The Federalist

The art of the $100 dinner

by Robert Nadeau

DINING OUT

The Federalist 15 Beacon Street (in XV Beacon Hotel), Beacon Hill, Boston Open daily, 7 a.m.-10:30 p.m. AE, CB, DC, Di, MC, Visa Full bar Smoking at bar (617) 670-2515 Street-level access via hotel lobby; valet parking $12

There must be 50 ways to charge $100 a plate for dinner, but the Federalist has arrived at one of the very best: serving small, intensely flavored dishes. I've seen the 90-piece setting, the intricately decorated food, the airmail-exotic produce, the hovering hundreds of staff, the view to kill for, the renaissance antique furniture, the museum-quality cheese plate, the overdesigned dining-room-as-wind-tunnel, yea, the chilled salad fork, the tasting menu, wine by the thimble, and even Paris itself. But a menu of small, intensely flavored dishes is better.

The meal begins with a server offering a choice of five kinds of bread from a wicker hamper: Boston brown bread, cashew-wheat, potato roll, hard roll, soft roll. My choice would be the potato roll, delicate as such things go; we found the cashew-wheat too crunchy and busy, the hard roll too ropy, and the Boston brown bread not so sweet as many (but rather better with food). The butter is unsalted, under a sterling dome. The salt is in a sterling salt cellar, with a little salt spoon. The pepper is in a small grinder -- sterling again -- that weighs a pound or two. Ours ground rather coarse.

The complimentary appetizer was a little turret of "salmon tartare" with chives and a painted circle of crème fraîche. The combination is not so different from lox and cream cheese, even if the salmon is uncooked. But it's three flavors, in harmony, in maybe two bites.

What the Federalist kitchen is up to is typified by an appetizer of sautéed sea scallop, ruby-red grapefruit, and grilled fennel ($17). That's one scallop? Yes. About the size of a jumbo marshmallow. Bet the restaurant on one scallop. Sear it around the edges, complement its full flavor with a slice of grilled fennel, four slices of grapefruit, and a wisp of a sauce that picks up the licorice hint of the one and the tartness of the other -- and you only need one scallop. If you get the right scallop. (Since you know you have the right scallop, you can show off with a mother-of-pearl platter mounted on moistened salt.)

And in a dish of soft-shell crab with heirloom- and sweet-tomato vinaigrette ($17), they get the right crab. The dirty secret of soft-shell crabs is that they don't usually taste this good. The tomatoes, in a rainy, cold week, were not the best New England has, but the vinaigrette trick, perking up dull tomatoes with good wine vinegar, works reasonably well. The sweet tomatoes were tiny red cherry tomatoes, and the heirlooms were a slice of a pink one and a slice of a yellow one, neither at peak ripeness. The whole sat on a crunchy biscuit of pastry.

One of the unusual features of the Federalist's menu is that it is about two-thirds seafood, with no chicken at all. Loup de mer ($36) is our New England wolffish, sometimes sold in Provincetown as ocean catfish. All these names are based on its ghastly appearance, but evolution has equipped the wolffish to grind up shellfish, and it has a firm flesh like striped bass, but more delicately flavored. I think the chef has brined this one a little, like a Gloucester fishwife, as it came to the table plump and juicy but somewhat salty. I've seldom had a better piece of fish, and barely needed the excellent wild mushrooms (mostly chanterelles) and spinach used as a platform.

Sautéed California red abalone with veal scallops and tomato risotto ($44) uses the airmail-produce technique of menu inflation, but only to deflate the mythology. The two veal scallops are so close in flavor and texture to the two slices of abalone that the game becomes telling them apart. The risotto underneath is on the chewy side, not in an exaggerated way, but just enough to break up the creamy richness. A side of "succotash" is served in a small abalone shell (balanced on moist salt paste again); it features fresh, crunchy peas and lima beans.

The wine list is enormous and expensive -- $7 to $30 per glass, $20 to $210 for half-bottles, and barely touching down at $35 per bottle. Among the halves are nine vintages of Opus One. This kind of list isn't assembled cheaply for a new restaurant, and the menu argues for a splurge on wine. I would situate the epicenter of value in the half-bottles of California chardonnay, but I chose a half-bottle of French Chablis (Trembley, 1997, $25). There is still nothing in California with the crisp richness of real Chablis, and nothing like French wine with French or even French-ish food. Wine service is impeccable, and our server earned additional praise by skillfully tuning the half-bottle to our pace of dining. (The wine cellar has tables and serves as a function room for special events -- on our night, a medical meeting hosted by a pharmaceutical company.)

Our favorite dessert was chocolate-banana brioche pudding ($9), an object of ethereally light chocolate cream not much bigger than the perfect sea scallop, accompanied by a scatter of sautéed banana slices and a little scoop of caramel ice cream. The peach tart ($9) was really a tasting platter of three items: a raft of excellent puff pastry, three slices of grilled peach with a balsamic glaze, and a double shot of peach "soup," about the consistency of applesauce. It was every possible angle on peaches except for the juicy luxury of a perfectly ripe local peach -- an object that will not stand up to culinary manipulations.

Service is extensive but rather good, by a seamless system of captains and servers. The main weakness of the Federalist is the room itself, which seems to pack too many ideas into too small a space. It is loud, crowded, and a little smoky from the adjoining bar. Thematically it is jumbled, with the portrait of the Antifederalist Jefferson (a serious gourmet, though) as one enters, the abstract art in red and black (that's the Sandinistas, not the Federalists), the plates and tablecloths that say "The Fed" (a central bank in my book), and a soundtrack that starts with a lot of salsa. Or maybe that's a tribute to the Caribbean birth of Federalist Alexander Hamilton?

Easier to fix, I think, are the dreary unisex leisure suits of the waitstaff (more Orwellian than Federalist). In addition to one of the most justifiably expensive dinners in town, the Federalist serves a power breakfast, a weekend brunch, and a lunch likely to be corrupted by the neighboring State House. My guess is that lobbyists are cutting back, or that no reporter can afford to go in and see what pols are present.

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

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