Silvertone

Funky old Bromfield Street gets claimed for the trendy crowd. Maybe downtown really is cool again.

by Stephen Heuser

69 Bromfield Street (Downtown Crossing), Boston; 338-7887
Open Mon - Fri, 11:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.,
and on Sat, 5 to 10:30 p.m. Bar closes at 2 a.m.
Closed Sun
Full bar
All major credit cards
No handicap access

If restaurants live and die by location, Silvertone has picked a hell of a place to open. It's in the downstairs room of a storefront on Bromfield Street, an obscure two-block lane near Downtown Crossing whose chief distinction, historically, is that it is home to Boston's oldest pen shop.

Not that the street lacks for its own kind of charm. Close to Government Center, close to Park Street, it's a mini-neighborhood of weathered old city stores and the kind of tucked-away bars where you can hide from your bookie all day with a glass of Bud and a bag of pretzels.

It was in April that Silvertone landed here, polished up its curious downstairs space, and began attracting the downtown hipster crowd. It's a modern room of slate-gray and poplar, more clean than warm, with concrete floors, sepia-toned pictures on the wall, and an old brushed-steel radio (a Silvertone, natch) that greets you on the stairway down from street level. Will it become a capital-S scene? Is Bromfield Street the new Leather District? The jury's still out. But as a restaurant, Silvertone is already a success. By keeping portions in check and preparations simple, the kitchen manages to turn out some better-than-basic food for some very basic prices.

The same menu is in effect all day: appetizers, salads, sandwiches, six entrees, a couple of specials. I ate there only at dinner, and hard as we tried, we couldn't manage to order anything for more than $14 that didn't come in a bottle. There are even generous little touches, like the fresh green salad that comes with every entree.

Calamari ($6) came fried gently in a light batter, tender and striped over the top with a garlicky mayonnaise (the kind of thing that would be called aíoli at a bistro) and served with a little side dish of pickled hot peppers. A plate of mild goat cheese with cracked black pepper on top ($3) came with long slices of baguette, quadrisected and toasted.

We also tried a quesadilla ($5), which was stripped to the fundamentals: red pepper, chili, and cheese smooshed between two tortillas and fried till just crispy. In a cross-cultural touch, the quesadilla was topped with the same aíoli we got on the calamari. Mussels ($5), served in a terra-cotta bowl, were steamed beautifully: the bellies were plump and tender, firm on the outside but soft in the middle. They came with thin slices of fennel and sprigs of thyme laid over the top, in a broth with a strong taste of white wine.

Co-owners Josh Childs and Katy Gehan have worked in several popular restaurants and bars around town (they met a few years ago at the then-new West Street Grill), and their background shows in an interesting way: Silvertone's short but very savvy wine list. It's called "Katy's Cellar" on the menu, and each of the 11 wines sells for exactly $10 over cost, which is practically a form of charity in a city where triple-retail markups are considered normal. Here, the most expensive wine is a white Burgundy for $40 -- and that bottle, just for reference, costs $95 on the wine list of a well-known restaurant on the opposite side of the Common. Here we were able to try a delicious, mellow Bernadus pinot noir for $28, and a tight, flinty Michel Reddie Sancerre for $25. (My one quibble with the wine list is the way it's organized: the wines are listed by country, so it's hard to tell reds from whites unless you know your grapes.)

We drank that pinot noir with steak tips ($8), which sounds a bit like champagne and a Big Mac until you actually try the steak tips, which were very tender pieces of beef, cooked medium-rare, and touched on the outside with something teriyaki-ish called "Long Island marinade" (nice to see a chef so proud of his roots, but you have to wonder). It came with a heap of terrific french fries, crispy and light; between the meat and the potatoes was a dusky-green spray of fresh sage, purely decorative unless you really like sage.

A daily fish special of salmon ($12), a moist fillet squared off at the edges, was cooked to a nice pink in the middle. Served over a buttery, oniony relish, it came with a generous helping of kale -- sweetened in the cooking, perhaps with honey -- as well as plain brown rice. Another version of steak frites was a sirloin special with home fries. The steak was less tender than the tips had been, but it seemed a good-quality piece of beef, the fat already sliced off, served in a deep-brown gravy. Alongside were pencil-thin asparagus spears, almost crunchy, and -- who would have expected? -- the greatest home fries in the world. They were thin little potato rounds, skin on, fried till crispy on the edge and still soft in the middle. No special flavors or sauces, just potato slices done exactly as they should be.

We did notice that our entrees were slightly better during that first visit, which was a quiet night, than on a busier evening. This isn't unusual. Something called "Jack's dirty pasta" ($8) was penne strongly flavored with cumin, hinting at garlic and chili. The pasta was a bit stiff and a little oily, as if it had been allowed to sit a while. A dish of plain penne with tomatoes (penne pomodoro, $7), though, was right on target. The tomato sauce had a fresh taste and texture, as though tomatoes had just been milled with a bit of basil and some parmesan cheese.

Silvertone's meatloaf ($9) turned out to be plain to a fault; we were happier with a special of sea bass ($12), which again came with those excellent home fries. The fish had a light citrus taste on the outside, and came with a fistful of haricots verts that were every bit as toothsome as the asparagus we'd had with the sirloin.

Dessert at Silvertone is a straight shot down the middle: dense cheesecake ($4), served chilled with a raspberry sauce and strips of mint leaf; hot apple pie ($3) with nice firm apple slices and a doughy bottom crust; a special of tart, icy lemon sorbet ($2), in a parfait glass, served with mint leaves.

Without carpets or much soundproofing, Silvertone can get a bit loud as it fills up. We listened to funk music one night, the Style Council another. Service was unfailingly friendly. Our waitress was Katy herself, and she put a lot of thought into giving us advice about even simple things, like which white wine to choose, or what exactly a Long Island marinade might be. She even adjusted the thermostat, just for us. Now that's cool.