LekaricA As Unusual As Name

Friday, April 23, 1999

By TRENT ROWE
The Ledger

Progress is making Old Florida a thing of the past, but you can get the feeling of the way things used to be and a taste of tomorrow at the LekaricA restaurant in Highland Park Hills Inn and Golf Course, south of Lake Wales.

LekaricA Address: 1650 South Highland Park Drive, Lake Wales Phone: 863-676-8281 Open: 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 6 to 9 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m Sunday (brunch). FYI: Daily specials. Recommended: smoked salmon croquettes, prosciutto-wrapped artichokes, stuffed portobella mushroom, potato-leek soup, salads, salmon, pasta di mare, rack of lamb, chicken Jerusalem, Bok Tower. Children's choices: half price.

The restaurant is in the original inn and takes up one end of the building.

Little oil lamps grace each table, which is set with linen and silver that includes butter knives. Big chandeliers hang from the ceiling, and the walls are board and batten, a look that makes you expect the original cast of "The Great Gatsby" to enter laughing at any moment.

A pianist plays a grand piano on weekend evenings.

The chef and menu are new since the restaurant was reviewed soon after opening two years ago. And the menu is due to be changed again to keep offerings fresh.

The chef picks from the best available ingredients for daily specials.

From the four appetizers on the menu, we started with prosciutto-wrapped artichoke hearts ($6.50).

The chef took pains to make the dish pretty as well as tasty, starting with a bed of mixed baby greens. Tiny pieces of sweet red pepper topped each of four artichoke hearts wrapped in the dry Italian ham.

The menu promised a stuffing of cream cheese broiled to a golden brown. We got the cream cheese but not the golden brown. No matter. Great taste made up for the light color.

A stuffed giant portobella mushroom ($6.75) turned out to be a large, almost giant mushroom, in a pool of goat cheese cream.

Prosciutto and sage flavored the stuffing with little piles of tapenade (minced black olives) and roasted red pepper around the outside.

The hot and gutsy goat cheese cream and even gutsier tapenade made the plate an array of bold flavors.

A sprig of thyme topped the plate.

If you have two appetizers, make the mushroom the second one because of the strong flavors.

Four finger-like smoked salmon croquettes with tzatziki ($5.50) in mixed greens looked hand-rolled. A light crust hid lighter texture on the inside with smoky flavor coming through.

Try the croquettes with and without the sauce.

A little dressing would have made the perfect greens into a small salad.

Potato-leek soup, the soup of the day on our first visit, had more solid than liquid. Bits of ham seemed an odd ingredient, but the pork worked to flavor the thick soup.

French onion soup ($3.95) came in a bowl, not a traditional crock, with a sprig of fresh dill and so much cheese that I forgot the taste of the soup before I finished chewing the topping.

A second try refreshed my memory of hearty onion and beef flavor.

Three crusty and tender rolls accompanied the soups.

A delicious house salad of perfect baby greens and sun-dried tomatoes with honey mustard dressing would have been improved a tad if the sun-dried tomatoes had been soaked a bit to make the pieces softer.

The dressing could not be seen but was tasted.

Wilted spinach salad ($7.75) would make a meal, with perfect small spinach leaves topped by chopped hard cooked egg, bacon, red onion and sliced mushrooms under a flood of warm Louis dressing.

Because of the whole leaves, eating the salad could not have been pretty. Thank heavens for large cloth napkins.

Seeded lavosh-like crackers came with the salad.

Neither soups nor salads needed the tiny salt and pepper shakers, the kind grandma brought out when the preacher came to dinner.

A half of a thick, boneless salmon steak, well marked from the grill, made up grilled filet of salmon with Hood River pear sauce ($16.50).

The salmon would have been good nude, but dressing the perfectly cooked fish with pear sauce made it a dish fit for company.

A mound of risotto, flecked with flavors, would have made a fine meal by itself.

Feta cheese topped a vegetable medley -- yellow squash, zucchini, black olives -- in thick tomato sauce that completed the entree.

The veal chop I ordered is gone, so roasted rack of lamb ($21.50) filled the bill.

"How would you like the lamb cooked?"

"As the chef thinks it best" brought eight separated tender chops done medium with very little of the promised stone-ground mustard rosemary persillade crust on each chop. A balsamic Merlot reduction had enough flavor to almost mask the taste of the meat. A little went a long way.

A sprig of fresh rosemary topped very garlicky mashed potatoes.

None of the flavors could be described as subtle.

I expected Jerusalem artichokes in Chicken Jerusalem ($14.50). Globe artichoke hearts shared the plate with a double breast of chicken, moist in the middle, with an assertive sauce.

Cooked wedges of tomato appeared rather than the concasse (chopped tomato) as the menu promised.

Tournedos Bordelaise with pate de fois gras ($20.50) will be gone from the new menu, but a filet will be the same price and will, no doubt, be just as fine.

Whole baby carrots, not large ones pared down, with a touch of green tops, alternated with barely-thicker-than-knitting-needle asparagus spears for a beautiful presentation.

Five perfect shrimp stood guard in a soup bowl of very hot pasta studded with scallops and lobster chunks for Pasta di mare ($16.50).

Intriguing nuances of flavors kept popping out of the creamy sauce.

Our knowledgeable and pleasant server said desserts come from the kitchen. The pastry person did a wonderful job making some desserts look perfect enough to have come from a factory.

Peanut butter mousse pie ($4.95) had three layers of flavor on a chocolate crust -- almost like a peanut butter cup.

Dollops of whipped cream topped an existing border on a thin slice of lemon blueberry torte ($4.75). Lemon flavor overpowered blueberry taste.

Tiramisu ($3.50) had much more cheese than lady fingers and left a fatty feeling in the mouth. More lady fingers soaked in espresso would cut the feeling.

A slim piece of three-layered chocolate cake ($3.95) seemed like an old friend. I have seen this one before in other restaurants.

A Bok Tower ($6.95) turned out to be the best of the desserts.

A chocolate tower, choice of dark or white chocolate, filled with mousse of the day, chocolate, came with two reflecting pools of intense raspberry sauce and whipped cream around the base with four rivers of piped mousse radiating from the tower.

We needed a knife to cut the very crunchy chocolate.

LekaricA is a pleasant place to dine. Food is a cut above good and service is professional. It's one of the places to take visitors for something they can't get at home.

LekaricA earns 4 stars, and the future looks bright.