the establishment, a former mom-and-pop grocery store. It’s a small cozy, attractive restaurant that seats 42. White lace curtains framing the front window contrast with the splashy colors of abstract paintings by artist Bari Goodman. Similarly, your meal is served on white geometric dishes in striking shapes that make it more surprising when the sugar and cream to accompany your coffee arrive in antique silver serving pieces. The stucco walls are painted terra cotta. Soft lighting is provided by candles and wall sconces, including some placed directly below mirrors that bounce the light around the dining room.

Like my other new favorites, The Coda offers fabulous, imaginative dishes prepared by impressive young chefs. It also presents a twist on that theme—the chefs here are a husband-and-wife team, Richard “Roo” and Karen Buckley. They opened The Coda, their first restaurant venture, on Sept. 15.

Roo Buckley grew up in Williamsville, graduated from St. Joseph Intercollegiate Institute and then the French Culinary Institute in New York City. Karen hails from Jerusalem. While the majority of their experience has been in New York City and Atlanta, Roo has worked in the kitchen at the Rue Franklin.

In addition to describing it as imaginative and delicious, the most important thing I can tell you about the food we enjoyed at The Coda is that the menu changes from week to week. The Coda serves dinner beginning at 5 pm on Thursday through Sunday. The week’s menu is posted Tuesdays on the restaurant’s web site at www.the-coda.com, where Roo also maintains an interesting chef’s food journal. The only constants from week to week are an outstanding crème brûlée and “chef’s experimental ice cream flight” on the dessert menu, and the fact that there will be an offering with a name that’s a literary reference (more about that later).

I began my meal with mushroom roulade ($4), a mushroom purée enclosed in homemade puff pastry jelly-roll-style before being sliced and baked. Clever and delicious, the crisp puff pastry was a nice contrast to the mushroom. The red cabbage slaw dressed with piquant plum/mustard vinaigrette that accompanied this vegetarian offering was also very good. The guest’s starter was a bowl of cream of asparagus soup with fino sherry ($4) that was very good, but needed a dash of salt to bring out its flavor.

Also available as starters were a “hearty” vegetable soup with red lentils ($4) and gravlax (cured raw salmon) and apple carpaccio with lemon oil ($9).

I loved my very impressive cobb salad ($8) that featured thinly sliced red onion and chopped egg, tomato and bacon and shredded cheese on lightly dressed greens. The guest opted for the equally nice house salad ($4) that featured greens tossed with a citrus dressing topped with thinly sliced artichoke and orange zest. The salad was referred to on the menu as “Tender Buttons,” in homage to a long prose-poem by writer Gertrude Stein in which she discusses a list of food items including artichokes and oranges. Thanks to our attentive server, Jim, for that explanation.

It was a tough decision selecting from the entrées, but I chose very well with a generous serving of red snapper ($23) crusted with finely chopped almonds, and served with saffron rice and large slices of zucchini and yellow squash that had been hollowed out and filled with a delicious herb pesto. It was the same herb pesto that we enjoyed, along with tapenade, on fresh bread prior to our meal, and I welcomed its encore appearance.

The guest, a red-meat lover, opted for and devoured the Delmonico steak ($24) served medium rare as ordered with a garlic béarnaise sauce and, in lieu of mashed potatoes, a root-vegetable mash featuring turnips and celeriac, or celery root.

Other entrées on the menu were chicken cordon bleu with roesti potatoes ($21), Calvados-glazed pork chop with tomato chutney ($22) and a vegetarian delight—a winter succotash featuring baked beets, oyster mushrooms and parsnip ($17).

Like the meal, dessert was outstanding. The Coda’s crème brûlée ($5), which Roo Buckley learned how to make studying with the former pastry chef at Le Cirque restaurant in New York City, is the new standard by which I will measure all future crème brûlées. The custard was silken, the thin caramelized sugar topping cracked appropriately when tapped with a spoon. Heaven on Earth!

The guest had high praise for his generous serving of dense bourbon chocolate cake topped with Nutella butter cream ($5). We were temped to eat our way through the dessert menu—which included an apple tartlette and spiced berry soup (pannacotta) each at $5—and, in fact, ordered an unprecedented third dessert.

After all, how many opportunities do you get to sample “experimental” ice creams like those crafted by Roo Buckley (he admits on his web food journal that it was always his dream to be able to serve these ice creams)? Our serving, at $5, included small scoops of five different ice creams: pea/Parmesan cheese, goat cheese, sun-dried tomato/chocolate, maple/caramel and celeriac/apple. Each was distinctive; the pea/Parmesan was the most intriguing. I think Anderson’s would be very smart to add goat cheese to its flavors of custard.

When planning a visit to The Coda, be aware that there will be a parking challenge if there’s an event at Kleinhans on the night of your visit. Reservations are highly recommended; make them early. For those who are physically challenged, the restaurant’s back door provides easy access.