The Boston Phoenix
July 20 - 27, 2000

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South End Galleria

A culinary face-lift on Columbus Avenue

by Stephen Heuser

DINING OUT
South End Galleria
480 Columbus Avenue (South End), Boston
Open daily, 5:30-11 p.m.
AE, MC, TM, Visa
Full bar
Smoking at bar only
(617) 236-5252
Sidewalk-level access

The food world never stops spinning. At the beginning of April this restaurant was La Bettola, a fusion bistro whose chef, René Michelena, turned out expensive exotica like truffled lobster salad and black risotto in garlic milk. His cooking earned him national attention but contrasted with the folksier style of the owners, Marisa Iocco and Rita D'Angelo. (They also own Galleria Italiana, the cult regional Italian restaurant in the Theater District.) By the end of April, Michelena was gone and the owners had reopened the place as a fully conceived neighborhood trattoria, considerably less expensive than before, and considerably more Italian.

Iocco has installed herself full-time in the kitchen, and D'Angelo energetically works the dining room. The face-lift is purely culinary: if you ever ate at La Bettola, you'll still recognize the crumbling-villa décor -- Martha Stewart among the ruins -- and you might even think the room a more appropriate home for the new menu than it was for the previous one.

But in the summer months, the inside of South End Galleria is for losers. The action is outside, at the sidewalk seats; I watched diners spurn empty tables inside just for the privilege of waiting for a sidewalk opening, biding their time until they could sip mojitos and watch the Columbus Avenue floor show. Even so, on two nights I had no trouble at all sitting down around 7 p.m. at an outdoor table for two with no reservation. (And no, I did not declare impetuously that I was reviewing the restaurant.)

I admit I've never eaten at Galleria Italiana, although I had wondered for a long time why its reputation is so good. If South End Galleria is any indication, the answer is pretty simple: the kitchen makes great fresh pasta, and gets terrific flavor out of almost everything on the plate. They also put a lot of gin in their gin and tonics, but that's beside the point.

A starter salad ($8) of spinach, asparagus, and prosciutto is a hard combination to screw up; this one was lightly dressed, with the four asparagus stalks peeled and the prosciutto tender. Another starter was marinated quail ($7.50); I find quail has a density that makes the meat satisfying out of proportion to its tiny size, and it holds marinade flavors well. This one was nicely cooked through, with a salty skin, served over shaved parmesan cheese and stewed tomato.

Carpaccio ($9), the Italianate appetizer for American boulevardiers, was arranged very prettily: thin round slices of tenderloin were laid concentrically around the plate, like a meat-colored chrysanthemum. The beef was soft and stippled with fat; as with most uncooked beef, its flavor came through only lightly. It was dotted with a garlic-cheese sauce that tasted like fondue. The three halves of black figs on the top seemed clearly a reference to a more traditional Italian appetizer: figs and prosciutto, where the meat has more salt and tang to balance the fruit.

A mixed-vegetable salad ($7) -- called "BMX greens" for reasons our waiter couldn't explain -- was built around slices of marinated grilled portobello, with chunks of tomato and cucumber, all touched with an interesting yogurt-mushroom dressing.

All this was pretty good stuff: thoughtfully arranged and not terribly expensive. But not till I tried the pasta did I see what the real fuss was about. I had two pasta dishes over two visits: one was a pasta primavera ($15), a dish I normally avoid (I have these nightmares about overcooked zucchini). But here it was lovely -- the pasta was chitarrini, an Abruzzese specialty made by pressing dough through a wire device called a chitarra, which cuts it into squarish spaghetti. These noodles had heft and bite, a little on the dense side, with the wheaty taste of ramen. The sauce was a pesto with green beans sliced on the bias; the whole thing was spring-green and maybe a little undersalted, but fresh and wholesome.

Even better was crab meatballs with fettuccelle ($15). The noodles were a perfectly toothsome kind of fettuccine, and the sauce was tomato-mint -- a strange-sounding combination until you realize that mint is a close cousin of basil, so this is a creative variant on tomato-basil sauce, with an unusual summery sprightliness. It also had heft: the meatballs were huge and coherent, and did a nice job preserving the distinctive but delicate taste of crab. Whole leaves of mint lay across the top.

We also tried some seafood. A brodetto ($17) -- tomato seafood broth -- arrived in a showy earthenware pot filled with chunks of skate meat, mussels in the shell, and a skewer of squid and shrimp. The broth -- often the weak link in such dishes -- was really tasty, with a nice balance of seafood, tomato, and salt.

An entrée of "monkfish Osso Buco" ($17) was indeed served osso buco style: on the bone (which in a monkfish is a thick segmented rod). The firm-fleshed, tubular monkfish doesn't taste like much on its own, so it relies on the sauce for flavor -- here, a light tomato brodetto with herbs. The three dumplings around the edge of the plate were remarkable; the menu called them "gnocchi," which usually implies potato dumplings, but these were formed of an airy herbed polenta, then fried. The result defied comparison but was both light and substantial, bursting through the crisp skin on each bite.

Desserts (all $6.50) weren't quite as exciting. Pineapple-basil sorbet (an amazing combination of flavors when done clearly) tasted mostly of pineapple; the peach crostata was pretty good, a half-peach covering a crimped mini pie shell filled with rich mascarpone cream. A cassata of three layered gelatos was bland, except for an excellent pistachio gelato, and surprisingly came with thawed strawberries. My favorite dessert was the espresso panna cotta, a jiggly mocha-colored mesa capped with the dark brown of espresso grounds and dusted with a snow of white-chocolate flakes.

Galleria Italiana itself is currently closed, scheduled to reopen in mid August. I'd suggest checking out South End Galleria now, while the owners have all their attention on it -- and while the floor show is in full swing.

Stephen Heuser can be reached at sheuser[a]phx.com.


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