Audubon Circle

Delicious grilled food and a setting you can enjoy all night

838 Beacon Street, Boston; 421-1910
Hours: 11:30 a.m. - 11 p.m. daily; bar open to 1 a.m.
(summer hours: opens at 4 p.m. Sat and Sun)
Full bar
All major credit cards
Street-level access

by Stephen Heuser

The first time I visited Audubon Circle, a well-groomed little bar just over the Mass Pike from Kenmore Square, I was stopping in for a quick drink before a dinner at the nearby Brookline branch of the Elephant Walk. I stayed for no more than a beer, maybe two, but I couldn't help wondering, as my confreres of the evening yielded one by one to the temptation of the little menu on our table, if the food was really as good as it looked.

Omens were promising: I knew Audubon Circle was the new project from Matt Curtis and Chris Lutes, whose first bar is Cambridge's Miracle of Science, the techie Central Square hangout that (I'm convinced) is one of the best bars in the world for a casual meal. The clean, spare interior of the new place suggests that the owners know it's the '90s, by which I mean they aren't about to burden you with snobby service or cranked-up music or frivolous ingredients. The restrooms are gorgeous, if that matters. And, especially promising in the summertime, almost everything on the menu is grilled.

The décor and the menu are nicely tuned to one another: the room is intensely stylish -- spare without being cold -- with walls of dark-grained padauk wood and whitewashed brick. Tabletops are heavy squares of matte-black slate, an effect at once earthy and urbane. The list of beers on tap is short and designed to push the buttons of most beerophiles (Ipswich light ale, Sierra Nevada pale, Pilsner Urquell and a few more, all $3.50.) The wine list has five reds and four whites; I stuck mostly to my Ipswich, but we did once try the Firestone Merlot ($4.50), which was full and pleasant.

On the menu, the occasional offbeat ingredient might sneak in -- cumin, bresaola, chipotle -- but the overall impression is still one of relative simplicity. Almost everything on the short menu (physically tiny, too, about half the size of this column) is grilled. Not charbroiled, not dunked in barbecue sauce, just quickly seared and delivered to the table with remarkable speed.

Even the bread is grilled, at least in the appetizer of bread with white-bean paste ($3). The broad slices from a thick French loaf are turned into a terrific kind of toast, over which you spread a plain but quite appealing purée of white beans, salt, and garlic. The quesadillas ($5.50) also get a turn on the grill. They're not too big, but still a good size for an appetizer or a light lunch. One is made with blue corn and one with white. Each is just a pair of tortillas slapped together with some cheese in the middle, and a red-chile salsa for dipping. This is what I always got back home in California when I ordered a quesadilla, unlike the giant pseudo-pizzas that a lot of nominally Mexican places now turn out.

The crowd at the Audubon is thin during lunch and dinner, but picks up as the evening moves on. Those who show up primarily to eat are a mixed group: the expected mid-twentysomethings, of course, but also older couples and even, once, embarked on some woeful team orientation project, a gaggle of businesspeople in mufti.

I saw a couple of them fumbling with the Asian potstickers ($5), which arrive in a cute (or maybe cutesy) Chinese takeout carton, tossed with red bell peppers, water chestnuts, green onions, and a filigreed slice of lotus root on top. These are a lighter version of the big, doughy Peking ravioli one sees at local Chinese restaurants. They're seared on the griddle, and have a nice thin skin and finely textured pork filling.

The Audubon's take on the ubiquitous chicken salad is a plate of mesclun tossed with a cilantro-citrus vinaigrette, overlaid with slices of the moistest grilled chicken I've had in ages, and topped with a few sundried cranberries and a handful of puffed-up toasted pumkpin seeds.

The grill works to maximum effect on a dish like the tuna ($12). This comes with banana salsa, which sounds like a bad New-Mex gag but turns out to be quite pleasant, with ginger, cilantro, and red pepper working with the banana to provide a zingy tropical counterpoint to the gorgeously seared tuna steak, which came every bit as rare as I'd ordered it. Coiled around the perimeter of the plate are spectacularly long green beans, and under the tuna is a fried scallion pancake.

The crucial item on any bar menu is, of course, the basic burger. I ordered the the cheddar cheeseburger ($6 -- the cheese-free version is $5.50). It's a big, meaty winner, with at least a third of a pound of beef dripping onto a generous half-dome of a bun, but the real fun here is in the extras. The ketchup, which comes in a little side dish, is made fresh with tomatoes and smoky chipotle peppers for a half-barbecue taste. And the herb-roasted red potatoes on the side of the dish were exquisite: crisp and dark on the outside, soft and warm and almost gooey on the inside, fragrant with parsley. (The potatoes and chipotle ketchup are also available as a side dish for $3.)

Then there's the vegetable sandwich ($5). It's pressed and grilled like an Italian streetside sandwich, and filled with smoked cheddar cheese, ultrathin slices of eggplant, and roasted red pepper. The plate's American twist is a variation on cole slaw: a toss of cabbage, red pepper, green onion, and cilantro bits in what tastes like sesame oil.

Audubon has one dessert ($4.50): three scoops of Toscanini's vanilla-bean ice cream on a bed of blueberries and halved strawberries, with two chocolate wafers and a sprig of mint tossed in for good measure.

Bar food is always a relaxing escape from the world of try-too-hard cooking. A night in any bar goes a long way toward reinvigorating the over-pesto'd palate, and a small group of bars -- like the Miracle, or the South End's Delux Café -- manage to take the project to another level entirely, turning out punchy food that beats most full-service restaurants at their own game. I don't think it's too early to induct Audubon Circle into that club.