Style Magazine ~ Mattison's magic kingdom

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Mattison's magic kingdom
BY RALPH DAVID ROMBERG/PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARK SICKLES

The centerpiece of the Manatee Riverwalk, with its broad brick promenade overlooking the scenic Manatee River, is the old yacht club at the Twin Dolphin Marina, built in 1928. For 70 years, off and on, the marina has been a mainstay of the local culinary scene.

It took Paul Mattison, past 40 now, but still the golden boy of the Sarasota restaurant scene to make Bradenton more of a dining destination. Mattison's Riverside, his masterful overhaul of the old yacht club, has been a resounding success virtually since it opened last November, drawing customers from Venice to St. Pete.

Mattison's restaurants, in downtown Sarasota, on Longboat Key and Siesta Key, plus his weekly cooking show and his frequent appearances hawking Cuisinart on the Home Shopping Network, have made his handsome face and easy charm familiar to thousands.

They all seemed to be waiting for a table at Riverside on a recent Saturday night, drawn by the Mattison name, no doubt, but also by one of the most spectacular waterfront sites on the west coast of Florida.

Occupying its own little peninsula, surrounded by water on three sides, the restaurant has long been a Bradenton landmark as the old Twin Dolphin Yacht Club, with food and atmosphere that hit a note somewhere between country club and awards banquet. The one reminder of those days is the 1976 salad iceberg and bacon bits and bottled Parmesan offered tongue-in-cheek in four versions, including a saucer-sized dollop for $3.

Mattison's pushed the yacht club's old menu ahead 40 years with a long and varied list of selections that purport to catch some of the Asian notes so much in the air there days.

There's even a sushi bar, with 40 offerings, including the signature Mattison roll, which mixes yellowtail, scallion, eel, lettuce, sesame seeds and tobiko (fish roe) in a spicy sauce, $13.50.

From the regular menu, other than the hint of ginger and lemon grass that turns up from time to time, and the occasional miso glaze, the Riverside Asian aspirations prove somewhat elusive on the place.

Here, as in his restaurants elsewhere (there's also a retail shop in Sarasota specializing in cookware, catering and guided culinary and wine tours of Italy), Mattison specialized in 21st-century Florida Cuisine, featuring rack of lamb, $29, pork tenderloin, $22, salmon, $18, even a duck in orange sauce, albeit spiked with ginger, $19.

There is also a mix of fresh fish and seafood from around the world, west (Hawaiian monchong pomfret, crusted with coconut and macadamia nuts, $23; Fiji escolar with a miso glaze, $25) to east (Nantucket sea scallops, sautéed with lemon vinaigrette $24) and north (Atlantic lobster, crab stuffed, $29) to south (Gulf caught black grouper with sun-dried tomato risotto and lobster sauce, $26)

Such an abundance of choices, although commendable for its ambition, many, at times, be too much of a good thing.

Mattison's Riverside is a big restaurant 340 seats - and often a boisterously busy one, with the kitchen cranking out 1,000 meals on a heavy-duty Saturday night. Fish, especially the mildly flavored variety in which Mattison's Riverside specializes, requires a light, deft touch and impeccable timing, certainly a challenge in a restaurant doing such volume.

The Riverside, like all of Mattison's restaurants, depends for its considerable charms on the gift of its location, the perfection of its lighting (Mattison has a set designers sense of light), and the relentless good will of its floor staff (the service is uniformly excellent). The Riverside's food isn t bad, for the most part, and can be quite good. Desserts, in particular, as a smashing success, like what used to be called "The 11 o clock number" in Broadway musicals the big finish that sends everybody home happy. (Big is right; the chocolate banana bread pudding, $8, is two enormous wedges; the flawlessly tart Key Lime pie, $7, often goes home in one of the modish black plastic boxes the restaurant provides for leftovers.)

But the real appeal of the Riverside is the mood that Mattison has managed to create, which is buoyant to the point of exuberance. In classic river front style, his Bradenton restaurant draws a sprawling mix of styles, ages and backgrounds slinky black dress and five-inch stilettos next to flip-flops and a "Wanna see my lizard?" T-shirt. Everybody is clearly having a great time.

With apologies to Disney, it's Mattison's Riverside that may be the happiest place on earth. 1200 First Ave. W., Bradenton; 748-8087.