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Type: French
Prices: Appetizers, salads: $3.95-$9.95; entrees: $8.95- $18.95; shellfish tower: $36 for 2, $69 for 3-4; desserts: $4.50- $5.95.
Good choices: Pates; onion tart; plateau de fruits de mer; beef tongue; choucroute; filet of skate with capers; chocolate souffle; floating island.
Hours: Breakfast, Mon.-Fri. 6:30 - 11 a.m.; Sat.-Sun. 7 a.m.- noon; lunch, Mon.-Fri. 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m.; dinner, Mon.-Fri. 5-11 p.m.; Sat. noon-11 p.m.; Sun. noon-10 p.m.
Reservations accepted.
Smoking at bar.
Credit cards: All major cards.
Access: Fully accessible.
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BRASSERIE JO
120 Huntington Avenue, Boston
(Colonnade Hotel)
(617) 425-3240
Restaurant reviewed 07/23/98 by Alison Arnett
The World Cup is only a small part of the French conquest this year. The nation that invented the gourmet is quickly reclaiming the culinary world, too. Certainly that's evident at Brasserie Jo, a big, noisy party of a place in the Colonnade Hotel. A sleek woman in slim designer trousers laughs at the abundance as an orange Le Creuset pot, spilling over with choucroute - smoked pork chops, several kinds of fat sausages, and a man-sized portion of smoky sauerkraut - is placed before her.
Looking around the dining room, one can see other smartlydressed people eating more beef tongue, calves' liver, and veal kidneys than surely must be sold at any other Boston restaurant.
Every second table seems to be finishing off the meal with chocolate souffle, a pouf of richness so decadently retro that one would swear no-fat diets and Spinning classes had never swept the scene. And then the waiter tops the dessert by pouring a stream of chocolate sauce over the souffle. Obviously, Brasserie Jo is not geared to the haute cuisine end of French dining. As its creator and co-owner, Jean Joho, said in an interview earlier this year, this is a true brasserie, big and boisterous with something for everyone, a good-time place with hearty Alsatian food to match. A replica of his restaurant of the same name in Chicago, this Brasserie Jo is also owned by Lettuce Entertain You of Chicago. Joho designed the menu and opened the restaurant with his chef, David Kinkead.
I dine one evening with a Frenchman and his American wife. Early in the life of Brasserie Jo, they're making their second visit, drawn by nostalgia. The interior, gilded with brass, mirrors, and lights, doesn't come up to the Belle Epoque grandeur of the best of the Paris brasseries, since it's plunked down in what was once the hotel's coffee shop/restaurant. But the ambience, he indicates, feels almost right.
We're sharing a plateau de fruits de mer, a three-tiered extravaganza of oysters, tiny clams, even tinier cockles, shrimp, crab legs, and lobster claws. The $36 Le Grand is just the right size for four to share as an appetizer, and it's perfect to eat here: the seafood is delicious and straightforwardly prepared with just a mignonette sauce, horseradish, cocktail sauce, and plenty of lemon wedges.
The best dishes are the simplest and most traditional. Onion tart Uncle Hansi is a big wedge of sweet onions just lightly bound together with custard on a flaky crust. Pates - foie gras, a chunky duck with pistachios, and a coarse ground country pork - are splendid, just what one remembers of pre-cuisine minceur. The flavors are strong and distinctive, able to stand up to the sharp, spicy mustard. Chef Kinkead says the pates are made in-house, and the selections vary. The choucroute is also excellent, especially the sauerkraut, which gets its smoky flavor from a little bacon cooked with it. The firm, crisp texture shows that it's made in-house, too.
Not all the dishes are as successful, however. This is heavy food, and sometimes the flavors seem muddy as well. There is nothing wrong with the quality of roasted sea bass with white beans and a sweet and sour garnish of red and green peppers. But the dish is dull and the peppers are too limp. Grilled leg of lamb steak is stringy, as was hanger steak on an earlier visit. Mashed potatoes of a particularly dense type dominate the plate in several dishes. Skate needed more of the capers that came with the dish; what one recalls is bland fish over bland potatoes. A frisee salad with bacon and croutons tastes strongly of grease and vinaigrette, not at all the bright, fresh flavors one wants from a salad.
Yet over three visits, the food got tastier, so perhaps the focus will sharpen even more over time. Faced with beef tongue in a brown gravy, I quailed. But the fork-tender meat was delicious, with an almost-but-not-quite corned beef piquancy smoothed by the gravy and braised spinach. It's not a dish I grew up with, and might not order if I wasn't reviewing, but it's something I easily remember, something I'd go back for.
The desserts at Brasserie Jo are all old-fashioned and over the top. Besides the chocolate souffle, we tasted an excellent floating island, one of those fabled concoctions one never sees these days. An airy mound of meringue sailing on a custard sea is a delightful ending to a heavy meal. Poached pear with ice cream and chocolate sauce, poire belle Helene, is another classic nicely done, as are frivolously stacked profiteroles, with cream puff tops perched above towers of vanilla ice cream. And always a waiter bearing a white pitcher of chocolate sauces hovers nearby, waiting to sweeten the already sweet treats.
Brasserie Jo's party atmosphere works partly because of the food, but mostly because of the service. The wait staff is uniformly friendly and efficient, and there are plenty of them. They're obviously well-trained, good at answering questions about the wines, knowledgeable and enthusiastic about the food. In a place this big, with 180 seats, slow or indifferent service could quickly put a pall on a dining experience. Instead, the wait staff abets the liveliness - it's easy to relax when one feels taken care of by the staff.
Brasserie Jo could work to smooth and brighten up some of the food, but Joho and his staff are doing well on the ambience. The place is a party.
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