When Avalon opened last April my feelings about the place ranged anywhere from ambivalence to indifference. I gave it three or four chances. With every visit I found as much to like about the place as there was to not like about it. But if a restaurant can survive a year in this mess of fickle appetites, they've got to be doing at least something right.

I get the sense that owner Howard Quan has been doing a lot of trial and error over the past year. For one thing, he's tweaked the decor noticeably. When the place first opened, it had a bleak corporate sterility about it. He's since swapped out the sparse wooden chairs with leather-upholstered seats and he's decorated the walls with assorted wine-related bric-a-brac. He replaced that unoffensive beige-ness with some warmer, darker wood tones. They're superficial changes, but, surprisingly, give the place a more lived-in feel. Incidentally, a rooftop terrace is in the works now too, which should be a welcome improvement.



Other changes, however, Quan seems to have had less control over, namely the revolving door in his kitchen -- two chefs with two vastly different styles in less than 12 months. Chef Hilary Ambrose opened Avalon with haute cuisine on the brain. His tendency to "compress," "foam," "froth," and "dust" everything seemed at odds with the overall objective of the restaurant, which was to be a "wine bar and grill." Make no mistake, some of things he did were terrific. Just about anything pork-based that he touched turned to gold, for instance. At the same time, though, much of what he did was overwrought, too busy, and perhaps went over the heads of many diners. I sense that this may have been part of the reason he and owner Howard Quan ultimately parted ways. When Sean Jorgensen (formerly of Apartment, Factory, and Maya) took over the kitchen he pared the menu down and created dishes that could be described in simple broad strokes -- meat, starch, vegetable, sauce. For a place like Avalon, this was the right move; leave the esoteric stuff to the higher price points. But Jorgensen's stint, too, was short-lived. After he left Quan hired former Kathleen's 5 chef Peter Gong as a temporary stop-gap measure. Gong took Jorgensen's menu, tweaked a few knobs, filed off what he thought were a few rough edges and made a couple of additions. And then he left too. Now, I gather that Avalon's kitchen is strictly in maintenance mode. On some nights even Quan himself is donning chef whites. Although I'm guessing he's probably expediting orders rather than cooking.

So what's the current state of the food? Well, it's far from transcendent, but, considering all of the abrupt personnel changes, the place is holding up surprisingly well. My only real complaint is that the kitchen tends to be timid with the seasonings. A confident cook is never afraid to season his food. Take, for example, the Canadian mussels in harissa. With an appetizer like this the aroma should hit you before it even reaches your table. But that smoky and sweet spiciness is almost totally absent. Likewise, even the delicate combination of white asparagus with a duck egg yolk ravioli could benefit from a little something else, perhaps a sprinkling of fleur de sel.



Other dishes, like the miso lamb rack, while sound in technique, suffer from a bit of superfluity. You've got three chops topped with a mint chimichurri served over stew of bacon and lentils with thinly sliced eggplant rolled up around little pats of goats cheese. All of that gives you plenty of umami to go around. The smear of miso on the plate is just overkill.



Once again, though, the pork dishes reign supreme here. Their ribs are delicious. After a 24-hour sous vide bath they're smoked for a spell and finally slathered in a sloppy, chunky chipotle barbecue sauce -- probably the one sauce they've seasoned enough. Don't bother with the "asparagus and apple slaw" on the side, though, it's a flavorless misnomer -- mostly carrots.



Desserts are showing reasonably well these days. Before Peter Gong left he slapped this up on the menu....



This is his Eton mess, a rocks glass full of meringue chunks with fresh strawberries and passion fruit. It's basically an English-style deconstructed Pavlova -- pretty hard not to like. Another seasonally appropriate sweet is this...



A lemon cream mille feuille. If you ask me, it looks more like a Napoleon, but why argue semantics when something tastes good? This one is simple: a few layers of crispy phyllo dough bound together with dollops of lemon cream. On top is a wafer-thin slice of dried lemon. You can eat it. It's good.

Food aside, though, there is one thing about Avalon that has not changed since my last time in: service. To put this in context, Avalon opened right around the time all of those fly-by-night Expo restaurants were luring good servers across the river with higher pay. It was a damaging blow to Shanghai's already suffering service standards and most restaurateurs will tell you they're still reeling from it today. In spite of that, Avalon's service staff demonstrates a competence and level of training you don't see in a lot of comparable restaurants around town. Servers are polite. They're able to explain the menu in relatively clear English. They understand the sequence of service, i.e. after each course they clear the table and mark it with utensils for the next course. Needs are anticipated. For example, you're water glass never goes below the halfway point. They manage to keep an eye on you with out actually looking like they're keeping an eye on you. On top of that, they look out for one another's tables, too. Perhaps I shouldn't be too congratulatory to servers for what they should be doing in the first place, but let's face it, this kind of stuff is a rarity in Shanghai and a little service goes a long way...

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