SET prominently in an area short on restaurants and shops, Cobble Creek Cafe, now renamed The Creek, has for the last 15 years provided the area's academic, concert and corporate community with a pretty dining spot offering more than burgers and brews.
Cobble Creek Cafe had been languishing in the last few years, and its advertisement in a playbill for the Performing Arts Center at Purchase College promised a rebirth: At The Creek, ''we changed our name, menu and everything else.''
But while the restaurant's road sign glows with the new name, no one has bothered to change much indoors.
Business cards and butter toppers bear the old name, and we recognized dishes that have been on the menu since 1997, many of them hip and new back then, but they're now basic offerings at almost any hotel restaurant. All that goat cheese, crab cakes and rare tuna are lovely additions to contemporary menus, but if that's all that's offered, it's been done and done.
Still on the menu is the laughable announcement that ''due to the integrity of the presentation, items will not be split in the kitchen.'' The notion of hordes of diners demanding that the kitchen split portions seems spurious. Furthermore, splitting one portion into two would hardly violate the integrity of the presentations here. There was nothing special about them at all; indeed, my dinner companions and I felt had. In addition, the server spent more of his time hobnobbing at the separate bar than taking care of customers in the dining room.
There were a few bright spots. A generous crab cake came with pleasingly tart rémoulade sauce, a classic pairing that sharpens the sweetness of the crab. Set on a bed of mesclun with ginger and wasabi mayonnaise, ''rare'' tuna was seared too long, but the flavor survived though some texture was lost. Foie gras was cut unevenly, which in cooking made the thin end overly done, but the thicker portion was deliciously molten and buttery. Sweet caramelized onions made a good match.
Some other appetizers required more work. The doughy crust of pizza Margherita, with tomato, fresh basil and mozzarella, lacked salt. Dumplings that needed more time in the steamer were filled with a barely warm chunk of chicken, which is usually ground with vegetables but instead was left whole.
Steak and mashed potatoes is a combination that's almost foolproof, and it was no exception here. Meaty juices from grilled, tender rib eye steak were soaked up by a fluffy heap of garlic mashed potatoes, with green beans on the side.
It's a pity that dreadful risotto compromised the success of decent salmon.
It's back to the drawing board for some other entrees: insipid grilled pork loin sliced over beans and rice made too long in advance; flavorless, tough scallops overpowered by spicy jambalaya, and dry, textureless shrimp that might have been cooked several times before being served.
Judging from mushy pear upside-down cake and an almost liquid chocolate terrine -- which tasted better than it looked -- desserts could use some inspiration.
Recent vintages of ordinary but decent wines, mostly from California, are in the $30 to $40 range, and about a dozen wines are available by the glass. The Creek also has a full bar.
The Creek
578 Anderson Hill Road, Purchase. (914)761-0050.
POOR
ATMOSPHERE -- Pretty stained glass insets and flickering votive sconces enliven a cube of a dining room with a separate bar. Awkward arrangement of tables that are at once too long and too narrow. Casual, inattentive service.
RECOMMENDED DISHES -- Crab cake, salmon (without risotto), grilled rib eye.
PRICES -- Lunch, main dishes, $14 to $18; sandwiches, $8 to $10. Dinner, $15 to $26.
CREDIT CARDS -- Major cards accepted.
HOURS -- Lunch, Mondays through Fridays, 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Dinner, Sundays through Thursdays, 5:30 to 9 p.m.; Fridays and Saturdays, 5:30 to 10 p.m.
RESERVATIONS -- A good idea on concerts nights at the nearby Performing Arts Center at Purchase College.
WHEELCHAIR ACCESS -- None
THE RATINGS -- Excellent. Very good. Good. Satisfactory. Poor. Ratings reflect the reviewer's reaction primarily to food, with ambience and service taken into consideration. Menu listings and prices are subject to change.
REVIEW PUBLISHED -- Jan. 18, 2004
