Food

Restaurant Marliave

ROBERT NADEAU — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 15:44:48 GMT

Introducing a menu that multitasks
The Marliave is 132 years old. It opened as a French restaurant, survived Prohibition as a speakeasy, and at some point became Italian.

FOURTH INCARNATION The landmark Marliave is back for an upscale round.

The Marliave is 132 years old. It opened as a French restaurant, survived Prohibition as a speakeasy, and at some point became Italian. And so, in the lifetime of the Boston Phoenix, it was a relatively cheap, old-fashioned Italian cafû spread oddly over three floors and a charming porch, which is now enclosed. Two years ago the restaurant was shuttered to be lovingly rehabilitated by chef Scott Herritt, of Beacon Hill's cozy basement-level Grotto. Now Herritt is running the three-level circus that is the new Marliave: an oyster bar; a New England food/speakeasy-flavor bar-bistro; and a fine-dining room, with which we are here concerned. The news from up top is good: old Marliave fans may have a little sticker shock, but the upstairs food is mostly Italian and mostly terrific.

On the dining-room menu, the operative word is "variation." Each appetizers and dessert, for example, presents more than one treatment of an ingredient or flavor, while each entrûe is actually divided into two courses, with one making something like an Italian pasta middle course and the other a modest, nouvelle-portion entrûe. It's a lot to take in, but it works quite well in pacing a luxurious dinner over an evening.

The appetizers seem to be the hardest to get right when it comes to the multitasking. My favorite was Eva's Garden Salad ($17), which manages to highlight two delicious kinds of heirloom tomatoes during out-of-season November, along with mesclun, edible nasturtium flowers, and a demitasse of rich tomato-veggie bisque. Beet salad ($17) includes a similar cuplet of cold borscht, a marvelous row of cubed mousses (goat cheese and red and yellow beets), and a somewhat silly toothpick skewer of sliced beets and multicolored cheese.

The duck appetizer ($17) brings two scrumptious meatballs in a port-wine reduction, plus foie gras (fattened duck liver) stuffed into a few ravioli. Unfortunately, the foie gras got lost inside the pasta, but you get the idea. Three pairs of oysters ($17) all fell short: oysters Rockefeller tasted mostly like cheese; oysters casino were overwhelmed by salty bacon; and oysters Champagne were just more cheese with oysters baked in there somewhere. It'd be better to simply perfect one of these recipes.

ChoCho's

AARON KAGAN — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 15:46:11 GMT

Transport yourself to a magical land of inexpensive Korean delicacies
ChoCho's distinguishes itself from the other cubby-like eateries in the Porter Exchange in two ways. First, it captures the fun, food-court-like energy of the adjacent noodle shops and sushi bars, but manages to feel more like a restaurant than a lunch counter.

Cantina La Mexicana

MC SLIM JB — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 23:30:17 GMT

A modest taqueria expands to go a little bit uptown
I've long been a patron of the eccentrically capitalized TaQueria La Mexicana in Somerville's Union Square, relying on it for tasty, cheap tacos from actual Mexican owners.

Erbaluce

ROBERT NADEAU — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 23:33:50 GMT

Elaborate cuisine that's simply delicious
If they start rotisserie leagues for restaurants, I'm never going to draft a chef in the first round. I just can't follow them all, what with their constant job changes and stints working for other chefs — for a week, for a year, taking out the garbage, who knows?

NO MUSSEL Razor clams make for a great dish in a terrific Mediterranean broth.

If they start rotisserie leagues for restaurants, I'm never going to draft a chef in the first round. I just can't follow them all, what with their constant job changes and stints working for other chefs — for a week, for a year, taking out the garbage, who knows? I can follow maybe 10 Boston chefs, each of whom has a really distinctive style. One I lost track of is Charles Draghi, who was a pioneer with transparent infusion sauces at the North End's Marcuccio's for what seemed like 45 seconds. Then he popped up at Limbo for another shining moment. I also caught him as the opening chef at 33, where I had one of the best meals ever served in the most distracting surroundings imaginable (they have since moderated both the cheffery and the interior design).

Then what happened to Draghi? It turns out he went over to the dark side and became a waiter for five years. Does working the front of the room, seeing how diners actually order and react, make you a better chef? Maybe. Now Draghi finally has his own restaurant, Erbaluce, and his food has a mature style that combines the best of the experimental "ûpices" cuisine — the early version of the science-lab stuff he used to do — with the locavore "terroirs" cuisine that is the current rage. Keeping things Italian puts it all in focus.

Food started with white-bean paste in a pool of virgin olive oil, with Tuscan bread to dip in it. The bean paste was intriguingly spiced with nutmeg and pepper and — what? These moments of intrigue recur, as Draghi is a flavor artist.

In an appetizer of roasted whole turnips with raisin locro ($16), for example, there was an amazing interaction between the slightly spicy taste of the turnips and something in the cheese. The whole thing ends up as bracing as parsnips, even though parsnips aren't involved. Razor clams ($9), in a broth with saffron and fennel, are a meatier twist on mussels. (They're also sandier, as razor clams are burrowing creatures and cannot be cultured on ropes.) This is a great dish of seafood in a terrific Mediterranean broth; we asked for spoons to finish it.

Roadhouse Craft Beer & BBQ

ROBERT NADEAU — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 23:43:53 GMT

Off to a (somewhat) smoky start
So, about the long-awaited Roadhouse Craft Beer & BBQ, sister restaurant to the popular Publick House, which has finally been rebuilt, licensed, and is now open.

ON THE FRY: The deep-fry baby-back ribs are a highlight at Roadhouse.

So, about the long-awaited Roadhouse Craft Beer & BBQ, sister restaurant to the popular Publick House, which has finally been rebuilt, licensed, and is now open. The 40 draft beers — mostly American — are outstanding. And service is pretty good; noise only becomes problematic on weekends. They even deep-fry baby-back ribs ($9) — it doesn’t get any more extreme than that.

But in the end, I’m pretty certain they don’t actually slow-smoke the barbecue. I’m quite sure about this with the half-chicken ($14), which is a boned breast with blackened skin but powdery, overcooked white meat; the dark-meat quarter is only a little better. The loss is flavor, both of the meat and of the flame. The gain, more evident on other meats, is tenderness. A brisket sandwich ($11) is wonderfully tender and juicy, with satisfactory hickory smokishness in the sauce. The least smoky meat I sampled on two visits was the mixed sausage platter ($12), which looked and tasted like supermarket kielbasa sliced two ways. Though it’s listed as an entrée, this platter is actually more like an appetizer. It comes with some white toasts, deli mustard, pickles, and an excellent mesclun salad.

An actual appetizer, Roadhouse chili ($4/cup; $8/bowl), is decent, despite cooked-in tomatoes and onions (which tend to make it too sweet) and decorative tortilla chips (which are okay in my book as long as they’re just decorations). I’d like a bottle of hot sauce handy with this chili, but that’s an easy fix.

In fact, the smoking problem isn’t an impossible fix either — you just need someone to commit hours and hours to keeping briskets and chickens and ribs going at low temperatures so they stay juicy, concentrate more flavor, and develop that telltale red ring. Then again, you could drop the smoke-cooking entirely if you also drop the pre- or post-cooking; there’s a perfectly legitimate North Carolina/Boston black tradition of oven-baked or slow-grilled ribs. Until the restaurant makes a decision, my helpful but unhealthful suggestion is to order the fried baby-back ribs. If it’s not about cheap meat and live fire, it should at least be about crunch and grease and salt. The barbecue sauce with these ribs has a little smokage, a bit too much sweetness, and a nice layer of hotness.

The Battery

MC SLIM JB — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 18:18:24 GMT

Fried fish to make an Irishman misty
Standing in a long queue of Irish ex-pats at the Battery, a new counter-service fish-and-chips shop in Brighton Center, I pondered what local foods I'd miss if I moved overseas.

Oran Café

MC SLIM JB — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 16:57:18 GMT

Revelatory Moroccan, served without frills
Recently, Boston Chowhounds steered me to Oran Café, a two-month-old Moroccan restaurant in East Boston that has much in common with Angela’s.

Winsor Dim Sum Café

ROBERT NADEAU — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 12:49:26 GMT

Dim sum all day and night
At most of Boston’s dim-sum palaces, my strategy has always been to sit near the kitchen door, to get the little plates off the cart when they’re hottest.

BEST IN SHOW: Lobster with ginger and scallion is one of the winners at Winsor Dim Sum

When dining out, comedian Henny Youngman always asked for a table near a waiter. At most of Boston’s dim-sum palaces, my strategy has always been to sit near the kitchen door, to get the little plates off the cart when they’re hottest. Winsor Dim Sum has introduced two exciting reforms: dim sum made to order, and dim sum — classically served as brunch or tea snacks — available all day. The former makes seating arrangements less necessary, but still a good idea.

Of course, no Chinese restaurant bets the mortgage on any single theme, so the menu also includes a considerable assortment of Hong Kong seafood, a sprinkling of Szechwan dishes, plus congee, bubble teas, and even sandwiches.

Various kinds of Chinese restaurants have been housed in this space, yet it remains a simple upstairs dining room. There are two Chinese pictures on the wall, and a third of a waterfall with a cheesy flickering-water effect. At night the room resolves into three very large tables and some smaller ones, with all the big tables our night occupied by a single family birthday party. The partiers were eating Cantonese dinner food, and we wanted what they were having. So we had dim sum for appetizers, and then tucked into the Cantonese menu with relish.

Off the dim-sum list, we started with “pork and shrimp dumpling” ($2.75), which produced four piping-hot barrel-shaped double bites of exquisite, juicy freshness. These were like the original shumai, before Japanese restaurants got a hold of them and began making them smaller and more tightly wrapped. I thought “crabmeat dumpling with soup inside” ($2.95) might be one of those Taiwanese type, where you use a straw to get the broth out of the dumpling before you try to eat it. In fact, we got one triple-size Peking ravioli floating in a bowl of “superior stock,” the pork/chicken broth that is the basis of much of Cantonese cooking. With a few mushrooms flavoring the shredded shrimp, it was an excellent snack.

Oskar Blues Ten Fidy Imperial Stout

MIKE MILIARD — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 19:35:28 GMT

Black gold
“Ten Fidy” is not the price per gallon, but simply the name of the latest, greatest beer from Oskar Blues Brewery in Lyons, Colorado.

The Green Tomato 2

MC SLIM JB — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 01:28:37 GMT

A Somerville cafeteria escapes the horror of Lunch Lady Land
Cafeterias — the kind of restaurant where you push a tray along a line and get served by counter help instead of having food brought to your table by a waiter — don’t have the greatest associations.

BOKX 109

ROBERT NADEAU — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 01:16:03 GMT

Go meat in Newton
To get questions about the name out of the way, “bokx” is the industry term for boxed cuts of meat, and number 109 is prime rib.

TAKE A NUMBER" Veal rib chop (306) is very tasty, with a hint of chew.

To get questions about the name out of the way, “bokx” is the industry term for boxed cuts of meat, and number 109 is prime rib. There are other numbers on the menu here too: 103 (rib eye); 173 (porterhouse); 204 (rack of lamb); 413 (pork loin). Personally, I preferred the hides and branding irons on the walls of the old steak houses, but cowboy culture is so last year; ours is the age of industrial chic. The dreamy techno soundtrack at BOKX 109 bridges the industrial name of the restaurant and the new age graphics of the hotel in which it’s located. How does all of this work for a place just off Route 128, south of the Massachusetts Turnpike? I don’t know, but the buyers of a defunct Holiday Inn thought they did, and here we are.

We walked past a bar with TVs set to sports and into a dark dining room with an up-market steak-house menu. You thought the steak luxe thing had reached its limit when Boston Public closed, but no. We sat down at a dark wood table set with refracted red water glasses, upside down salt and pepper grinders, and a switchblade-looking steak knife for big meat orders.

My favorite appetizer was calamari frito misto ($12), for its impeccable dry-fry job and presentation in a checked paper cylinder. Warning: the accompanying fried green beans are harmless, but the fried red chili peppers can do serious harm to the unprepared. The red dipping sauce also has hot spice and a hint of smoke. Many will prefer not to dip.

Also quite good were the crab cakes ($16), three all-meat patties crisped on the top and bottom, but so meaty they fall apart. On each one is a little salad of frisée and green apple shreds. Mussels ($12) are seasonally plump and served in a tomato linguiça broth that builds up some hot pepper intensity. (Our server warned us about this one.) Asparagus salad ($12), from the “Bokx of Greens” menu sub-section, is presented with a crisp-fried coddled egg. This would be a classic if the egg didn’t end up solid due to the extra deep-fry step. Excellent wild mushrooms enhanced with truffle oil are included in this salad, but a side dish of the mushrooms ($8) gets you a lot more of them, so if you’re mainly into the fungi, have them as an appetizer.

Mike & Patty’s

MC SLIM JB — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 17:22:41 GMT

Lilliputian place trumps Brobdingnagian expectations
Yet another set of owners has now taken over this tiny, nearly invisible Bay Village spot, calling it Mike & Patty’s and serving coffee, tea, pastries, breakfast plates, and sandwiches in the morning, and sandwiches and salads at midday.

Machu Picchu Charcoal Chicken & Grill

ROBERT NADEAU — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 03:10:55 GMT

Double the pleasure, half the price
Having made a success of their remarkably authentic Peruvian restaurant in Union Square, the owners of Machu Picchu moved it to a bigger space up 30 yards across the street.

BIRDLAND: Try the rotisserie chicken at Machu Picchu.

Having made a success of their remarkably authentic Peruvian restaurant in Union Square, the owners of Machu Picchu moved it to a bigger space up 30 yards across the street. Then they cleaned out that original room, installed a rotisserie, modernized the décor, and opened up a new restaurant in the old space — confusingly, also called Machu Picchu — with an even-less-expensive menu of Peruvian treats (and some holdovers). Want a $9 chicken dinner or a $14 steak? You could put up with a little pan-flute music for that, right?

Curiously, the yucca fries ($6.95), native to Peru and served with most entrées, are only middling, not really crisp, while the plantains — from Africa — are wonderfully sweet, and the yuquitas ($6.95) — native to Brazil — are glorious. This may be due to the fact that yucca is closer to pure starch than is a potato, so the symphony of starch, grease, and salt is uninhibited by too many vitamins or minerals. It also may have to do with correct frying temperatures, which are different for yucca and potatoes. Certainly the huancaina sauce, borrowed from an Andean potato dish, is a major factor in the success of Machu Picchu’s yucca fries. It’s creamy with rich flavor and real bite courtesy of the Peruvian yellow chili called aji amarillo. Another creamy sauce is available, this one green and a little less incendiary. Both make wonderful fried-yucca dips.

Choclo Peruano ($6.99), a seasonal peasant meal of corn on the cob with only eight rows of giant white kernels, is a fine traditional appetizer. It comes frozen from Peru and is served with rubbery white cheese. You could also move into the key of meat with combination street-snack platters. The “Picante” ($12.99) features grilled tripe, chicken gizzards, and pieces of beef-heart meat, all pre-treated with cumin and pepper. The beef heart, the classic “anticucho” ($7.99 à la carte), is the best, though the gizzards are too chewy and need more taste of the fire. The tripe are the easiest to eat, but don’t absorb flavor so well.

Tamarind Bay Coastal Cuisine

ROBERT NADEAU — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 06:11:13 GMT

A second successful effort from an Indian-food master
Tamarind Bay in Harvard Square set a new standard for Indian restaurants in Boston, and perhaps in the whole country.

THE COAST IS CLEAR: Mangalorean lobster is mighty fine and easy to eat.

Tamarind Bay in Harvard Square set a new standard for Indian restaurants in Boston, and perhaps in the whole country. It was like going from black-and-white to Technicolor, or flying from Boston to New Delhi or London. This second location, Tamarind Bay Coastal Cuisine, opened with the original chef, Wali Ahmad; a few of the best dishes from the first restaurant; and an emphasis on New England seafood. Although the Brookline location is somewhat spottier and has a shorter menu than Tamarind Bay, it, too, is several cuts above the competition.

Tamarind Bay Coastal’s superiority is evident right from the papadum, which are fresh and curled around like Frisbees, something that doesn’t happen to papadum at other Indian restaurants. Our appetizer choices ran to fried morsels. The most amazing were cabbage chitwa ($9.95), crunchy cakes of red cabbage and onion that had the dry maple flavor of fenugreek. Then there were crispy cheese tikki ($8.50), fritters with some hot red sauce and a slice of jalapeño on top. Yum!

We also had tulsi malai lamb ($10.95), five sausages with subtle coriander spicing and a sneakier, slower-acting version of the red sauce, tempered with mint. Grilled scallops ($12.95) are seared with some dry and hot spices on a bed of cold spinach with seaweed flavor.

For main-dish seafood, Mangalorean lobster ($24.95) is mighty fine, presented sort of semi-shelled — still easy to eat, but this way you know they started with a live lobster — in a rich green curry. Masala crab cake ($20.95) brings two large patties in a more familiar curry laced with cumin and coriander seed.

For vegetarians, Tamarind Bay Coastal is still nirvana. I had to order what I remembered as my favorite thing from the Harvard Square restaurant: lalla musa dal ($14.95). This is a thick brown dish of black lentils cooked overnight, meatier than most meats, with overtones of butter and barbecue. Though I received side dishes of the same dal (and basmati rice) with other entrées, I was glad to have more of it. (Looking on the Internet for a recipe, I found that Sanjeev Kapoor, chef Wali’s former boss on the Indian TV food show Khana Khazana — not to be confused with Hannah Montana — features lalla musa dal at his chain of Yellow Chilli restaurants. So at last we taste the kind of Indian food that lights up gourmets in India.) Puréed red pepper may be part of the magic.

Temple Bar’s beef carpaccio

KENJI ALT — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 22:53:00 GMT

Elevating a classic
Beef carpaccio has suffered an unfortunate fate.

Guru the Caterer

MC SLIM JB — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 06:12:19 GMT

Scintillating Indian takeaway — if you can find it
Guru was catering-only for four years before starting takeout service this year.

Mangia Pizza

MC SLIM JB — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 17:20:49 GMT

Hanging tough with a featherweight crust
Mangia channels a little bit of Naples with a thin crust and simple sauce of San Marzano tomatoes, but it doesn’t hew to the canon the way Gran Gusto does.

The Melting Pot

ROBERT NADEAU — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 14:07:17 GMT

Dip into confusing dining
You can eat pretty well at the Melting Pot, but you need some focus and discipline.

LOBSTER FONDUE: Don’t overcook the protein, which can be dipped in six sauces.

Back when George W. Bush was smart enough to get a Harvard MBA, he began — as do all first-year students — with Production and Operations Management (POM), the basic barrier course. The class uses the case method, and the fun lesson in those days was that of Benihana, a chain of Japanese-style steak houses where waiter-chefs grill your food in front of you. In terms of POM, Benihana streamlines production by merging the roles of cook and waiter, and operates more efficiently by seating people with strangers at circular tables. The Melting Pot will soon have twice as many locations as Benihana, in part by doing the same trick with waiters as chefs. But by applying it to fondue — broadly defined here to include variations of the Mongolian hot pot — they’re able to charge mass-steak-house prices for less protein. Bring your marketing-class notebook, because part of the formula is for the menu to convince people that a fondue dinner consists of four courses, and to make the 16-page menu so confusing that most people buy a prix-fixe combination.

You can eat pretty well at the Melting Pot, but you need some focus and discipline. The urge to try everything makes for a diminished experience here, as it does at a wedding buffet. (Remember Nadeau’s Law of Buffets: look it over first, then take no more than three or four things you like.)

The menu says you should start with cheese fondue ($16/one or two; $8/each additional person). They offer six kinds, but four of you can usually have only one, since there’s a single heating element per table. (Tables for six have two heating elements.) If you’re not going for a package, give a nod to fondue history with the “Traditional Swiss Cheese Fondue.” The waiter heats up your pot and makes a production number out of mixing six ingredients in several batches. This is fondue as it was made by young couples with wedding-gift fondue sets in the 1970s. The wine never fully cooks off, so it’s sort of heady melted cheese, rolled up like spaghetti on cubes of bread (not stale enough our night) at the end of long fondue forks. You also have cauliflower florets, celery, and cubes of Granny Smith apple. You’ll run out of cheese before you run out of dipping food, so stick with bread and apples.

Brookline Lunch

AARON KAGAN — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 22:51:58 GMT

Not just for breakfast
It turns out that its Mediterranean-inspired menu, coupled with Monopoly-money prices, makes this an excellent spot for any meal.

Annapurna

ROBERT NADEAU — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 07:15:00 GMT

Unusual pan-Himalayan cuisine in the heart of Cambridge
Annapurna is owned and decorated by Nepalis, but in addition to Nepali cuisine, it serves a pan-Himalayan menu, including Afghan food, and a couple of Tibetan items.

QUALITY, QUANTITY: Annapurna Special Himalayan Bhojan is a multi-dish combination that
comes on brass plates and makes an interesting show.

Annapurna is owned and decorated by Nepalis, but in addition to Nepali cuisine, it serves a pan-Himalayan menu, including a lot of Afghan food, a couple of Tibetan items, some really good Indian-style curries and breads, and, for all I know, the best of Sikkim and Bhutan. In what’s proven to be a tricky location in Porter Square, they also hedge with some plain salads, “Cape Cod fried fish,” and what looked a lot like chicken nuggets as they cleaned up a child’s birthday party just before dinner hour. I didn’t taste these last things, though they may be a boon to parties in which someone just doesn’t like any kind of spice.

That said, the spicing in dishes here, at least those ordered by non-Asians, is rather mild, as is typical of these high-mountain cuisines. Most of the hot pepper went into pickles and chutneys, especially a truly superb mint one. To get it, you need to order something like chicken pakaura ($6), not crisp but genuinely tasty chopped-up chicken fritters with Himalayan herbs. This also comes with its own dip, a creamy peppery-cilantro sauce. Annapurna’s chicken momo ($5), also available in a vegetarian variety, are folded over like Peking ravioli instead of being drawn into the usual purse shape. On the other hand, aushak ($5; $11/entrée) are not the usual Peking-ravioli shape (as they are at the beloved Helmand), but flat pasties stuffed with scallions and topped with minted yogurt.

The restaurant has added American-style salads, including one of boiled beets and a bit of goat cheese ($5). You’ll want to explore the soups instead. Complimentary our night with a plate of papadum was a demitasse of yellow-split-pea soup jazzed up with coriander. Roasted-vegetable soup ($4) was a purée as rich as Canadian pea soup (which is made with pork), but likely accomplished without meat.