Venue Review: Two: Twenty: Two Restaurant and Events

GEORGETOWN — When it was announced a couple of months ago that three new restaurants would be opening in Georgetown, I was surprised. Lexington rarely has that many openings in a month. But it appears that the sale of liquor, wine and beer by the glass has opened the door for many entrepreneurs in the Scott County seat. The last upscale restaurant without wine or beer in Georgetown was Elijah's, and it didn't make it. This time, Two: Twenty: Two Restaurant and Events, at 222 North Broadway, has wine, beer and liquor and a good chance of succeeding — with a little tweaking.

Two: Twenty: Two — the peculiar punctuation is on the menu and the signs — is an upscale but casual restaurant in an old Greek Revival mansion at North Broadway and East Jefferson Street. Inside, it's minimalist, mainly just an entrance foyer with a hostess and big double parlors with nicely napped tables and chairs.

Two: Twenty: Two's menu is small, not complicated, but adequate. To me, as long as everything is done well, it doesn't matter how small the menu is. In addition to the menu offerings, we were offered two evening specials, fried quail and walleye pike.

We started with "Tastes," or appetizers. From a selection of crab cakes, fried green tomatoes, goat cheese crusted with walnuts, and fresh mozzarella and tomatoes, we chose the crab cakes with lemon-lime aioli ($9) and the soup: basil tomato bisque ($5). The crab cake was the best I've had anywhere in the region. It was so simple. Hardly anything, possibly mayonnaise, held the patty together. It was pure lump crab and no Old Bay Seasoning. Hallelujah!

Still, there was a problem. The aioli wasn't aioli at all. Broken down, aioli means garlic and oil. Here, there wasn't a hint of garlic in the mayonnaise served with the crab cake. It was just mayonnaise.

The basil-tomato bisque was a cream soup served in a large soup plate. It had great top notes of fresh tomato but lacked a finish. Although I could see bits of basil, it was barely noticeable on the palate. And on the way down, it lost all flavor (that's a problem with vegetarian soups). Tweaking with herbs or other seasonings could help.

For salads, we tried the watercress and arugula Caesar ($6) and the wilted lettuce ($6). Both were delightful. The mix of watercress and arugula was very fresh and topped with large, baked garlic croutons. If you like anchovies, this salad dressing had them in spades.

The wilted lettuce salad was a classic. A lettuce chiffonade was doused with a hot bacon vinaigrette. Anything with bacon is wonderful, and so was this.

You don't see quail served very often, so we ordered the fried fowl ($21). The special certainly did not disappoint. The two birds, had been butterflied, dredged in seasoned flour and deep-fried. They were served with a wild and brown rice mixture. There isn't much to a quail except bones, so we had to work to get every delectable morsel.

The other entrée came from the menu, a rack of lamb bean cassoulet ($24). This one intrigued me. Cassoulet is usually a hearty winter dish, and here it was, in the heat of late summer. It's a classic French stew or casserole made with white beans and an assortment of meats — lamb, duck, pork — and the fat from them. But when our server asked me how I wanted the rack of lamb cooked, I was beginning to sense that I wasn't getting true cassoulet; the lamb should have been cooked in the pot with the beans. What I was served was a delicious rack of lamb — tiny lamb chops — wonderfully grilled and served with a side of white and lima beans that had been stewed with bread crumbs. That's not cassoulet. As with the aioli, terminology is flawed here. What we got was an excellent rack of lamb with beans on the side.

We washed down our appetizers and entrees with a nice Bohemian Highway California cabernet sauvignon ($5 a glass).

Desserts were offered without a menu. We chose the lemon tart ($4) and lemon cheesecake ($4) to go with a couple of good cups of coffee ($2 each).

The tart was light and not too satisfying. I suppose my mama ruined me on lemon tarts, tart being the optimum word. It wasn't bad; it was just too light — sweet with a lemonesque taste.

And speaking of light, the lemon cheesecake was a lot of fluff. It was reminiscent of an old restaurant standby, the French silk pie. Not a lot to it.

Two: Twenty: Two has the potential to be a Bluegrass classic. It has a great wait staff. But the chef needs to check the recipes, tweak a few things and rename a couple of others.

Dinner for two, including four glasses of cabernet sauvignon and tax, but not tip, was $109.18.