In Cambridge, a culinary playland that kids - and adults - can enjoy
Type: Eclectic
Hours: Daily 9 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.
Good choices: Middle Eastern plate; salad of pears, blue cheese, and walnuts; grilled shrimp with arugula; roast half-chicken; meatloaf with mashed potatoes; Chuck's chicken salad plate.
Credit cards: MasterCard, Visa
Access: Small step out front; restroom fully accessible.
FULL MOON
344 Huron Avenue, Cambridge
(617) 354-6699
Restaurant reviewed 04/08/98 by Sheryl Julian
The 6-year-old girl at the next table left her chair, ran to the back of the restaurant, and brought her mother a giant sandwich. Then she took off again and returned with a taco. This went on for a while until she wore herself out and there was a stack of food beside her plate.
It was all made of plastic, fetched from a play area where a pint-size kitchen was stocked with all kinds of things for making meals. ``Some nights we clean up and have to separate the plastic food from the real food,'' says Full Moon co-owner Cary Wheaton, late of the Blue Room and East Coast Grill, the mother of Mai, 2, who was born in China.
Full Moon is a child's culinary heaven. It has appealing tot menu choices and an area where kids can go when they're itching to get away from the table and leave behind half-eaten portions of barbecued chicken nuggets ($4.50), macaroni and cheese ($3.95), or kid's pasta with marinara sauce ($3.95).
Because the children have their own menu, there's no pressure for them to struggle to eat food they're not interested in. Adults have their own sophisticated menu. It's the best of all worlds.
With her sister Sarah (the mother of two young children), Cary Wheaton has established the sort of restaurant that thrills modern parents. The clientele from the Huron Village area of Cambridge, waiting to see what would replace Otto (which replaced Pentimento), have already discovered it.
Since it opened last September, Full Moon has been working to get things just right - and offer a place where adults without children don't go crazy. Now, the restaurant stays open until 8:30 each evening, and by 8 most of the little ones have gone home to bed.
The menu is as close to good home cooking as you can get, except that someone else is at the stove. That person is Robert Del Bove, the original chef of the East Coast Grill. Rosemary Mack, the Grill's original baker, is the pastry chef.
On the adult menu, Full Moon salad with pears, blue cheese, and walnuts ($5.25) was a nice balance of sweet, nutty, and creamy tastes. Grilled shrimp and arugula salad ($7.50) boasted intensely smoky, plump shrimp, and orange sections over pleasantly bitter arugula dressed with an orange vinaigrette.
A satisfying Middle Eastern plate ($6.75) came with a fan of thick, grilled pita triangles, tabouli studded with shredded carrots, and ramekins of smooth, garlicky hummous and smoky baba ghanouj.
Meat loaf with mashed potatoes ($9.75) arrived sliced and grilled, with a ladle of lovely gravy studded with red and yellow bell pepper confetti and mushrooms. The creamy, lumpy potatoes also accompanied a crisp, moist, roast half-chicken ($11.95).
Only fettucine with broccoli rape and cauliflower ($9.95) was disappointing, the noodles studded with too many rape stems and no flower ends. The dish was underseasoned, as is much of Full Moon's food, so you'll find yourself reaching for the salt.
We revived ourselves with a chocolate bread pudding moistened with a vanilla custard sauce and whipped cream. This gorgeous dessert, dense and chocolatey, was perfect, as was its size in the little glass coupe dish.
Rosemary Mack has also made splendid lemon squares, giant peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies, layered coconut and chocolate bars, and decorated cupcakes for the kids. There are fewer children at lunch, of course. Some of the dishes need a boost - more seasoning on the grilled vegetable sandwich, more dressing on Chuck's classic chicken salad plate.
But these are quibbles. It's hard not to like Full Moon in all its kiddie glory and admire Cary and Sarah Wheaton for the scattered toys and sticky seats they put up with in the name of pleasure.
Tips & hits
