Bob the Chef's

Yuppies, buppies, and neighborhood folk still mix here as they always did. Only now the people -- and the food -- are a bit more dressed up.

604 Columbus Avenue, South End; 536-6204
Open Mon - Fri, 5 p.m. to midnight; Sat and Sun, 9 a.m. to midnight
Beer and wine
AE, MC, Visa
Sidewalk-level handicapped access

by Robert Nadeau

The Old Bob the Chef was a rather genteel soul-food luncheonette with frankly bland food. I used to joke that if you wanted to try chitterlings for the first time, this was the right place to go, because most of the funky smell would be scrubbed off. For most of its very long life under several managements, Bob the Chef (yes, it didn't used to be so possessive) was open only for breakfast and lunch.

The current owners have changed format without greatly changing the food or the prices, obviously aiming for a post-Spike Lee kind of image. Ironically, the restaurant is now open only for dinner on weekdays, and has about the same mix of yuppies, buppies, and neighborhood people as it always did -- only now we are a bit more dressed up. Take-out customers, now diverted to the kitchen door, can still pick up lunch.

The restaurant properly touts its "glorifried chicken" and overly estimates its barbecued ribs, just as it always did. Judging by a "tin bucket" appetizer of chicken wings and ribs ($6.95), the chicken has a little crispness and breading without too much seasoning but the ribs are still baked, with no taste of the fire other than a bit of smoke seasoning in the sauce. This was the main style of ribs in Boston's black neighborhoods until recently, and it may reflect the Carolinas origins of a large fraction of the community. These ribs are good, mind you. But the only "barbecue" part is the sauce.

Most of the new things on the menu are associated with New Orleans, and, to this kitchen, that means red pepper. Thus a cup of gumbo ($2.95; $3.95 for a bowl) was quite spicy, with additional bits of spicy sausage, but a slightly burnt aftertaste. Jambalaya ($14.95) was excellent rice, also very spicy and with the sausage cut in, but with five fresh mussels (one of them not so fresh) instead of shrimp. Shrimp etouffée ($12.95) was half a dozen large shrimp over excellent white rice, in a Creole sauce again with major cayenne.

The chitterlings ($12.95) are still well-scrubbed, and they have very little red pepper. I asked for pepper sauce, and I got a big bottle of "Frank's" -- good tasting, but one of the least fiery brands on the shelf.

Liver and onions ($9.95) is one of the dishes where blandness pays off: the original Bob had been a railroad chef, which was the real top of the culinary profession for African-American men during most of this century. Railroad food was plain American cooking from sea to shining sea, and that's where Bob's can still really make an impression. The liver was slightly overdone, which is unfortunately traditional, but the gravy was fully flavored with onions. It's good to see an American classic still on the menu.

No one comes in this door thinking about grazing, but the appetizer menu has some real possibilities for mix-and-match. The catfish fingers ($5.95) is a dinner-size portion of meltingly tender and sweet fried fish with a fresh tartar sauce. Any of the side vegetables ($2.50 à la carte) would complete a meal for me. An order of crab cakes ($7.95) arrives as a pair: soft on the inside, a little spiced, crispy on the outside, and very good with that same lively tartar sauce.

About the only fried thing that didn't work for us was the sweet-potato fries ($3.95). Ours came limp and greasy, though with a nice lacing of cinnamon.

Of the side dishes, I especially liked the creamy macaroni and cheese, the "fried" corn with onions, the soft but tasty collards, the baked beans, as well as the honey-sweet cinnamon yams. For some reason, the baked beans were served over hard, undercooked rice, in contrast to three other kinds of excellent rice on the table.

The new Bob's has a wine list, and the wine list includes a couple of reds from South Africa by the glass. For a long time, I never expected to drink South African wine again, and certainly not with chitterlings, but here I was all set to toast the new South Africa constitution, which is now more protective of human rights than ours, at least on paper. Rooiberg Shiraz ($4.50 per glass) is a red with a fruity nose and some alcohol on the palate, better with glorifried chicken than with chitterlings (and probably better slightly chilled in any case), but not an unworthy African wine for an African-American restaurant.

Desserts include an excellent candy-sweet bourbon pecan pie ($3.95) and a filling sweet-potato pie ($2.95), as well as a fresh-tasting "mile-high" apple pie ($2.95) that wasn't especially tall. Unfortunately, the coffee ($1.25) was very thin and wasn't refilled.

The restaurant currently features jazz Wednesday through Saturday nights. The quartet we heard on a Friday night would have justified a small cover charge, and perhaps a second cup of coffee.

Service was otherwise excellent from a young multiracial staff. The kitchen sends out appetizers and entrees in somewhat random order, but our table was sharing everything anyway, so it was all good fun.

Bob's old counter and booths have gone to diner-nostalgia heaven, and the new design is bare-brick, sponged-yellow interior walls, framed Afrocentric art and posters, polished wood floors, and smoky soul music between live sets.

The evening crowd is just as mellow as the day business, which means the owners have won their bet on the rehab. Celebs I noticed was Henry "Eyes on the Prize" Hampton. Henry Louis Gates has reportedly been in, and I don't know that he would have made the breakfast or lunch scenes under the old mission.