90 Henrietta Street | 442-0444

Monday-Friday 5:30-10 p.m.; Saturday 5-10 p.m.; Sunday 5-9 p.m.

Over the past several years, restaurants have started telling us, often in great detail, about where our food comes from. By attaching pedigrees to their dishes, restaurateurs hope to convince us not only that the food they are offering is fresh and local, but also that it is worth the price that they are charging for it. There's at least one restaurant in Rochester, though, that has been offering seasonal, local menus for almost 30 years - and the modifiers on the menus refer to what's being done to the ingredients, not where they came from. Rooney's doesn't have to tell us how great it is; the restaurant shows it in the quality of the service and the high caliber of the dishes coming out the kitchen. As Joe Squalli (the fourth owner of the restaurant since it became a fine dining institution in 1979) will tell you, Rooney's has been doing fresh, local, and seasonal for so long that "it's natural": there's just no other way to do it.

Dinner at Rooney's takes time. Although the menu is short, the choices are difficult. However, you could choose entirely at random and come up with a winning combination. Some dishes, executive chef John Bardeschewski told me, are classics, but others come and go throughout the year (and even the preparation styles for the standards change with the seasons, sporting different side dishes, different sauces, and different taste combinations that reflect the best the market has to offer). Order a cocktail and take the time to consider the possibilities.

We started off with Rooney's signature dish, plantain-crusted jumbo shrimp served with a mango salsa and curry butter ($12). This variation on coconut shrimp was invented more than 20 years ago by Rooney's current sous chef, Minh Nguyen. Nguyen, who emigrated from Vietnam in 1982, combined plantains and mangos in his take on a classic dish with surprising results. Although the original preparation featured Vietnamese fish sauce in the salsa, the current version of the dish contains only sweet and savory flavors as counterpoints to the richness of the shrimp and the silky texture of the bright-yellow curry butter. The slight muskiness of the mango, the deep, almost smoky tang of fried plantain, and the zing of red pepper add even more flavor.

The panko-crusted crab cake ($11) is everything you would want in a crab cake - richly flavored and held together by just enough savory filler to add taste to the cake without making it bready. The cake was perfectly crusted on the outside, and served atop a mound of bright green split beans surrounded by a deep-green swirl of intensely flavored green peppercorn mayonnaise (a nice change from the usual remoulade that accompanies crab cakes). Both of these appetizers were quite substantial (the shrimp is offered as an entrée), and either of them, with a salad, could make for a very satisfying meal. 

I could quibble with the decision to call either of the two salads we ordered salads in the strictest sense of the word, but that would be silly. Both of these dishes - the grilled portobello mushroom, apple, and eggplant with fresh mozzarella ($8), and the oven-roasted asparagus with prosciutto, parmesan, and balsamic vinegar ($9) - were sublime. The vegetables and the mushroom in the grilled salad were clearly cooked over a wood flame, taking on a very satisfying hickory tang in the process that worked well with the earthy mushroom and sweet apple. Both the eggplant and the summer squash on the plate were nicely grilled, and the mozzarella brought both a welcome creaminess and a nice contrast in textures. Asparagus is a must on any seasonal menu, and the spears used here were pretty amazing: dark purple at the tip and perfectly tender without even a hint of the woodiness. Complemented by salty-smoky cubes of prosciutto, astringent and resiny balsamic vinegar, and the round bite of good parmesan, this was one wonderful side dish - although I'm still not sure I can call it a salad.

Fish, fowl, or meat? Hard decision. We tried all three, and were vastly impressed. Rooney's favors simple preparations and presentations. All of the plates were attractive, and none of them presented the too-frequent problem of how to dig into them without making a huge mess. The wood-grilled swordfish steak ($30) was cooked to that delicate point between done and overdone, finished with sage-infused brown butter (shades of late winter melding into spring), and paired with a transcendent warm salad of pearl barley and spiced pecans along with tiny, tender peas. Buttery, nutty, rich, with a nice dose of spice and the tang of wood smoke, the fish was a perfect palette for the other flavors that were paired with it.

The same was true for the crawfish-crusted mahi mahi ($31). The fish was first rate and well cooked, but the "crust" - really a spicy and buttery crawfish cake balanced on top of the fish - stole the show. The fragrant and ever-so-slightly briny shrimp butter with which the mashed potatoes were finished transformed the humble spuds into something truly special. The duck ($26), slowly roasted to render the skin crispy and the meat meltingly tender, was also a very good choice. Served with a generous portion of wild rice and a sauce of port and berries, the whole dish invited me to abandon decorum (and utensils) and attack the duck with bare hands. Smoky flesh and ripe fruit combined to make every bite a pleasure.

Rooney's prides itself on its lamb, and justly so: a rack of four ribs ($31) is rubbed down with salt, pepper, cumin, and perhaps even a bit of lemon peel, and roasted over a wood fire until the outside is savory and beautifully seared, and the flesh within is tender and perfumed with the spices from the outside. The delicate meat was cooked to a true medium rare, and served with a rich red wine and demiglace sauce (of which I missed not a drop). Accompanied by truffled mashed potatoes, this might have been a bit heavy for spring, but was perfect for the chilly evening on which I ate it.

Although it will be hard to do so, saving room for dessert at Rooney's is an excellent idea. Chocolate fanatics will find much to love in the chocolate bombe ($7)- layers of rich, dark chocolate cake and chocolate mousse, covered in a thick coating of milk-chocolate ganache. Those with palates more attuned to subtle pleasures will be filling in whatever space remains with bread pudding studded with golden raisins and surrounded by a vanilla-perfumed crème anglaise ($6).