Good choices: Artichoke ravioli with pea sauce; grilled tomato soup with grilled calamari; sweet pea raviolo with summer truffles; roasted, smoked beef tenderloin; lamb sirloin with gingered caponata, braised lamb tortellini; monkfish wrapped in pancetta; lobster and potato salad with lobster-truffle-miso sauce; plum pie; cherry-chocolate bread pudding.
Credit cards: MasterCard, American Express, Visa, Discover.
Access: Fully accessible.
LA BETTOLA
480A Columbus Ave., Boston
(617) 236-5252
Restaurant reviewed 07/10/97 by Alison Arnett
Does a neighborhood shape the character, the flavor of a restaurant? I think so, and La Bettola, snuggled into a slightly awkward two-room space on Columbus Avenue, may be a case in point. Busy, chic, and very noisy, with food that is beautiful to look at and quite ambitious in conception, La Bettola also captures the South End's casual, slightly loopy feeling.
This is the second restaurant opened by Rita D'Angelo and Marisa Iocco, proprietors of Galleria Italiana near the Theater District. Galleria has a distinctly Euro-urban ambience and food that closely reflects the owners' Abruzzi heritage. There, the connections to Italy are clear, no matter how inventive the actual dishes.
At La Bettola, it's as though the melting pot of the South End has inspired the cuisine to wander the world. Chef Rene Michelena uses Italian cuisine as the lightest of springboards, pulling in spices, flavors, and influences from many quarters to fashion some unusual dishes. Tasting his lamb sirloin with gingered caponata and braised lamb tortellini, one notices first the bold flavor of lamb, the slight piquancy of caponata. But the tongue lingers over unexpected fragrances, elusive nuances.
In a telephone interview, Michelena, originally from the Philippines, explained that Asian influences had crept into the dish because he'd decided it needed some zing. So the caponata is gingered, and the savory braised lamb breast in the tortellini is fired with cumin, paprika, and tumeric. The quality of the filled pasta itself was excellent, making it a nice addition to the meat rather than a filler.
Michelena's stints at Charlie Trotter's in Chicago, Patina in Los Angeles, and Sign of the Dove in New York City are apparent in the food, which is stylishly presented but restrained. Chilled tomato soup is lovely, light in texture but vivid in flavor with small bits of grilled calamari embellishing the soup without interfering with the vegetable's taste. Lobster and potato salad, a tightly woven mound of tender potato slices and lobster chunks, is simple luxury. Its slightly sweet sauce of lobster stock, truffle oil, and miso complements the shellfish without intruding.
Just as at Galleria Italiana, the pasta here is stupendously good, even if Michelena uses it in sometimes unconventional ways. He explains that the same Italian women do the pasta for both restaurants, and the quality of handmade pasta shows. Artichoke ravioli with pea sauce, with chunks of crayfish, and mint croutons from an early summer menu was delightful, the artichoke giving a tang to the filling, the pasta silken. Sweet pea ravioli is literally sweet, balanced by summer truffles and pecorino cheese. Potato cannelloni is truly crispy, as the menu promises, and I liked that crunch against a sauce of morels, turnips, and the surprise sharp burst of lemon confit.
Monkfish wrapped in pancetta, two fat turbans of fish, are served over silken mashed potatoes heady with saffron, a dish so rich that it's over the top. Beef tenderloin is given an interesting character by being smoked, then quickly corned in brown sugar and spices before being grilled. It's more pleasing than richer entrees.
Not everything sparkles. Eggplant terrine with red pepper juice was flat in flavor, making one gravitate toward the simply dressed arugula on the side. Chicken breast with portobello and spinach stuffing and mashed potatoes was merely boring. Grilled marinated quail was meaty but rather placid, although the fennel and artichoke salad tasted faintly like kim chee, the fiery Korean relish.
Desserts veered around the globe also. Plum pie, with the fruit plumped into a brown butter batter and encased in pastry, was a wonderful evocation of summer. A bread pudding full of grappa-infused cherries and chopped bittersweet chocolate gave a whole new character to the genre, which is rapidly rivaling creme caramel in its ubiquitousness on menus. But the fascinating-sounding dessert of shredded melon and young coconut with white chocolate bon-bons fell short: The melon was insipid and watery tasting; shredding it and adding coconut didn't improve it at all. And the bon-bons seemed silly against the fruit.
As is easy to tell, La Bettola and its staff are producing upscale food in a casual spot. This is the third restaurant reincarnation I've reviewed in this spot and by far the most ambitious; the wait staff even presents gratis little petits fours and cookies at the end of the meal.
But walking to the dining room means quite literally walking through the kitchen. Some nights that's fun, but on one particularly hot summer evening, when about five cooks were working near blazing flames and steam as we walked by, one felt rather chagrined to be sidling past them and into the comfortable air-conditioned dining room.
On that visit, the place was crowded and the pleasant staff seemed outdone by the traffic - it happens now and then at many, probably most, restaurants, and young ones are most susceptible. We had to ask for bread; none of the appetizers came at the same time, nor did the four main courses arrive simultaneously. The music was too loud; the lights bright, then too dim, then bright again. The waitress was apologetic and helpful, but one wondered if this place with its small kitchen could handle the kind of elaborate food they were producing. A subsequent visit was much more low-key, and the kitchen and staff seemed to be running without a hitch. So perhaps the month or so interval has smoothed out the kitchen and staff's pacing. However, the lights still seem to go up and down in unexpected ways - very South End.
La Bettola offers a $38.50 prix fixe for three courses; unlike most such plans, anything from the appetizer, entree, and dessert menu can be put together for that price, giving the diner both choice and fairly good price. Michelena's flair and far-flung influences will be fascinating to chart in the future, as well as this attempt to deliver high concept food in a casual, even funky location.
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