Restaurant review: Temple falls short of high aims

Getting to your table at Temple requires navigating through a sensory experience circuit.

Out on the sidewalk, your nose is tickled by burning incense. Inside the dark, cramped entry, a chic kimono-clad hostess warmly greets you, takes your coat and gestures toward a pair of gigantic half-moon doors. "Lounge or dining room?" she inquires, and when you respond with the latter, she gives the heavy door on the right a tug, initiating a deep, "Addams Family" creak. She leads you inside a dim, low-ceilinged room dominated by a curving wall bathed in scarlet light and accented by dozens of flickering white candles floating inside clear glass vessels. As you take a seat inside a deep, comfortable booth, your peripheral vision detects motion: sinuous koi languidly maneuvering through an enormous aquarium.

"So this is what Christina Aguilera's bedroom must look like," said a friend as he admired the surroundings.

Yeah, it's sexy, it's fun and, in a land of lookalike restaurants, refreshingly different. Owner Thom Pham is no stranger to seductive eye candy, obvious to anyone who has visited Azia, his looky Eat Street darling. With Temple, Pham has dialed up his routine to match the more sophisticated downtown address: a subdued grown-up vibe, an ambitious culinary program and prices to match.

It's a pleasure to watch Pham the clotheshorse work his dining room; he brings a hefty dose of sartorial polish to a dining scene starving for a restaurateur with style. Everything coming out of the kitchen has comparable visual panache. Chef Tuan Nguyen (a gifted California Cafe vet) cooks with a sculptor's sensibility -- each plate is prettier than the last -- and he has a vivid imagination. But I wonder if he and Pham need to refine some of their efforts.

For starters, Temple ain't cheap. An artful grilled lobster, the succulent meat singing with a kaffir lime sting -- was a knockout in the looks department, but, in a problem I would encounter repeatedly, was barely above room temperature. Is heat too much to expect for $45? A palm-size filet of Kobe-style beef goes for a stratospheric $75. The kitchen slightly undercooks to order, then asks diners to do the rest via a heated tableside stone. As you sear it yourself ("Finally, something hot," said my friend), an intoxicating scent wafts up from your cute Flintstones cooktop, although in the end the butter knife-tender meat is more about superior texture than flavor. Not that I noticed much, as my mind was preoccupied with tallying up each bite as another five-dollar notch on my MasterCard statement.

Most other entrees hover in the upper $20s, and the overall investment is somewhat uneven. Mandarin orange and anise put a playful flavor spin on a long cut of juicy short ribs, and giant prawns, butterflied and grilled in their shells to a wonderfully smoky finish and served over crunchy red rice, were highly satisfying. Ditto a creamy risotto enriched with deeply flavorful mushrooms and a grilled-to-precision New York strip finished in a tangy plum wine demiglace and paired with ultra-creamy mashed potatoes.

Less successful was a dreary Peking duck, the skin decidedly un-crispy. An elaborate eggplant Napoleon looked better than it tasted. Roasted hen was dry and overcooked, although I barely noticed as the plate's roasted Brussels sprouts and delicate rosemary-scented potato croquette were fantastic (a trend for many entrees: the side dishes were genius, but the main courses were lacking). A pork tenderloin was frighteningly underdone, mahi-mahi was a salty mess and the less said about a peculiar pan-seared skate, the better.

Nguyen's starters are his best work. I could eat the beautiful rolls wound with smoked sturgeon and shiitake and enoki mushrooms every day, those well-balanced tastes and textures chased by a flirtatious bit of spicy heat. Pan-roasted quail was hearty and well-seasoned. Thai chiles gave a subtle punch to a bowl of meaty, perfectly steamed mussels. Oysters were cool and briny. A plate of greens is done up like a lovely bouquet, and roasted beets -- paper thin and as translucent as stained glass -- framed a gorgeous blend of peppery watercress and a poached quail egg. A liver pâté, made using what our server called "poor man's lobster" (translation: monkfish), was meager in portion but stunning to look at -- a timbale of the stuff, crowned with a teaspoon of caviar and resting on an icy disk.

The clever desserts are equally hit-and-miss. Best was a campy hibiscus-scented panna cotta, a luscious tapioca parfait and a trio of smartly executed crème brûlée variations: mellow chocolate, tangy ginger, perky green tea. My suggestion: Round out the meal by perusing the fabulous cocktail menu, one alluring sexpot-in-a-glass after another.

A final nit. At these prices, service should be flawless. But after running into a flurry of overlooked details -- missing flatware, endless time lapses between courses, room-temperature white wine -- I was disappointed to conclude that at Temple, expectations and reality don't quite meet eye to eye.

Rick Nelson • 612-673-4757 • rdnelson@startribune.com