The Boston Phoenix
August 19 - 26, 1999

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Sweet Chili

In restaurants, imitation is the most dangerous form of flattery

by Stephen Heuser

DINING OUT
Sweet Chili
(617) 864-4500
1172-1178 Cambridge Street (Inman Square), Cambridge
Open for lunch Mon-Fri, 11:30 a.m.-3 p.m., and Sat and Sun, 11:30 a.m.-4 p.m.; and for dinner Mon-Thurs, 5-10 p.m., Fri and Sat, 5-11 p.m., and Sun, 5-10:30 p.m.
AE, MC, Visa
Full bar
Access via lift
No smoking
At this point it's probably fair to declare Inman Square the only neighborhood in the area with rival Thai/Japanese/Korean bistros across the street from each other. The original is Jae's, with its tropical aquarium and urbane woody interior and endless menu. The upstart, a block down Cambridge Street, is Sweet Chili -- also with tropical aquarium, woody interior, and endless menu.

To be fair, there are some differences. For one thing, Sweet Chili is more conspicuously Thai; it's the jazzed-up second branch of an all-Thai restaurant in Arlington Center. For another thing, the fish in the aquarium are smaller than the fish at Jae's. For a third thing, the sushi at Sweet Chili -- and I hope the owners of this restaurant will forgive me for putting it this way -- kicks ass. The first time I tried it I was pleasantly surprised. The second time, it was so pretty I almost cried. The sushi at Jae's is fine, but this -- this was something else altogether.

Sweet Chili But first things first. If you were asking me for a name for a Thai restaurant, Sweet Chili would be pretty high on the list. It sums up the cuisine concisely and appetizingly; it also makes the place one of the two Thai restaurants in America without the words "Thai," "Bangkok," or "Siam" in the name (the other is Brown Sugar, in the Fenway). If you were asking me for a culinary strategy for a Thai restaurant, I would suggest a very spicy, sharp, ingredient-focused cuisine, something to stand out from the stewy throng of local Thai restaurants, which (as the Boston Globe intelligently pointed out last week) tend toward a sugary sameness in their sauces.

They didn't listen to me on that one. The Thai dishes here are good -- probably as good as anything in Cambridge -- but not remarkable. Pad Thai ($7.50), the favorite noodle dish of most American Thai-food fans, probably isn't quite up to the Jae's standard. (Comparisons may be odious, but they're inevitable.) The noodles are a little oily and the whole dish is a little monochrome (brown and beige, mostly); it tastes fine, but it doesn't have the clean crunch and brightness that fresh bean sprouts and lime wedges provide. There was a little more life in the "pad Thai country style" ($7.50), a chili-pepper version of the same thing.

Sweet Chili Most of the entrées we tried had similar underpinnings: some kind of meat in a coconut-milk-based sauce tossed with green beans, bell-pepper spears, broccoli, and giant disks of carrot cut like asterisks. Some dishes had onions, some had baby corn; the chili heat wasn't aggressive, and tended to catch up to you only after a few bites. The most distinctive, and prettiest, entrée was randang curry with chicken ($10.95): it was the usual mixture served with a topping of golden-brown toasted coconut, and the result tasted good, if slightly like a pie. "Dancing Squid" ($10.95) was decoratively cut calamari rings in a soy-based sauce. Thai chili string beans ($9.95), a vegetarian dish, was gratifyingly spicy and heavy on the cashews.

The two standout Thai dishes we had were both appetizers. One was som tum ($5.95), a salad of shredded green papaya and carrot tossed in a sharp lime-chili sauce. There were glistening-fresh half shrimps, and the whole thing was bound by a quietly intense flavor that I think came from dried shrimp. The other was the Thai rolls ($4.50), which were small -- each about the size of a human finger -- and fried to a pleasingly non-greasy crisp.

Two other appetizers, both Japanese, were outstanding. Gyoza (six dumplings stuffed with chopped pork, $5.50) had a lovely texture, with delicate fried skin and a very mild filling; shumai ($5.50) were like little white pillows with spongy shrimp filling.

Sweet Chili Now, about the sushi. You look for a couple of things in sushi: a glistening-fresh piece of fish; a cut that maximizes the beauty of the grain; and of course -- given the price of sushi -- a little generosity in the portion. The nigiri (sliced fish laid on a finger of rice) hit on all cylinders, and was a wonderful deal at the price. With good sushi, as with high-end steak, a finely marbled fat increases the flavor and desirability of the meat, up to a point. The hamachi (or yellowtail, $3.95) -- probably my favorite of all sushi fish -- had a delicate latticed pattern of fat that I'd never seen before; it was cut wide and long, to cover the rice and droop over the sides. Mackerel ($3) was gorgeous, all two-toned flesh and silvery skin, with a green knot of shaved scallion decorating the top, but the meat of this oily fish was slightly dry. Chutoro (fatty tuna, $5) bore audacious streaks of fat and was amazingly buttery to the taste. (Five bucks for fatty tuna, by the way, is a steal.) Finally, the caterpillar roll ($7.50) -- one of those modern multi-ingredient maki rolls -- was an astonishing object: a long inside-out roll sheathed in thin-sliced avocado, with two little octopus suckers for eyes on one end. Slick and green and segmented, it looked for all the world like edible Lego. The crunch in the center came from crispy eel skin, cucumber, and the fine fish roe called tobiko. It curled around the plate like a snake and tasted like the sea.

The front-of-house operation at Sweet Chili is friendly, almost aggressively so; they pounced on us, menus in hand, the moment we entered. Service is quick (appetizers tumble out in a hurry) but slowed down as business increased on a Wednesday night. The décor is a mostly successful attempt to Thai-ize what used to be a Greek restaurant by hanging prints and gilt figurines between the classical pilasters; little birds are mounted in the chandeliers. If they make you feel festive, order the fried ice cream at the end of the meal. It comes in a light and warm tempura-like shell sprinkled with sesame seeds; it was the only dessert we tried, but we liked it so much we ordered it three times.

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


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