6 Burner

A playful space that could be a lot more serious about its food

Dining Out by Robert Nadeau

151 Brighton Avenue, Allston (617) 782-5660 Open Mon-Fri, 11:30 a.m.-11 p.m. Sat-Sun, 9:30 a.m.-11 p.m. AE, DC, Di, MC, Visa No liquor Sidewalk-level access No reservations

The six burners in question are those of a commercial stove, the kind that wealthy "foodies" buy for their home kitchens. The restaurant 6 Burner sends up a lot of contemporary foodism, starting with the first-class joke of running the TV Food Network on big screens over the bar where most establishments would have the hockey playoffs. So instead of crashing helmets, we have Emeril Lagasse tossing salt around, "Sing, Sing, Sing" on the CD jukebox, and a racket of twentysomething voices and clashing flatware, all in a room that looks like the eat-in kitchen of Pee-Wee's Playhouse. The whole thing would be really funny if the food were any good.

The owners of 6 Burner earned their stripes with the wonderful selection of beers across the street at the Sunset Grill & Tap (also not noted for fine food), but here they have as yet no liquor license. So reviewing their restaurant before they can deploy their beverage expertise is a bit like writing a sports article on Mo Vaughn's abilities as a pinch runner. And as it turns out, eating here on my own nickel would feel a bit like paying for a Red Sox ticket and ending up watching Mo play tennis.

So Vaughn tosses up the ball for his first serve . . . .

It's a breadbasket with a lot of hot things in it: onion focaccia (good but greasy), toasted pita bread with too much celery salt, a fluffy and tasteless roll, and an overly herbalized bread stick. Saving things somewhat is a dip of puréed beans with lots of raw garlic. But it also leaves us thirsting for beer, which may be the eventual plan, but right now we must make do with a couple of nonalcoholic concoctions in bottles. As you might expect, these are the most realistic of the nonbrews -- Molson Exel ($3.25), which has the thin, hoppy profile of Molson Extra, and Warsteiner Fresh ($3.50), which is malty without being too sweet, almost like an English ale.

The "Greek artichoke & feta toss" appetizer ($4.95) was fine -- like an upscale Greek salad, with field greens instead of the usual iceberg lettuce. But then we had a special cabbage-and-bean soup, served cold and inedibly salty in a 14-inch bowl, with barely enough soup to fill a diner mug. And they left out the beans.

Then you have the "napoleon of grilled polenta & herbed vegetables" ($5.95). Now, a napoleon is a dessert of many layers of fine pastry and custard cream. This tall, vertical appetizer is layered (and plumed with a rosemary spike, reminiscent of a Prussian helmet), but since the largest layers are portobello mushrooms, a slice of eggplant, and the disk of cheesy polenta, it looks like a burger. It would work if you could eat the dish like a burger or like a napoleon, with several flavors in one bite, but all these pieces (and the layers of spinach and broiled tomato) are so large that you have to cut them with a knife and fork and eat them one at time. The vegetables are good (not especially herbed, but good), but the dish as a whole is subtraction by addition.

Thai spring rolls ($5.75) have been modified in ways that will make them fail for many diners. Typically, you get a flavor contrast between the spring roll and the dips. Some wise guy here has added fine sticks of hot ginger to the spring rolls, so not only are they spicy (probably too spicy for many people), but the Thai-style dip of hot peppers in a thin syrup is hot and spicy, too. No contrast, so why dip? (The other dip of honey-sweetened soy paste is horridly sweet, as is the base of green soba, so those parts just don't count.) As a minor point, putting julienned vegetables in a spring roll looks cool, but it makes them hard to bite into.

A special appetizer of smoked salmon risotto cakes ($5.95) was rather fun, with cilantro and black beans added to the gooey cakes for contrast. My suggestion to the kitchen: watch the grease on these, keep up the spicy red-cabbage slaw, and you'll have a winner. And while you're at it, lose the four-cheese orecchiette ($5.95) off the "grazings" menu. With 10 other pasta plates and a risotto, no one will notice -- and the restaurant will be spared the embarrassment of any more reviews that say "Can't even cook macaroni and cheese." Most of the center was cold, even though the ear-shaped pasta had been cooked through, somewhere, sometime.

Then you get something like "filet mignon & cannelloni" ($9.95). Again, the parts don't really relate, but the steak was done accurately. The cannelloni weren't really tubes (or "sleeves"), but were more like pasta crêpes rolled around some more of those good portobello mushrooms. The "chianti demi-glace" is close enough to wine sauce, and the giant crisscross potato chips are a pretty good surprise.

On both of my visits the restaurant offered specials involving sea scallops (both $13.95). The first, which skewered four large scallops with scallion spacers and featured greenish, cheesy potato pancakes and greasy fried onions, was reasonably special. The second was prettier, with more scallops nicely browned (if not seared, as promised) and snow peas, and I enjoyed the saffron fettuccine that came with it.

If you don't order desserts at 6 Burner, you get fortune cookies. If you do, you wander into a minefield. The best we had was "Crazy Al's tiramisu" ($4.95), which was a pretty sane and dull square of coffee-soaked sponge cake and whipped cream, with a flamboyant vertical medallion of caramel. The worst was a "classic" chocolate éclair ($2.95); even when it was fresh it wasn't classic, because the filling is supposed to be custard cream and this was more like the ricotta filling of cannoli. I would rate the "triple berry tart" ($5.95) in the middle --it had some excellent berries but a whole lot of leaden cookie-dough crust, and I couldn't find the advertised custard layer.

Given the price structure, it ought to be possible to do a diner/comfort menu here, with modest portions of garlic mashed potatoes and meatloaf and so on. Meanwhile, you have a very amusing place to hoist a non-beer while taking in a bronzed tin ceiling; Steely Dan, Dizzy Gillespie, or Little Feat on the jukebox; huge nickel-plated kitchen tools on the wall; Mediterranean Mario on the big screen (Caps 1, B's 0 on another tube for the fanatics); plastic food in the window; giant false banquettes; corrugated-tin wainscoting; colander lamps; Emeril stuffing a Cornish hen on the screen above the bar; "Fever" played as a mambo -- a phantasmagoria of the omnivorous '90s that could really take off, if only the kitchen clued in on the joke.

Robert Nadeau can be reached at robtnadeau@aol.com.

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