Lamb at Othello | Hanna Raskin
Published on January 14, 2025 at 3:11 pm
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At a recent off-the-record confab involving a few forward-looking restaurateurs, a consensus emerged. According to these owners, what’s driving admirable places out of business prematurely — and forcing ambitious places to scale back their artistic visions — is food.
Food! What was once the defining aspect of restaurants has become its biggest drag. Food is expensive, and food is divisive. You try coming up with a dish that’s equally pleasing to the gluten-free vegan, garlic allergen sufferer and keto adherent sharing a table. Plus, finding reliable people to prepare food — at least for the wages that restaurateurs say they can afford to pay — is nearly impossible. Obviously, these bigwigs concluded, restaurants are soon going to have to quit serving it.
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If that sounds radical, consider that the dining public has already been clued in to this coming development. After all, what’s a wine bar but a restaurant with a miniscule menu?
And if a charcuterie board hasn’t persuaded you that restaurants as we’ve known them are on their way out, what these seers would say is that food is the least they have to offer. Their specialty is creating environments in which customers feel cared for and closer to their communities. They’re adept at choosing the perfect light fixtures and playlists, as well as providing the kind of hospitality that makes the everyday melt away.
In other words, if you want a glimpse of the future, check out Othello in Springfield.
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Opened in September by Vanesa Ewais; Ewais’ father, restaurateur Jeriees “Jerry” Ewais; and Sebastian Velez, Othello looks outwardly like an oldfangled restaurant, at least in terms of food availability. Its menu lists a range of appetizers, salads, and large-format entrees that solo diners are discouraged from tackling by themselves. Unfortunately, few of those dishes alone amount to a reason to return. Yet everyone I know who’s gone to Othello wants to go back — me included.
Othello’s dining space — roughly halved between an understated ivory-walled room, outfitted with Moorish-esque pendant lights and votives, and a quiet outdoor patio — is stunning. If I was going to quibble, I’d note the bar stools are a few inches too low, but that oversight is eclipsed by an abundant number of front-of-house staffers, all of whom seem sincerely invested in guests’ good times.
Nominally, the menu at Othello is Mediterranean, although mishmash might be a more accurate descriptor. How else to classify a muted rice pudding ornamented with so much dried fruit that it registers as glorified muesli?
Pity the fan of patatas bravas who orders the snack anticipating crispy hot cubed potatoes stung with pimentón. At Othello, the phrase conjures a pyramid of what could pass for Chinese bakery sesame balls in size and color, albeit with no discernable texture inside or out. The softish orbs taste mostly of secondhand oil, with innards that recall unsalted canned potatoes.
That’s not meant as a compliment, but it’s possible the typical patron has a palate calibrated differently than mine, since a server assured me that the patatas are Othello’s best-selling item. An astute dining companion speculated that it might put some diners in mind of tater tots, and maybe that’s so. Or perhaps eaters are won over by the puddle of uncannily smooth toum at the base of the potato structure.
Which is to say: Othello is big on sauces. Right now, the whole world is staunchly pro-sauce, as evidenced by the KFC prototype that debuted this past December in Orlando. At Saucy, Harlan Sanders’ 11 iconic herbs and spices have been upstaged by 11 dipping sauces, served in flights of four, so customers don’t have to choose between Creole honey mustard and jalapeno pesto ranch for their tenders.
A similar ethos prevails at Othello, where most flavor tasks are outsourced to accompanying condiments, whether it’s the lemon-rich aioli alongside mild-tasting smelt, or herbed yogurt paired with bland kibbeh paste that’s been deep-fried. When the saucing’s left up to the kitchen, it’s harder to discern what flavors were on the plate in the first place: I’m thinking here of what’s billed as chorizo-spiced mushrooms, paired with vegan mayonnaise, and branzino blighted by harissa.
So, what to order in a place you very much ought to visit? The lamb’s a winner, even if the shank’s too hulking to cook evenly. It’s worth getting for the accompanying brothy rice, a beautiful amalgam of fluff and flavor. Yet the rice is far from the carb star at Othello, where servers rightly do their best to make certain every meal begins with homemade bread.
Derived from man’oushe, the Levantine counterpart to pizza, Othello’s bread is a proudly puffed-up exemplar of basic dough. The kitchen will shower it with za’atar or harissa upon request, which isn’t a bad idea if you’re looking to jazz up woefully toned-down hummus. Otherwise, the salted-and-oiled bread is more than fine on its own, lightly crisped at the edges and warm throughout. Just lovely, in fact.
Bread is food, sure, but it’s also a symbol of welcome, communion, sustenance, and support. It’s testament to Othello’s grasp of the true meaning of restaurants that its pinnacle guest experience entails a loaf of bread and glass of Congaree & Penn cider; maybe those restaurateurs keen to give up cooking are on to something, after all.
Othello, 1555 N. Pearl St., Jacksonville | 904-882-0433 | othellospringfield.com
