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Union Square Bistro

A not-always-bistro so good it merits the name

16 Bow Street, Somerville (Union Square)

THIS RESTAURANT IS NO LONGER IN BUSINESS

by Robert Nadeau

Back before the marketers got hold of the term, a "bistro" in France was a little place with hot meals at all hours. The word almost implied "fast food," but we are talking about the French fast food of many years ago - long-cooked soups and stews that were filling and delicious, if not beautifully composed upon the platter. The most American equivalent would be "diner food." The bistro ideal remains identified with certain dishes, such as onion soup, and the experience of gastronomic illumination in downscale surroundings, no matter how the concept is stretched by the expensive Hamersley's Bistro, or the monocultural Bombay Bistro.

The Union Square Bistro, however, has captured the spirit and much of the flavor of French bistros. Its only deviation is the slightly pretentious wall decorations - photographs and souvenirs of famous restaurants, wineries, dishes, grapes, and such. And it's not purely French, but has selected (with a bistrological eye) some Portuguese and Mediterranean influences. Yet for tone, friendly service, hang-ability, and rib-sticking cooking, this is a bistro's bistro.

The menu is so oriented to the bread platter and the appetizers that its quality is "front-loaded" - like the teardrop-shaped dream cars of the 1940s, its weight is shifted forward. At dinner one is served an impressive platter of warm, roasted walnuts, carrot sticks, sourdough rye bread, sweet currant bread, and irresistibly crunchy, garlic-treated flatbread toasts, like the Armenian lavash. With it, you have an outstanding virgin olive oil, even if it is served in screw-topped glass jars that remind every male in the room of specimen jars. As if this weren't enough food for many light suppers, a waiter comes and refills. At lunch the platter is reduced to two breads and the olive oil, and it still impresses.

Soups are important to any bistro, and this one always has the classic onion soup, and usually has a Portuguese kale soup as a nod to the surrounding Portuguese neighborhood. A recent special of tomato-fennel soup ($3.45) was like the quintessence of Provence, a thick tomato soup with notes of fennel root, leek, and red pepper. The caesar salad is a good one, though the anchovies are merely laid out on the top.

The bistro's hits are likely to be offered as appetizers, main dishes, and lunches, and some favored ingredients repeat themselves in various permutations. On the fall menu, portobello mushrooms and puff pastry are teamed for a broiled appetizer ($7.95), and again for an entree ($12.95). The former exaggerated the beefy flavor of the large mushrooms with a charred crust and sliced, reassembled presentation - just like a steak or duck breast. This treatment, though, resulted in burned puff pastry on our plate. I also thought that the meat sauce under the dish had the salty, thin quality of American "au jus" gravy, which is often made from commercial beef-soup base. But it is at least an authentic error, since many French bistros serve similar concoctions.

No one should miss some form of the crab cakes ($6.95, $11.95). We tried them as a lunch entree ($9.95), and got three of the best-flavored crab cakes in Greater Boston. Complementing those were seasoned french fries, and a mix of pickles, corn, and red pepper in a mayonnaise-based sauce, a very successful cross between tartar sauce and piccalilli.

Another neat bistro lunch was a Portuguese pork sandwich ($6.95). This vaguely evokes the Azorean pork trimmings they used to serve at the old Terra Deli in East Cambridge. But the chef at Union Square bistro has taken a better cut of pork, with a lot more vinegar in the marinade, and served it on the sourdough rye with sautéed onions and a very French sauce like a thinned mayonnaise. This has addictive qualities, and should be avoided by recovering sandwich abusers.

Going upscale and modern with dinner entrees brought us to pleasant but less lofty territory. A medallion of salmon en papillote ($16.95) was nicely served up with buttery vegetables, but felt like a bistro treatment of a pretentious dish, rather than authentic anything. A piece of grilled swordfish with "frizzled leeks" ($16.95) was tasty swordfish for the season. Sweet corn risotto was a successful use of the crunchiness of fresh maize to amplify the residual crunch of properly cooked risotto. (There is still some thinking to be done about the traditional butter-cheese flavor of the risotto versus the dominating sweetness of the genetically improved sweet corn we get these days.)

The wine list is mostly inexpensive and well-selected, though it can be expensive by the glass. There is a supplementary list of luxury and older wines for $65 to $125, but most bottles are distributed around a $20 average. There is a nice selection of dessert spirits.

Desserts are commendably inexpensive but correspondingly underdeveloped. In particular, the kitchen leans hard on its homemade ice creams, but the ones I tasted were underflavored. The seasonal specialty is an "apple orgy" ($5.95) of a heavy, bland coffee cake, napped with apple butter, and topped with "granny smith ice cream" of no distinctive flavor. Same problem, plus a somewhat icy texture, with a decaf-espresso coffee ice cream ($2.75). I preferred an apple tart ($3.95; with ice cream $5.45) based on the puff pastry with a very good topping of sautéed fresh apples.

The service promotes good feelings by balancing friendliness and non-intrusion. I would recommend Union Square Bistro for early dates, if there were not the danger of meeting someone you know, combining tables, sharing tastes, talking loudly, and perhaps diffusing some of that crucial atmosphere. Bistros are like that, or maybe your dates are like that, and this will suit your crowd ideally.




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