Il Bico

Not your everyday Italian joint

by Stephen Heuser

DINING OUT

Il Bico 468 Comm Ave (Kenmore Square), Boston (617) 375-0699 Open daily, 11:30 a.m. - 3 p.m. and 5:30 - 11 p.m. All major credit cards Wine, beer, and cordials Smoking in bar area Dining room down a flight of stairs from street level; bathrooms down another flight

By any normal standard, my first visit to Il Bico was catastrophic. The place looked pretty enough, in its half- downstairs location east of Kenmore Square and west of the sun, but when I peeked through the window I could see only one occupied table, and the occupants looked an awful lot like the staff. An hour into dinnertime on a Friday night this is rarely a promising sign. I almost didn't go in, but going in is what I get paid to do. I pushed the door open and took a table for one.

The staff dispersed. Il Bico is a handsome, tile-floored trattoria with a big open kitchen in the back, and I could see one of the guys start to peel carrots. One of them became my waiter. I ordered tomato-and-bread soup, and a plate of tagliatelle. I ordered a glass of white wine. The waiter brought a breadbasket, olive oil, balsamic vinegar. And then . . .

Well, it was a lucky thing I'd brought a magazine. The waiter told me the soup was made by puréeing tomatoes, then adding cubes of bread to soak in the purée overnight. I began to fear the overnight part might still be ahead of us.

Eventually I got my soup, and I got my pasta, and by the time I paid my bill and left -- there were a few other people eating by then -- I realized that I had been kind of charmed by the place. (I had also finished reading two very long articles in my magazine, mostly before the soup came.) The soup (cup $3.95, bowl $6.95) had been a very basic purée of tomatoes, with bits of bread that behaved like something between thickener and very soft croutons. The pasta ($13.95) had been wonderful: noodles about the width of fettuccine with a perfectly homemade al dente texture, coated thinly with an intense tomato sauce. The sauce was flavored with veal stock and interesting chopped giblets -- chewy little bits that the waiter and I were never quite able to pin down. (He said chicken stomach, but it tasted like heart to me.)

At any rate, I was charmed because something about the food felt real -- not gritty real, or fussy-organic real, but real like the food you get in another country, where the rhythm is off and the details are awry and "tagliatelle" doesn't quite mean what you think it means, but you become aware, as you eat, that you are in the presence of something ineffably different from the food at home.

Of course I had to go back.

I covered my bases and invited a heroic eater who is also a good conversationalist. The pattern at dinner, though not identical, was recognizable. This time we got a diffident server, relatively quick service, and no extras: no bread, olive oil, or balsamic vinegar. My salad came without dressing, apparently on purpose. We had goblets, but water arrived mainly by request. Our server was neglectful about little things, but sporadically attentive: she accidentally poured too large a chunk of ice into one goblet, fished it out with her fingers, then stopped self-consciously and carted off the glass.

We ordered carrot-cream soup, a salad, a couple of entrées, and a "bico" -- a rolled Etruscan flatbread and the eponym of the restaurant. The soup (cup $3.95, bowl $6.95) was monumentally thick, and during the lull while we were waiting for a spoon, I just dug in with my fork for a taste. I'm not kidding: it didn't even drip. The carrot flavor was clear, but it also had a muscular undertone, like beef broth, and a surface freckled with cracked peppercorns.

As for the bico, we had a sneak preview at the next table, where an aging hipster was delivered a plate bearing what looked like six egg rolls arranged in the shape of an asterisk. I asked what it was, and the guy just handed me a piece -- I think, looking at it, he realized he couldn't finish this and eat dinner the same night. The premise of the bico is very simple: warm meat and cheese, or spinach and cheese, or cheese and mushroom, rolled up in a great big piece of flatbread and topped with a dusting of crushed herbs. This may sound like heresy in Wrap Nation, but it's really the bread that makes any rolled-up food work, and the "Etruscan flatbread" was just the ticket, fresh in the middle and crispy around the edges. To read the menu you might think it's intended as an appetizer, but it's really a decent-sized meal.

When our entrées came -- they were delivered at the same time as the bico, which made for a lot of food on the table at once -- my dinner was like nothing I've ever seen in a restaurant. It was called bocconcini de pollo ($13.95). Picture a dark pool with chunks of chicken arrayed like moon rocks. That's it: no starch, no side vegetable. The taste was spectacular: the pool was an intense reduced sauce of balsamic vinegar and chopped radicchio, somehow buttery, tangy, and sweet all at once. It worked its way into every cranny of the chicken chunks. Our other entrée, the tortelloni con zucca ($14.95), had the same appeal as the tagliatelle: it was square-cut ravioli stuffed with butternut squash, and the pieces stuck together with the toothsome gumminess of fresh pasta. The sauce was a brilliantly colored carroty affair, with chunks of tomato giving it tart and crimson highlights.

Though Il Bico advertises itself partly as a wine bar, right now there are only a few wines by the glass, and the list doesn't exactly come flying to your table when you say the word "wine." On the other hand, I noticed a few other parties -- middle-aged couples from the Back Bay or from the BU professoriat -- getting very engaged in the wine ritual, and being served in snazzy thin-walled crystal glasses.

Desserts were basic and unimpeachable: a large square-cut chunk of tiramisú, shot through with espresso liqueur ($4.25); a plate of little biscotti served with a small glass of sweet vin santo ($4.25).

To be fair, I spoke to another friend of mine, a restaurant nut, who went to Il Bico before I did, ordered the exact same things I ordered, and hated it. The lettuce wasn't fresh, she said, and the chicken was dry and overcooked. I didn't have these problems; I'd go back to Il Bico in a second for the food. I'm bringing another magazine, though, just in case.

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

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