Tremont 647

A talented young chef brings the thrill of the grill to the South End

647 Tremont Street (South End), Boston; 266-4600
Open Tues - Thurs, 5:30 to 10 p.m.; Fri and Sat,
5:30 to 11 p.m., and on Sun, 5 to 9 p.m.
Light menu served Thurs - Sat till midnight.
Brunch Sun, 11 a.m. - 4 p.m.
AE, DC, MC, Visa
Full bar
Sidewalk-level access

by Stephen Heuser

No one who follows local restaurant news could have missed the arrival of this little bistro at the corner of Tremont and West Brookline Streets. We've read about the travails of its owners, its contractors, its design consultant; the financing hurdles, the delays, the inevitable opening-night party. That kind of publicity is great for restaurants, which often live or die on the business they receive in the first couple of months, but it always suggests a question: Is it deserved? After all, publicity can be bought, or cajoled, and Andy Husbands, chef and co-owner of Tremont 647, certainly has friends in the right places; his last full-time job was working for Chris Schlesinger at the East Coast Grill.

Well, the skeptics can sit down. Good publicity and professional designers are all very well, but the proof of the bistro is in the eating, and the food here is unarguably the work of a very good cook. Our dinners demonstrated a rangy, energetic attitude toward spices and a steady hand at the grill; at the risk of sounding pat, this is a bistro with all the pieces in place.

It fits into its sophisticated strip of the South End much the way the übercasual East Coast Grill fits into its unbuttoned Cambridge neighborhood. The long space has a polished bar in front, an open kitchen running down one side of the dining room, and a couple of iron chandeliers, whose parchment shades throw a warm yellow light over the room. There's also $8 valet parking, which sounds like a luxury unless you've ever tried to drive to the South End for dinner.

The food at Tremont 647 is grounded in good old American grilling, but the accents are pretty world-beat -- black-bean soup here, coconut-jasmine rice there. None of the entrees feels outright exotic (except the one that comes wrapped in the banana leaf), but there's always a reminder that you're dealing with the cleverness of a playful cook.

And the consistency of a well-run kitchen. That became apparent as soon as the breadbasket arrived. We loved the breadbasket, let me say, and went through at least two per meal -- each containing a wedge of a crispy flatbread with black sesame seeds, a split cumin-jalapeño corn muffin, and a couple pieces of a terrifically yeasty and thick-crusted bread that may (this is just a guess) have been tossed on the grill to allow the butter and sea salt to soak in.

Encouraged, we started one dinner with the "steamed mussel hot pot" ($8), a good-sized bowl of mussels cooked in lemongrass-chili broth, exceedingly flavorful and light-tasting. One appetizer that might have made a nice small meal in itself was the cumin, lime, and chicken tamale ($6), an open corn husk lined with steam-cooked masa dough around a nest of shredded chicken. The red chili sauce on top was given a bit of extra fuel with a squeeze of lime. In a more haute vein was a pricey appetizer of duck confit ($9.50), with a preserved duck leg served over roasted slices of parsnip that had their own lovely texture, softened by the grill and caramel-chewy on the edges. The underlying sauce pulled it all together -- a tart red-wine reduction touched with the sweetness of plump yellow raisins.

Duck also appeared in one of the entrees, a sliced breast arranged over wide pappardelle noodles ($17). The duck was done to a sharp pink in the middle, served not only with chunks of smoked bacon but also with indulgent bits of crackling.

Tremont 647 bucks the New American trend of front-loading the menu with a host of highly flavored starters; it saves much of its fire for the entrees. For instance, the grilled half-chicken ($14.50) might sound a bit bland, but the meat came coated with an absolutely delicious grill-blackened crust, and was served with distinctive red beans and rice (available as a side for $3) which may have taken their terrific smoky flavor from their signal ingredient -- osha, a New Mexican sagebrush root.

Dry spice rubs, such as the one used to achieve the crust on that chicken, have gained quite a following in recent years as a high-flavor alternative to marinade. A similar rub was used to great effect on the "647 Grilled Skirt Steak" ($18.50), in which the moist interior of the meat played counterpoint to the tight mélange of spices seared onto the outside. The plate also came with spinach salad and a wittily American touch: truffle-infused tater tots.

Tremont 647 doesn't go in for a lot of fancy presentation, but one exception was the Chilean sea bass ($18), steamed and served in a giant banana leaf, which spread open like a lotus to reveal a moist cut of fish brushed with a tangy Asian-inflected sauce. Inside its pouch, the bass lay on a bed of coconut-jasmine rice with a chili bite.

The only exception I took to the food, besides a bit of dryness in the half-chicken, was with a grilled salmon fillet ($17) served under a green-olive tapenade. As nicely as the fillet was cooked, the dish didn't quite convince anyone that salmon and green olives have any real future together.

Desserts (all $5) held the same line as entrees: intense, flavorful, and handsome without fuss. The flourless espresso fudge cake, compact and tooth-numbingly rich, came surrounded by concentric rings of chocolate sauce and crème anglaise. A tart with four kinds of nuts was the perfect kind of non-chocolate sweet, with a thick caramel sauce that begged to be licked off the plate. I'm finding more and more that I like fruit, not chocolate, on the heels of a rich meal, and an apple stuffed with cranberries and raisins, baked into a flaky pastry crust, would have been ideal if only it had been served a little warmer.

The wine list is a good length, about 40 bottles, most between $20 and the low $30s. A sticking point of new menus is that the reds are often too young to enjoy fully, especially at restaurant prices, but we did find a 1991 Faustino Rioja Riserva at $25 that went down nicely. Our servers both evenings were informed and helpful, doing a nice job recommending and explaining the dishes when we asked -- but it was the food that did the real talking.