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Type: Eclectic
Prices:Appetizers, salads $5.50-$9.50; entrees $15-$21; desserts $6-$9.
Good Choices: Mushroom, roasted pepper and cheese custard with Serrano ham; tea-smoked scallops; baked halibut with bacon, rhubarb compote; grilled salmon with orange-chipotle barbecue sauce; duck, duck, goose; honey-mustard glazed yams in rice-paper; lemon curd tart; peach and basil crisp.
Hours: Mon.-Thur. 6-10 p.m., Fri.-Sat. 6-11 p.m. Reservations accepted. No smoking.
Credit Cards: All major credit cards
Access: Fully accessible.
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EVOO
118 Beacon Street, Somerville
(617) 661-3866
Restaurant reviewed 09/10/98 by Alison Arnett
I'll answer the obvious about this restaurant right away: EVOO stands for extra virgin olive oil. Sounds a little silly, but it looks quite lovely in slanting type, rollicking along on the sign outside and the logos on the menus.
The yin-yang of that name _ a little frivolous, but appealing all the same _ carries one right into the restaurant and through the meal. Perched on the edge of Somerville, this might be a perfect neighborhood restaurant, but it's more ambitious, more upscale.
The lively room, painted a lovely shade of yellow-green with funky light fixtures and a pretty little bar, feels hip and urban, but the friendliness of the staff infuses it with neighborhood warmth. One can dismiss the slightly industrial look of the space itself (and try to ignore the noise).
Chef and co-owner Peter McCarthy and his cooks toss and grill in a kitchen so visible that one feels part of the cooking action. There are pluses and minuses to open kitchens, but in this restaurant it's a pleasant feeling of inclusion that carries over into McCarthy's food. It's accessible cuisine, not too exotic, relying on local vegetables and full flavors.
Most of the dishes are quite wonderful, fun to eat, pretty to look at, even exciting. And now and then the yin shows up in a clumsy construction or an errant flavor.
McCarthy was formerly the chef at Seasons at the Bostonian Hotel, and many of the hotel flourishes, the touches of luxury associated with hotel dining, show up here. For instance, most appetizers have several elements, a little gingered vegetable salad with tea-smoked scallops or curls of Serrano ham and a few ripe figs with an intense mushroom and cheese custard.
I'm not complaining. The little custard _ really a cheesecake without the sugar, McCarthy explains in a phone interview _ is packed with shiitake, crimini, oyster, chanterelle mushrooms, roasted red pepper, and herbs. It's an indulgence, gentle on the palate, irresistibly rich and creamy with several kinds of cheeses. And the ham, intense in its own way, and the figs play off that richness to make a wonderfully rounded dish. One might not immediately identify the flavor in the scallop appetizer as tea, so gentle is the infusion. But the elusive hint of smoke works beautifully against the small, dense scallops. And the gingery accents of the finely julienned vegetables give the composition an added kick.
This time of year, farmers make the yearly New England wager with Mother Nature that all those tomatoes on the vine will ripen before frost hits, so tomato and mozzarella salads flood local menus. But we order it anyway and are richly rewarded for our loyalty to seasonality. It's clever, this salad, stacked into a tower, each thick slice of tomato perfectly ripe, each bite of mozzarella equally rewarding. The swirl of basil oil and cabernet vinegar gives a perfect zing to the simple salad.
Another nod to the season has the same straightforwardness _ romaine lettuce simply dressed with champagne vinegar and olive oil with a shower of shaved Parmesan. Though the taste is fine, I always feel it's difficult to handle uncut salads like this; one feels like Peter Rabbit struggling to cut through a whole head of lettuce before Farmer MacGregor shows up.
McCarthy has a nice touch in composing entrees. He matches a thick filet of halibut flecked with herbs with a spiky compote of rhubarb and onions caramelized to be just this side of sweet. Slender strips of crisp smoked bacon are strewn atop the fish, making a pleasing contrast _ mild fish, sweet-sharp compote, and salty bacon. But each element has a little separation in this construction. Another fish dish, this of grilled salmon, has the same virtues. The salmon is fine stuff, given a burst of heat from orange-chipotle barbecue sauce liberally swathed on it and a watermelon salsa. And the dish would have been much less without the pool of perfect creamed corn, delicate and yet with some texture, that rounded out the other parts.
There's a flash of humor in the duck, duck, goose entree, a clever takeoff on the children's game. Here McCarthy offers up roasted duck leg, some duck foie gras, and goose breast along with tiny French lentils and slender green beans. It's pleasant, although a little difficult to distinguish the fowl while you're eating. A simpler idea, beef tenderloin studded with lots of garlic, is quite stunning in its bold flavor, with mashed potatoes and some sauteed shiitakes on the side. Although the dish is the most expensive on the menu, at $21, it's still a bargain.
McCarthy says he likes to try many different cuisines, instead of sticking with, say, Northern Italian. That offers a broad palette for the diner as well, and he seems to carry it off from the Latin-flavored roasted chicken, with lots of lime juice and plantains, to yams wrapped in rice paper.
But dishes that involved frying don't work as well. Oyster coated with cornmeal and fried are thick and a little gummy on the tongue. Soft-shell crabs would have fared better without the heaviness of a tortilla crust. One evening, a dessert of fruit in a fried tortilla shell seemed clumsy and out-of-date, with the oil from frying lingering on the tongue.
The triple chocolate and peanut butter pudding trifle isn't fried, of course, but is much too heavy and thick in consistency; even the chocophiles among our party stopped after a bite or two. A peach and basil crisp with wonderful Massachusetts fruit is a much better choice, a lovely lilt to end a meal, as was a tangy lemon curd tart with a few raspberries and some caramelized figs.
The pride McCarthy and his wife, Colleen, the co-owner, have in their first restaurant is palpable in the food, a well-chosen wine list, breads baked on the premises, and the congenial, low-key service. There may be glitches now and then, but EVOO is instantly likable.
Tips & hits
