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Type: Eclectic
Price: Appetizers, salads: $4.95-$10.95; entrees: $14.95- $24.95; desserts: $7-$8.
Good Choices: Peppered rare tuna; lobster and quinoa; yellow tomatoes and gorgonzola salad; maplewood smoked Chilean seabass; rotisserie pork loin; Argentine ribeye steak; poached pear filled with creme brulee; lemon cheesecake; chocolate pate.
Hours: Lunch: Monday-Friday, 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m.; dinner, Monday-Thursday, 5:30-10 p.m.; Friday-Saturday, 5:30-11 p.m.; Sunday, 5-9:30 p.m.; Sunday brunch, 11 a.m.-3 p.m.
Reservations accepted. Smoking at bar only.
Credit cards: MasterCard, American Express, Diners, Visa.
Access: Accessible wheelchair ramp next door.
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LAUREL
142 Berkeley Street, South End
(617) 424-6664
Restaurant reviewed 09/17/98 by Alison Arnett
A somber climate ushered in the '90s for Boston restaurants. The big spenders and their expense accounts had vanished, and recession and austerity had taken over. We planned to spend the decade eating at home, making do.
That's when Russell and Sherry Berger opened the Blue Wave on the California-casual model, a place that substituted panache for luxury. The menu was simple -- grilled pizzas, lots of salads and vegetable soups -- and the prices were quite moderate. It was a brave stand against the fear that eating out would be struck out of our budgets forever.
The tide has turned, and the city is flush with prosperity as the '90s wane, at least for now. The Bergers have changed course as well. Last spring, they retrofitted their restaurant, renaming it Laurel, installing Corey Comeau as chef, and completely redesigning the food, the format, and the decor.
From a funky, open, and noisy dining room with local artists' work embedded in the tabletops, Laurel has been transformed into a handsome space, albeit a rather generic-looking one. It's all heavy white napery, subdued tones of beige with touches of wine and dark wood -- it's like those Northern Italian restaurants of the '70s that screamed "serious" at you so that you wouldn't mistake them for red-sauce joints. However, Laurel's chairs are comfortable, a conversation is actually possible without risking laryngitis, and the wait staff attempts to hover, with sometimes mixed success.
Laurel's cuisine, too, matches the times. Comeau, who was previously at Stephanie's on Newbury and Grill 23 & Bar, has a light touch, spinning out beautiful salads and some well-thought-out entrees with clean, bright flavors.
His gazpacho, a classic-looking tomatoey concoction filled with a fine dice of crunchy fennel, cucumbers, and zucchini, is excellent. Its definite spicy tone contrasts well with the cool temperature of the soup.
An appetizer of thin slices of very rare tuna, heavily peppered, is appealing, too, the fish clean against the slightly bitter bite of tatsoi greens and curls of pickled red onions.
The most elaborate appetizer is a turban of lobster and tomatoes wrapped in a sheath of quinoa, a crunchy, mild grain that resembles millet. A swirl of chive oil and a few dollops of almost smoky, almost sweet yellow tomato coulis give the lobster and especially the quinoa an extra depth.
Comeau pays attention to salads, and although adding gorgonzola, even throwing in pistachios, isn't particularly new, his yellow tomato and gorgonzola salad elicits sighs. The soft and tangy cheese is perfect with the mild tomatoes; the greens are well-handled and crisp; the crunch of pistachios is an added bonus. It's a lovely tribute to the genre.
Conversely, hand-rolled potato gnocchi, five or six of the gnocchi arranged on a large plate with a tomato and leek salad and foie gras butter, are disappointing, a disservice to the pasta that should be small and light as air. Gnocchi are peasant fare, after all, and seem odd arranged so ostentatiously, especially when they're too heavy to taste right.
In fact, the pasta dishes overall didn't shine like other main courses. Lemon-thyme fettucini stick together, looking rather glum in their tomato broth and overwhelming the delicate taste of the mahogany clams and scallops in the dish.
The maplewood-smoked sea bass, which Comeau said he coats with honey to trap the smoke from high-heat grilling, trumpets flavor. An intense lobster sauce matches the intensity of the fish, but a nest of squid-ink fettucini with it seems out of place and flat.
Comeau's passions can be tasted. Rotisserie pork loin is a favorite of his, he said in a phone interview, and he's right; it's a lovely dish. There's nothing shy about the succulent pork, and the almost syrupy glaze of sauce adds depth. Crisped polenta and pearl onions round out the flavors.
Another pleasing blending of flavors is achieved by cabbage-wrapped red snapper paired with mussels in a saffron-flecked sauce.
But rotisserie chicken, flecked with thyme and more pistachios, seems half-hearted, not attractive on the plate and rather boring.
The restaurant has sent out press releases about its free-range Argentine beef, and one evening we compared it with a grilled porterhouse steak. My dining companions each liked their choice the best, but personally I found the Argentine beef more appealing, the texture definitely chewier but the flavor more pronounced.
The wine list here, with a wide range of prices and some interesting choices, is a plus. And except for a night when the food seemed to arrive at a glacial pace, the service matches the style of the place.
One big advantage here is dessert. Pastry chef Kerry Manning deftly stuffs a poached pear with a slightly stiff version of creme brulee and then sprinkles the plate with big drops of port wine syrup for a delicious combination. She fills a big blue glass cookie jar with chocolate chip and toffee-white chocolate cookies, and lightens an individual lemon cheesecake served with tiny blueberries. And her chocolate pate, certainly not a novel idea, is really delicious, exciting enough to put to memory for reordering.
Comeau has a young chef's energy. A few pieces of his cuisine, from indifferent pasta to a few too many uses of pistachios, could be curbed to benefit. But the retrofit of the Blue Wave into Laurel captures the tenor of the upscaled times.
Tips & hits
