Vox Populi
The people speak, sort of
by Robert Nadeau
DINING OUT |
Vox Populi
(617) 424-8300
755 Boylston Street, Boston (Back Bay)
Open Mon-Sat, 11:30 a.m.-11 p.m.; Sun, 11 a.m.-3 p.m. and 5:30-11 p.m.
Full bar
Valet parking available
Sidewalk-level access
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I suppose it takes a certain amount of nerve to replace a brewpub with a French
bistro and call it Vox Populi. Maybe the people's voice was expressed in
declining beer sales? Maybe the populace clamored for a revival of foie gras
custard and blanquette de veau rather than constant bread and circuses? Maybe the
proprietors are being ironic, as they try to move the ale-ites up to nine-dollar
glasses of wine. Of course, with peasant bread selling at five dollars a loaf
these days, why shouldn't French food be a populist gesture? Everything else is
upside down.
In fact, Vox Populi is sort of upside down, with a posh, non-smoking dining room
on the second floor, featuring a view of the Prudential Center. You can smoke at
the bar; and while the warm weather lasts, you can eat on the sidewalk and
pretend you're in the Roman forum. The French food is pretty well camouflaged on
a typically eclectic menu, but what we could find was rather good. Vox Populi
will please a broad spectrum of the public, prices aside.
Tamarind-glazed quail ($10) could be a signature item. The bird is tiny, about a
four-bite quail, but kept rare and tasty, with good use of the tangy tamarind
sauce. The quail is displayed on a bed of over-salted and -peppered tabouleh,
which will be a good foil once a few holes in the salt shaker clog up. Spring
rolls ($8) are elegantly elongated in the Vietnamese manner and served with dips
of both fish-sauce and hot, fresh "Chinese" mustard.
A salad of tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, and basil ($9) had very passable slices of
red and yellow tomato, with red and yellow cherry tomatoes as a garnish. This
salad is all in the marketing, and it's quite difficult to bring off in the
winter, but it should be good for another month or so. Gazpacho ($8) is tricked
up with fresh avocado and real crab meat, as well as leaves of basil. Again, the
presence of good tomatoes is crucial, and successful here.
Now, about that blanquette de veau ($21). This is really French comfort food, the
sort of thing one sees on the menu in a country roadhouse rather than in a
Michelin-starred Paris dining room. At Vox Populi, chef Michael Burgess gives it
the old cooking-school deconstruction. The veal is in discrete chunks, neatly
arranged around the rim of a giant platter, alternating with similar chunks of
carrot and potato. In the middle are the noodles, with a buttery sauce that could
convert anyone to French cuisine. But the French idea of this dish is a stew in a
lot of white glop (the blanquette part). Here we have individual bites, and even
a different (and orange!) sauce on the veal. Still, this blanquette de veau is
certainly the peak of the evening, and certainly something different from dishes
served by most of the other young-thinking restaurants in the Back Bay.
The "aged sirloin" ($24) doesn't have much of the gamy taste of aged beef, but
it's good meat, and well set-off with a heap of ultrathin green beans and a cake
of sliced potatoes au gratin. Another high point was salmon ($18) served with
roast potatoes on a bed of corn relish. Although salmon and corn relish are old
New England specialties, I don't think I've seen them together before. The
combination works well with today's richer, farmed salmon, here beautifully
crusted with spices. The roast potatoes had some crust, too.
On a dish of braised halibut ($22), the same potatoes were underdone. But the
halibut was an excellent piece, reminding us what a light-yet-flavorful dish one
can make from these giant flatfish. (Overcooked halibut steaks like wooden boards
were a bane of my childhood.) Leaves of watercress were a nice garnish, glazed
with an overly subtle sauce of fennel and orange.
The wine list
is long and rather pricey, but includes some
half-bottles for
smaller parties or for tables where not everyone is having wine. We tried a
Murphy-Goode '99 fumé blanc ($20 per half-bottle), which had the bracing
acidity
and hay-like aroma that Robert Mondavi intended when he coined the term "fumé
blanc" for a California sauvignon blanc with the style of a French Sancerre or
Pouilly-Fumé. Those are great food wines, and so was this. Our waitress smoothly
sold us soda water ($3.75) with the phrase "We are featuring Saratoga water," but
not so smoothly poured our entire half-bottle of wine into two glasses. This got
the bottle off the table right away, but too much wine per glass concealed the
aroma and underlined the fact that we hadn't saved much over the per-glass
price.
Desserts were adequate but not overwhelming. A chocolate terrine was very good,
and even better with cappuccino ($3.75). The peach Melba trifle was one idea too
many, served in a tall parfait glass, but tasting more like apples and whipped
cream. A slice of lemon cake with blueberry sauce was my personal favorite,
because the blueberry sauce was so good - the dessert was like blueberry
shortcake.
Vox Populi is in a pleasant, modern space without distracting features. The walls
are a color between adobe and salmon (which would be a good description for
modern bistro food), and the lamps are clever without going too far. Service is
generally good, better than the surroundings would suggest. The system still has
servers going up and down the stairs with some items. A surprising lapse on an
early (pre-theater) Saturday night was that the women's bathroom was a mess.
The atmosphere on the street level was already crowded and loud, although we had
no trouble getting a quiet table upstairs. The challenge is to get those bar
customers interested in dinners like blanquette de veau by the time the bar
popularity cycle is coming to its natural close. That puts the deadline sometime
in early winter, right around the time you might want a hearty French stew.
Robert Nadeau can be reached at robtnadeau@aol.com.
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