Paul LaRosa and Michael Cammarata, the team behind Privé, La Fina, and LaRosa’s, have taken over the former Smythe & Dove Steak space in Andover, a sprawling barn with plenty of room to hang out, watch a game or two, and grab lunch or dinner. If Andover feels like an up-and-coming destination for the culinary-minded, well, that’s probably accurate. The Autograph American Tavern, which opened in Andover last fall, is a casual restaurant with an option available for nearly everyone. I recently stopped by for a Wednesday lunch and was greeted by a busy dining room.
The restaurant’s menu is divided into starters, soups and salads, pizzas, burgers and handhelds, and mains. To start, I sampled one the Autograph’s signature dishes, the Guacapoke, a marriage of tuna poké and guacamole (served in a traditional Mexican Molcajete, the dish includes cubed yellowfin tuna, quinoa, avocado, watermelon radish, wakame, a sesame glaze, and wonton chips). It’s a healthy helping, big enough for a table of four.
A parade of food followed: a massive California Cobb salad, adorned with crumbled bacon, avocado, tomato, bleu cheese, hard-boiled egg, and a creamy avocado-ranch dressing; perfectly crisp chicken wings, doused in Buffalo sauce (the restaurant also offers other sauce offerings) and served with pickled cauliflower florets; the iconic Autograph burger, a towering specimen that came topped with candied bacon, white cheddar, fried onion strings, and a barbecue aioli and accompanied by thick-cut French fries and sweet pickles; marinated steak tips, served perfectly medium-rare with mashed red-bliss potatoes and garlicky green beans; and a fillet of cod, cloaked in a light breading next to a tangle of sautéed greens.
The restaurant embraces family-owned companies, like Malden-based Dom’s for its steak tips and Haverhill-based Fantini Bakery for bread.
My lunch, for what it’s worth, was not small. Portions, I found, were substantial. Autograph serves the kind of tavern food that makes people want to settle in—for a game, for a couple of drinks, for an afternoon or lazy evening. My one-hour lunch quickly became a two-hour lunch. In the bright dining room—large windows face the street, and I could watch the leaves turn—I sat through until the end. The coda was a blondie baked in cast-iron, and served in it, too. It was a little gooey in the center, and necessarily so. That blondie could have served my whole family and yet, with just my husband and me as patrons, it—along with the ice cream and whipped cream that sat atop it—disappeared suspiciously quickly.
There are, these days, far too few places that can execute two things at once: casual food, for instance, that is both deliberate and smart and that is served in a dining room that still welcomes, say, large televisions for sports. A place where a signature cocktail is close at hand (and where you can get a nonalcoholic drink, too; I was tempted by the booze-free version of the piña colada, made with coconut, lime, orgeat, and orange juice, and by the dreamily tropical-sounding mango-lemonade, which includes lemon, mango, and prickly-pear juices).
A contemporary interior and plenty of private spaces, too, make Autograph a place where no two experiences are the same. Wandering around the 120-seat restaurant, I wondered how many times you could return to the restaurant and have completely different dining experiences. Seats at two bars—one downstairs, with space for 24, and one upstairs, with space for 16—face large televisions, ideal for watching a game over a plate of wings. The upstairs mezzanine provides its own unique perspective. The private dining room can host up to 50, ideal for holiday events, office parties, baby showers, birthday parties, and sports drafts. (To that sports draft point: On Sundays, the restaurant incentivizes football fans with their Sunday Ticket, a promotion that promises specials timed with all football kickoffs.)
In the evening, back at home, my husband and I opened a bag of leftovers and unearthed, for our children, a treasure trove of delights. Our children, who had been unable to join us for lunch, were treated, then, to their own version of Autograph by proxy. We realized, then, that there was truly something for everyone to enjoy, even once the dishes had been packed up—a wing, a burger, a salad executed with precision. Andover, your next casual hotspot has arrived.