Dining Out: Marshall Street Cafe

You never want to be known as "the restaurant that SUV ran into," but a year ago, that's just what Marshall Street Café became.

Last June, an SUV traveling down Adams Street hit a VCU police car and rammed into one of Jackson Ward's signature historic buildings, demolishing the ground-floor restaurant and the apartments above. Fortunately, no one was seriously injured.

Unfortunately, Marshall Street Café was closed for nine months while the building was reconstructed from the ground up. Using the rebuilding to add another dimension to the restaurant's identity, Marshall Street's owners reopened the café in March, calling it Marshall Street Café and Jazz Bistro. The menu is essentially the same — crabcakes, hamburgers, salmon and wings — but now you can catch live jazz nightly and during Sunday brunch.

Although the café offered jazz occasionally in its previous life, officially rechristening it as a "jazz bistro" helps Marshall Street stand out among the many wonderful restaurants thriving on Broad Street just a block away.

But it also sets the bar higher regarding the menu. The new name, at least for me, implies a consistently stocked kitchen and starters more impressive than potato skins, especially considering that the cozy interior with linen-covered tables has always been quite elegant.

When I first wrote about Marshall Street Café in 2007, I thought the menu strayed toward the simple side of things, but dishes were executed well.

However, when a group of friends and I recently visited the reopened café, we were met with mixed results. Our experience was similar to my original visits in that the staff was extremely friendly and the live music gave the space a good vibe, but the food didn't resonate as positively.

The appetizer selections are more sports bar than jazz bistro, including nachos and egg rolls (each $7.95). We started with the sample platter ($12.95): mozzarella sticks, potato skins and chicken wings.

The mozzarella sticks were, well, mozzarella sticks. All I can really say about them is that they were served with marinara sauce. The thick-cut, homemade potato skins were satisfying, topped with melted cheddar, bacon and green onions. Lightly fried and doused in a tangy-spicy sauce, the meaty wings were definitely the highlight.

Sandwiches are available, but I hoped the small entrée list is where Marshall Street would shine. So we ordered a pork chop ($15.95), crabcakes ($16.95), Caesar salad ($6.95) with shrimp ($6.95 extra) and a 10-ounce New York strip ($13.95) with sautéed mushrooms and onions ($1 extra).

Sides ($2.75), such as homemade potato salad and seasoned cabbage, are listed on the menu, but our server told us they weren't available, leaving us to choose from mashed potatoes, coleslaw, french fries and collards.

The pork chop was topped with deliciously savory gravy and caramelized onions, but the meat itself was dry and tough. Despite being studded with tangy bits of green pepper, the crabcakes resembled potato pancakes, with mostly filler.

The strip was cooked to order, but the kitchen was out of mushrooms, a key selling point when we ordered. The Caesar was just what you would expect, but I was shocked by how small the shrimp were given the addition doubled the price of the salad.

Surprisingly, the sides turned out to be the best part. Creamy mashed potatoes were laced with the intense flavors of garlic and onions. Collards came loaded with large hunks of pork, adding more depth to their already appealing flavor.

Throughout our meal, our server, the chef and a bartender all stopped by to see how we were doing, a level of dedicated service you don't see often. As the jazz band got going, I wished I'd enjoyed the food more.

Maybe Marshall Street Café is still trying to find its rhythm after the massive rebuild. The dining experience itself is in sync, so let's hope the kitchen just needs time to tune up.