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Type: Mediterranean
Hours: Dinner: Sunday-Thursday, 6 -10 p.m.; Friday-Saturday, 6 -11 p.m. Reservations accepted. Smoking in bar area.
Prices: Appetizers: $5-$12; main courses: $16-$23; desserts: $6-$10 (cheese plate).
Good Choices: Garlic soup with littleneck clams; flowerpot of crispy shellfish; roasted chicken; braised lamb shank with cabbage, beans, potatoes; rabbit fricasee; toasted pasta with lobster; vanilla bean custard; Catalan cookies.
Credit cards: American Express, Diners Club, MasterCard, Visa.
Access: Access around side of building.
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RAUXA
70 Union Square
Somerville
(617) 623-9939
Restaurant reviewed 02/18/99 by Alison Arnett
I fell in love with all things Catalan last year in my first visit to Barcelona, a city so magical that every moment there seemed infused with light. That magic spilled over into eating, especially since almost daily pilgrimages to the wondrous La Boqueria food market, in the center of the city, meant I was always hungry.
It would be difficult, I knew, to come close to that experience. Luckily, along came Rauxa, named for a Calalan colloquialism meaning wild spontaneity. Chef-owner Jim Becker visited Spain often when his parents had a house there. In his first restaurant - he was chef at the former Rustica in Belmont and had cooked at Biba - Becker pulls together memories of eating in Catalan friends' homes; the result is lusty food that includes influences of southern France as well as of Mediterranean coastal Spain.
Becker is a good cook with an ability to incorporate all the elements of a dish into one distinct flavor portrait. One can get a sense of his years as a teacher, and be grateful that the food has an integrity. His aim is not to razzle-dazzle but to make the ingredients into a dish that tastes good.
My first visit to Rauxa (pronounced Rau-shah), on a stunningly cold January night about three weeks after it opened, was auspicious. Delicious olives of several varieties were on the table; the rustic bread was good. The garlic soup, barely thickened with bread crumbs, sang with flavor and had all sorts of extra benefits, from toasted pine nuts to tiny roasted cherry tomatoes. Although I worried that littleneck clams would taste odd in such a soup, their briny nature pointed up the sweetness of roasted garlic.
A clay flowerpot lined with brown butcher paper was filled with fried shellfish - all crunchy and slightly spicy. The tiny tendrils of squid, little shrimp, and clams were light, airy, and irresistible, especially with an ailoli sauce strong with garlic and a slightly chunky romescu sauce of red peppers, almonds, and vinegar and oil.
A spicy rabbit fricasee over polenta, an amalgamation of Mediterranean cuisines, was delicious, its paprika-laced sauce blending with portobello mushrooms, green olives, and cubes of chorizo. The Catalan version of pasta, which is thin noodles roasted crisp and golden, rested in a deep, brick-red lobster sauce with chunks of lobster. The result was a heady burst of rich lobster flavor set against the pleasingly toasty crunch of the noodles.
A creamy custard with a burnished top finished the meal beautifully, as it was much lighter than the ubiquitous creme brulee. We floated out, reinforced against the cold.
Subsequent visits brought more treasures and a few disappointments. An appetizer tasting plate featured a roasted red pepper stuffed with goat cheese and wrapped in serrano ham, a seductive combination of textures and tastes, sweet to salty, creamy to a slight crunch from the pepper. Fresh white anchovies sparkedcq against the tongue; crusty bread spread with tomato and toasted was mild against the snap of a dried sausage called sobrasada. Another appetizer of quail cooked and then marinated in olive oil, vinegar, and spices was great, and the garlic shrimp was appropriately garlicky, although the proportion of alioli in the sauce seemed excessive, making it overly creamy.
Sometimes Becker seemed to be trying too hard. Cannelloni stuffed with wild mushrooms in a creamy, anise-spiked sauce was so rich that the addition of escargots to the stuffing seemed silly. They had no taste, or rather they didn't have enough to be recognizable. A black-and-yelllow paella, with half of the rice stained with squid ink, and half with saffron, looked more interesting than it tasted. The shrimp, mussels, clams, and lobster were fine, but the rice was a little mushy and almost unforgivably salty on one visit. The dish lacked the deepness depth of flavor and the slightly crusty surface of the best of the Barcelona paellas. Cod Two Ways combined pan-seared cod with a brandadacq of pureed cod. The cod was enlivened with an olive, caper, and roasted pepper salsa, and there was nicely sauteed spinach with the dish, but overall both versions of the fish were dull.
However, many of the more single-minded constructions shone. Lemon, garlic, and herbs had been stuffed under the skin of roasted chicken, and the result was a flavorful, moist bird, very Catalan in its rustic simplicity. Succulent lamb shank over a sautee of white beans, cubes of potatoes, and cabbage showed the Spanish talent - and Becker's - for matching humble tastes to delicious ends. Called La Sagrada Familia (the Holy Family), for the traditional Spanish combination, the dish also playfully refers to Gaudi's fanciful still-unfinished cathedral in Barcelona. A layered dish of grilled eggplant, goat cheese, roasted vegetables, and black olive puree, called a Napoleon, although in Catalonia they might have added a little sausage.
Although Becker's restaurant, which opened in late December, is young and in midweek can be rather sparsely populated, he's wise to have started out with a good pastry chef. Tonie Rapa sets out a delectable plate of Catalan cookies - from a marzipan-like cookie with a sweet potato dough to an almond variety to the Spanish equivalent of biscotti - and adds to that nougat ice cream in an almond tuille. Her pumpkin semifreddo, like a thick mousse, reveals the flavor of the vegetable edged subtly with sweetness. The chocolate dome pudding cake is sweet and intense, but light, and saffron in the creme anglaise added a distinctive note.
I liked so many parts of Rauxa - the intelligent, friendly waitstaff, the excellent Spanish wine list, most of the food - that I hesitate to complain about the surroundings. But although the former Elephant Walk space was refashioned with care and style, it felt like a too-bare basement. The bar area at the front is quite charming, but beyond that the atmosphere a little dispiriting. The upholstery on the booths was is handsome, the mosaic paintings are interesting, but even so there was a sense that we should keep our voices low so that conversations wouldn't echo. More lighting, throw rugs on the floor if carpeting isn't feasible, just more stuff, would make the ambience a little warmer.
Then the place could sparkle like the best of Becker's food.
Tips & hits
