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Type: Seafood
Prices: Appetizers: $2.95-$11.75; entrees: $11.95-$17.50; lobster fra diavolo for two: $32.50; desserts: $3.50.
Good Choices: Littlenecks on half shell; spinach salad; fish and chips; broiled salmon; seafood diavolo; linguine with shrimp.
Hours: Lunch: Tuesday-Friday, 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m; dinner: Monday-Thursday, 4:30-9:30 p.m.; Friday-Saturday, 4:30-10:30 p.m.; Sunday, 4:30-9:30 p.m.
Reservations accepted. No smoking.
Credit cards: Cash, personal checks.
Access: Fully accessible.
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THE VILLAGE FISH
464 Massachusetts Ave., Arlington
(781) 483-3474
Restaurant reviewed 01/14/99 by Alison Arnett
The National Restaurant Association has projected restaurant industry sales to reach $354 billion this year, a 4.6 percent increase over 1998. It doesn't take an accountant to perceive that those figures mean Americans eat out a lot and at an ever accelerating rate.
Not all those meals can be fine dining, of course, unless one's pocketbook is bottomless. So those neighborhood restaurants, casual places where reasonable prices offset paper napkins and specials written on chalkboards, are important to restaurantgoers.
Once Americans, enamored of beef, sought out lower-priced steakhouses - signaling the rise of Ponderosa and other moderately priced steakhouses that were the success stories of the '70s and '80s. Now we look for a price break on seafood, since we hope to eat it more often than just for special occasions. We can't get enough of seafood, it seems.
Enter Greg Jacobs, who once worked for Legal Sea Foods and now owns The Village Fish in Brookline and his newer restaurant of the same name in Arlington. The Arlington restaurant captures the feeling of neighborhood haunt perfectly. There's minimal decor - just some family photos on the walls and handwritten notices of specials. The napkins are paper and the tables a bit wobbly at times, but the welcome is warm from the young waitstaff. And the prices for large portions of fish are quite reasonable.
The concept is simple: fresh fish bought whole daily and then cut on the premises, prepared with a minimum of fuss and not much sauce. When a fish isn't in season or the stock available doesn't meet his standards, that variety isn't on the menu. The few sauces have an Italian bent.
It's best to play it straight here. One evening we start with raw littlenecks. These little morsels are spectacular, briny and firm, as fresh as anyone could hope for. The menu offers only littlenecks and cherrystones, but the quality is so high, one wishes oysters were offered, too.
Broiled salmon, a large portion practically covering an oval plate, also shows off its freshness, under a sprinkling of just a few herbs. This most familiar of fish is often so tricked up with sauces, garnishes, and side dishes that one can barely taste the salmon. Not here.
Linguine with red sauce and shrimp is delivered straight from the kitchen in a small frying pan. The lusty sauce, made, Jacobs says, with a lobster stock base, is delicious; it would make any seafood taste good. The best sauce - in fact, the best dish - is a variation on this sauce, but spicier: Seafood diavolo, brimming with shellfish and chunks of white fish and pasta, adds the heat of chilies to the tomato sauce formula. The sauce heightens the seafood flavors; it's an inspired dish, especially for a neighborhood place.
Other sauces aren't so successful. Monkfish piccata could have been chicken or veal because the sauce was just heavy enough to mask the flavor of the fish. And just gluey enough to be slightly unpleasant despite the bright bursts of lemon and capers in it.
But the grilled fish is the real disappointment. Grilling is so fashionable that all foods seem to fly onto the flames - from vegetables to fish to meats to breads to even fruits. But not everything tossed on the fire comes out better, as any chef who's serious about barbecueing can attest. The low-budget steakhouses used to mask inferior-grade meat by heavy charcoaling and gloppy sauces.
At The Village Fish, I trust that the tuna I order is fresh and good quality, but the grilling seems to be done too quickly. Watching the cooks throw slabs of tuna and other firm-fleshed fish on a grill above leaping flames shows why the shock of the fire turns the fish stiff and robs it of its delicious qualities. Then the problem is exacerbated when the tuna is left on the grill so long that even the interior is dry and the fish tastes like cardboard. Bluefish, an oilier variety, fares better; it retains assertive flavor but is still overcooked, the edges dry and brittle.
It wouldn't take much to fix this, just more care when grilling fish. After all, if broiled salmon comes out beautifully moist and gently crisped on top, grilled tuna, a sturdier and more expensive cut, should be treated with even more regard. It's those details that can make a neighborhood place great.
Other pieces of the picture don't always work well either. The waitstaff is efficient and hard-working, and the service of the meals moves along at a brisk clip. But one evening a staff member carrying dishes to the kitchen dropped a glass, which shattered near a diner in our party, spraying him with shards. The staff people stopped and stared, but seemed unable to decide how to react until we asked for a cloth to wipe him off. And although the small dining room is clean, the area around the kitchen where the dirty dishes are piled up helter-skelter needs some tidying up. It's unappetizing to see scraps of food sitting in plain sight while one is eating.
The Village Fish doesn't need to be fancy, but the experience could be better with some attention to those details. Good enough to make the restaurant a neighborhood habit.
Tips & hits
