Good choices: Split pea soup; pan-roasted sea bass in cilantro broth; fettucini with white eggplant and roasted garlic; monkfish stew; grilled chicken breast, compote of tomatillo, prune, sage and Madeira; apples baked in custard.
There is nothing so dear to the hearts of Boston diners as the humble little storefront place, intimate and unheralded, where one can get a great meal for a reasonable price. More important than price, though, is the exclusivity of it, the private club aspect. Remember the original Le Bocage on Huron street in Cambridge and its diehard fans?
It's no wonder, then, that I've gotten calls and tips about Prose, a little storefront restaurant that opened about a year ago. With its personable chef-owner, Debbie Shore, and its bare-bones, homespun decor, Prose fits the profile of the best-kept secret.
For one thing, it's small, very small, so those sitting in one of the 24 seats feel kinship with one another. And then Shore mingles often with her guests, so earnestly asking if they've liked the food that one begins to identify with her, to root for the success of each dish. The other is that the menu is short but quite ambitious, initially a surprise in the setting. The high points in Shore's highly flavored cuisine are all the more satisfying because of the bonding that the diner has already done with chef and her restaurant.
In a phone interview, Shore, who was formerly chef at the Black Crow Caffe in Jamaica Plain, explains her style as modern American, "for lack of a better expression." She takes influences from many parts of the world and many cuisines to meld them into something of her own. That's reflected in the name, she says, meaning "unversified language" and the "stuff of everyday life," not mundane but enveloping the whole of life.
A stew of monkfish with a laundry list of ingredients - tomatoes, onions, potatoes, almond oil, lime leaves and cilantro - gains its inspiration from her Dominican sous chef's native country. The dish works, all those flavors mingling beautifully into a fish stew with a gutsy, straight-ahead character. This is definitely not a fish soup, but more akin to a meat stew, something to which the monkfish, heavy in texture but not particularly strongly fishy, contributes nicely.
In other dishes, though, multiple ingredients get lost in the finished product. Fettuccini with ramps, fiddleheads, asparagus, roasted garlic and prune coulis along with manchego cheese promised the first tastes of spring. But the unusual green vegetables receded behind the coulis, so the dish tasted merely slightly sweet and not particularly of the ramps or fiddleheads or even the strongly flavored cheese. Ultimately, it was disappointing.
Halibut pan-roasted in a cider, olive, clam and sherry broth was topped with a cabbage and apple compote. The combinations made this dish also a little too sweet for my taste although a dining companion loved the flavor.
Shore's simpler flavors were more pleasing. Her soups fell into the hearty category. A split pea soup with smoked ham and chicken was thick enough to stand a spoon in, and warmed the chilly spring night with its homey flavors. A Vidalia onion and Swiss chard soup was lighter but still very rich and creamy, the sweetness in this case from the onions which gave the mixture a lovely tang.
The sauce of white eggplant, loads of roasted garlic and spinach over fettuccini was good enough to want the recipe, so that the dish could be eaten again and again. Prose's menu lists most of the ingredients in each dish and this one includes pistachio oil. Maybe that gives it a bit of an extra kick, although I don't think one can really say for sure.
Shore's heart obviously lies with the several fish entrees on the menu; I thought sea bass over Vidalia onions, Savoy cabbage in a cilantro-flecked broth showed her skill well. Although a grilled ribeye steak rubbed with chiles, garlic and cilantro was perfectly nice, the seasonings were shyly applied and the result was just OK. I had the same reaction to an appetizer of grilled calamari with red chile aioli - more punch would have improved the dish.
Prose has a succinct but pleasant wine list, mostly California vintages that match the food and are quite reasonable in price. I happened to make my tasting visits on weekends when the tiny room was quite busy, and the wait staff (two) seemed pressed to keep up with the action. There's a communal feeling to the place and one tends to forgive lapses. However, when did the notepad for waiters go out of style? Why does the entire party always have to raise hands to identify their own plates? "Now who had the sea bass, who had the chicken" is a too-frequent routine.
A meal at Prose ends best on a simple note. Several desserts, such as a much too dense chocolate almond torte which was served too cold, are brought in from outside. Shore's own creation, apples or pears baked in custard, makes a more lyrical epilogue to the assertive flavors of the main dishes. The delicate, creamy custard against the soft fruit is wonderful, down-to-earth and homey, just what one wants from a place like Prose.
And after all, that's what Prose is all about - an endearing little eating place to share as a secret with friends.
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