Endive exhibits delicious potential

Service: eclectic and sometimes awkward

Best dishes: chicken fingers, pork tenderloin

Vegetarian selections: appetizers, salads and sides

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Price range: $$-$$$

Credit cards: all major credit cards

Hours: 5 p.m.-close Thursdays-Saturdays

Children: uncommon, but probably OK

Parking: dedicated lot

Reservations: yes

Wheelchair access: yes

Smoking: no

Noise level: moderate

Patio: no, but plans for one

Takeout: yes

Address, phone: 1468 Mecaslin St. NW, Atlanta. 404-504-9044

Website: www.endivepublik.com

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We have the wrong friends.

That’s what my dining buddy and I were thinking as we ate at Endive Publik House, the new restaurant arm of Endive Catering. We haven’t been to weddings with catered food like this.

Endive, which began catering operations in 2003, recently added restaurant service three nights a week. You’ll find this new neighborhood hangout nestled back in the Loring Heights area, just a stone’s throw from Atlantic Station in Midtown.

Endive has taken on the challenge of bridging the chasm between catering and restaurant dining. Having entered the food industry from the catering side, I can tell you that these are two entirely different animals, requiring related but different skill sets. Bartending, service and food expectations are unique to each scenario.

Endive Publik House is still straddling these two worlds, as it attempts to make the shift. The reasonably priced menu reads like a greatest hits list from catering proposals, many of the dishes inspired by catering client favorites. Items like the bourbon-glazed salmon topped with a carefully positioned nest of malanga root come highly styled, consistent with photogenic, event-worthy fare. And, as my friend and I noted, it’s very good — by catering standards, where the food is but one aspect of a larger experience.

Servers, most of whom have worked Endive’s catering events, are still acclimating to the performer’s role of a restaurant server and seem a bit uncomfortable with the consistent interaction. Some have yet to learn to increase tips by simply selling refills on selections from the small beer and wine menu. Instead, we are left empty and lusting after the frosty pours of SweetWater 420 ($5) and Monday Night Fu Manbrew ($5) in oversized glasses heading to neighboring tables while we attempt to flag our absent waiter.

Bartenders at the “full” (but not so full) bar struggle with classic cocktail requests. Negroni? Can’t do that. Old-fashioned? “Can we do that? What’s in that?” Yes! They can do that one — with nearly 20 minutes’ effort.

Meanwhile, we munched our way through appetizers that could easily grace a buffet. The black truffle cremini mushroom dip ($4), an indulgently French onion-y cream cheese mixture, could almost serve as a centerpiece. Curled-edge strips of malanga root, lotus root and boniato in pale hues stand tall in a piped-ruffle cloud of the dip.

Sumptuous miniature wonton tacos ($6) stuffed with soy-sherry-marinated chicken and ginger-studded slaw sit in an alternating pattern on a teardrop-shaped plate lined with a strip of leaf. Cored Roma tomato halves on the heirloom tomato salad ($7) spout mixed greens like exploding volcanoes.

Tiny triangles of tortilla-crusted duck pizza ($7) line a long rectangular platter in overlapping angles. The pizza’s dark purply-brown, oppressively sweet fig jam gives color contrast to the mild blue cheese and crispy white crust.

Interestingly, my favorite finger food most closely resembled a restaurant standard: the well-seasoned and generously portioned chicken fingers ($6). Large, diagonally cut chicken breasts encrusted with cornflakes weep moisture and beg to be dragged through the accompanying house-made cider-and-honey-laced whole-grain mustard.

Presentation remains a priority with entrees. Both the sugary-sweet glazed salmon ($14) and the well-seared beef tenderloin (6 ounces, $25; 10 ounces, $32) come adorned with a crispy crown of tangled root vegetables (malanga for the salmon; sweet potato for the beef) for visual interest and texture.

The Korean barbecue-glazed beef roast ($12) provides an artfully stark contrast in color. The nearly black pool of sticky glaze surrounding the chunks of tender meat juxtaposed with two delicately poised, glossy white and deeply dense steamed buns.

Perhaps because they were originally created to satisfy the palates of the widest audience possible, some of the dishes lean toward the sweetest end of the spectrum. Therefore, it was with trepidation that I ordered the pork tenderloin ($12), wary of the accompanying roasted apples and peach sauce. Yet, here the flavor composition was as balanced as the aesthetics. Crusty-seared wedges of pork topped with Endive’s signature root nettle snuggle into a peach sauce that’s as savory and unctuous as it is sweet.

The caterers come back out to play for dessert, offering a weekly chef’s sampler platter in lieu of individual options ($6). A trio of picture-perfect miniature desserts line a glass tray, each appealing to different cravings. A tiny chocolate cream pie for the chocoholics, a moist honey-almond cake with a red-wine poached peach for warm dessert fiends and a take on strawberry shortcake with strawberry sorbet in between two bitty biscuits just for me.

By catering standards, Endive Publik House wins best in show. If it can retool for restaurant service, where food and service are the main attraction and not ancillary components to an event experience, it can rank higher by restaurant standards.