The Boston Phoenix
August 6 - 13, 1998

[Food Reviews]

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South End Grill

Dollar for pound, we're looking at probably the best food deal in the South End. Just hope you're hungry.

by Stephen Heuser

439 Tremont Street
(South End), Boston
(617) 338-8884
Open Sun-Thurs, 5-11 p.m.;
Fri and Sat, 5 p.m.-12.30 a.m.;
bar open till 1 a.m. nightly
AE, DC, Disc, MC, Visa
Full bar
Sidewalk-level access
My first dinner at the South End Grill began with a huge pile of homemade potato chips dripping with melted blue cheese. Even people indifferent to homemade potato chips can probably sympathize; here was a plate groaning with fresh chips -- crispy and brown on the edges, soft and starchy in the middle -- smothered with rich, sharp, thick cheese, in a quantity that could feed a cocktail party. The chips ($5.95) were great, but the cheese was way too much of a good thing, and matters just got more out of hand from there.

The second thing I was served at the South End Grill was essentially a stealth three-in-one salad ($5.95). Big slices of grilled chicken were laid on a dome of mixed baby greens, and hidden underneath the greens was a full-size serving of potato salad. Each of these elements taken alone would have made a decent appetizer; the greens were fresh, the chicken was moist, and the potato salad, with chopped-up green onions, red peppers, and egg whites, had a crisp and summery kick to it. But on the same plate, they amounted to more than two people could finish. And side-by-side with the potato chips they left us in no shape at all for the dinner to follow.

The South End Grill is not a place to visit if you've eaten recently -- say, in the past few days. The generally modest prices make this an amazing value, especially for the neighborhood, but you can't be super-fussy about preparation and you should probably bring backup eaters. It is not like Vinny Testa's, where goofy-huge portion size is the central gimmick, along with giant flatware and waiters challenging you to go home without a doggy bag. No, here the excess has an unselfconsciousness that makes it even more intimidating: I should be able to eat this, you think, but you don't even get close. You keep ordering thinking that the last dish might have been a fluke, but no -- the cheese chips and picnic-on-a-plate are followed by a piece of "baby pork loin" as thick as a beer can ($13.95), which also comes with green beans, gooey mashed potatoes, and roasted beets. Another night, a salad of diced raw vegetables on flatbread wedges ($4.95) is so big, the veggies so vastly outweighing the bread, that you don't see why the bread was mentioned on the menu at all.

The South End Grill occupies a pretty prime piece of real estate, just around the corner from the very popular Appetito, with which it shares owners. Initially I figured the place would be angling for a sort of A-list gay clientele, but belly-busting bar-and-grill portions are probably a bad fit with the Metropolitan Gym crowd; after four months in business, it appears the grill is playing neighborhood bar to Appetito's hip trattoria, with an unpigeonholable mix of gay and straight, twentysomething and middle-aged, all apparently sharing a virtually unfillable hunger for potatoes, greens, and grilled meat in sweet sauces. (The pork loin came in a bacon-onion glaze; a half chicken ($12.95) was coated in a sweet "balsamic" crust.)

Not that there weren't flashes of moderation. An appetizer of Maine crab cakes ($5.95) was just right for two -- a pair of big, soft, fried crab cakes tasting of red pepper and accompanied by unctuous, vaguely peppery mayonnaise. Another appetizer, of onion rings ($4.95) -- well, it wasn't small, but it had undeniable finesse, with thin, ribbony, only slightly oily rings coated in a fairly light batter.

Based on what I tried, the cooking at South End Grill didn't overreach, but it didn't hypnotize us with its subtlety either. I couldn't help thinking this was a meat-and-potatoes restaurant for people who like the word arugula. The onion rings came with a "mango chipotle ketchup" that tasted good, but it was hard to detect the mango. The "grilled flatbread" under those chopped veggies was lavash, which is normally found on the outside of roll-up sandwiches; unfortunately, here the wedges were too small to roll up much of the salad.

No surprise that most of the straightforward American food was just ducky. A great big hamburger patty ($7.95), maybe half a pound, sat royally on a near-albino sourdough roll, topped with a square of sharp white cheddar and a thick slice of tomato. The meat was a touch undercooked for medium rare, but not too bloody; on the side was a nifty mix of regular French fries and thin sweet-potato fries. Meatloaf, too ($11.95), did what meatloaf is supposed to do; fancy as it sounded on the menu ("ground veal, beef, and wild mushroom meatloaf"), it tasted just like my mom's meatloaf (she made it with ground beef and tomato sauce), not too heavy, with a dark-brown gravy ladled over the top.

A special of pan-fried catfish ($14.95), on the other hand, outfoxed itself a little. A fine, tender fillet was pan-fried and then glopped up with a caponata of tomatoes, capers, and kalamata olives -- yummy and Mediterranean and totally overpowering the fish. The side vegetables, as with the meatloaf, were garlicky broccoli, mashed sweet potato, and a stir-fry of crispy vegetables like pea pods, red peppers, and onions.

It strained my endurance to move on to dessert, but this column is about nothing if not duty. I liked the chocolate bourbon pecan pie ($4.95), which was a narrow wedge assembled almost purely of pecans, with chocolate worked into the interstitial goo and a scribble of sugary bourbon sauce across the plate. (In two nights at the restaurant, the pecan pie was the only thing I finished.) A slice of banana cream pie ($4.95), served on a striking black plate, was a predictably Brobdingnagian thing, a cloud of meringue and toasted coconut looming malevolently over the guy who ordered it. His fork advanced gamely, carving out territory bite by bite, but eventually the time came to call it a night. Historians will award victory to the pie.


This week's "unclear on the concept" award goes to the restless geniuses at Reynolds Wrap, who recently sent us a press kit announcing a new product: aluminum-foil pouches for outdoor grilling. Come again? Ignore for a moment that if I want to cook my food in a pouch, I can make one in about 15 seconds by folding up a sheet of foil. Instead, think: the whole point of grilling is that direct heat and smoke make food taste better. The spiffy new Reynolds Hot Bag(TM) eliminates the direct heat and the smoke -- thus creating grilled food that tastes just like it was baked in an oven. Yum! What's next? A BreadShield(TM) to keep your toast from acquiring that unpleasant golden color? Stay tuned.

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

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