Aura

A new convention hotel on the waterfront
makes a restaurant in its own image

by Stephen Heuser

One Seaport Lane (Seaport Hotel), Boston waterfront (617) 385-4300 Open daily for lunch, 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m., and dinner 5:30-10:30 p.m. Brunch on Sun, 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Full bar AE, Visa, MC, DC, Di Sidewalk-level access

Aura, in Fidelity's new new Seaport Hotel, opened a month and a half ago to fanfare that suggested it was more than just another hotel restaurant. That one-word name, the local chef (Ed Doyle, who opened the Back Bay Brewing Company), the wacky "Chefs in Shorts" benefit scheduled there next week -- all these seem to tell us that this is, like Anago or Clio, a major new kitchen that just happens to be operating within a hotel.

Not quite. Aura doesn't even have its own space, set off as it is from the Seaport's lobby only by a long, mullioned screen of blond wood. It has the generic wall hangings and beigeness of a room designed to fade into its own background. Even so, I was interested in eating there, because Ed Doyle's work at the brewery was clever enough that I wanted to see what he could do without a brewpub's requirements keeping him in check.

A convention hotel, it turns out, imposes its own set of requirements.

Doyle is good with presentation, and there are indeed exquisite aspects to a meal at Aura. The most special little flourish is a tiny pre-appetizer, different from night to night: one time it was a postage stamp of exquisite cured salmon, lush and buttery-rich, with a pinch of seaweed salad and a dab of crème fraîche. Another time we got two slices of rare venison -- no bigger than quarters and half as thick -- with tiny diced tomatoes and a bit of red-wine vinaigrette.

Presents are nice, but so is sensible service. It seems to be a matter of policy not to deliver menus until the wine list has been examined, and drinks have been ordered, served, and nursed a bit. The menus came eventually, as did bread plucked with tongs from a basket, but I didn't understand the wait.

Pretty as the pre-appetizers were, the most out-of-hand presentation was a potato-leek soup (sorry, "potage of spring potato and baby leek," $8), which arrived like this: our server set down a dry soup plate containing diced potato, bits of thick bacon, and seared leek rings. Then another person -- a guy in a blazer -- arrived with the actual soup in a gravy boat, which he poured with great dignity and ceremony over the ingredients on the plate. The texture of the final soup was grainy and even, nicely executed but a little plain, livening up whenever the bacon got involved.

Among the other appetizers, "mesclun salad with truffled vinaigrette and baby tomatoes" ($9) was a tall, airy haystack of frisée and other, obscurer greens with a perfectly light vinaigrette that had no appreciable truffle flavor. A "warm tart of morels, asparagus, and aged goat cheese" ($13) came in a dense pastry crust, slightly burned on the top, that tasted -- in spite of the diced pencil asparagus -- as much late-fall as spring (mushrooms and cheese will do that). A "caesar salad with white anchovies and aged parmesan" ($8) was good but came with only a single anchovy. I love white anchovies, so I complained a little, and our waiter dutifully arrived with a plate bearing another one-and-a-half anchovies.

The showstopper entrée at Aura is the cedar-roasted sea bass ($26). As far as I could tell, every table orders one: it's a silvery fish, head and all, staring mournfully from a rectangle of singed cedar. ("Planking," or roasting on bare wood like this, is an open-fire cooking technique supposedly inherited from the Indians.) The fish, stuffed with rosemary sprigs and slices of preserved lemon, was indeed delicious, moist and steaming under the skin, light-fleshed and substantial. The mingled aromas of cedar and rosemary lent a woodsy air to our table.

That was the only entrée that the kitchen really seemed to have any fun with. The kitchen otherwise played it safe: the grand gesture, the searingly memorable flavor I expect when I'm running up a $140 dinner bill for two, didn't materialize. A Rock Cornish hen was nice enough, moist and generous for $22, but its oyster-mushroom gravy was more sweet than intense. A salmon fillet ($24) was cooked very well, the skin crispy and the center moist, but the chive broth on the plate was a little undersalted and the jasmine rice plain.

It's hard to fault the "dry aged sirloin with potato and roasted garlic flan" on anything except price ($31!) and menu pretense; that "flan" was really just a cylinder of mashed potato with bulbs of garlic mixed in. (Good mashed potato, too, so why the overselling?) The meat was terrific, thick slices of sirloin that were flavorful on the outside and pink-touched-with-red on the inside. The Doyle touch on this one was visible in the clever (and tasty) ring of fried potato slices encircling the "flan."

Desserts, engineered by pastry chef Carrie Cole, achieved some real heights. There was a variant on strawberry shortcake ($7), in which the shortcake was split open and filled with a strawberry-rhubarb compote and whipped cream. I like things that hold back on their sweetness, and the strawberry-rhubarb mixture was nicely done, not oversugared (or over-rhubarbed). The crème brûlée ($7) was handsome but too eggy to be great, with a delicious buttery lattice wafer dancing across the top like a ribbon. Best of all was passion fruit cheesecake, a round puff of cheesecake encircled by another crispy lattice wafer. A pineapple compote on top was like a tropical exclamation point. (As it turned out, we didn't even have to order dessert: with the check came a little postmeal plate of chocolates.)

The wine list was long (100-plus bottles) and primarily American, heavy on big-ticket varietals like cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay. I always appreciate the availability of half-bottles, which means two people can share a decent wine and still drive home. One night we had a spare, grapefruity 1996 Blondeau Sancerre ($16/half); another night it was a fruity and surprisingly meaty 1994 Sterling Winery Lake pinot noir ($21/half).

Our server one night was enthusiastic and unctuous; our server another night was somewhere in the middle of the learning curve. They both got the same tip, though, since the Seaport Hotel adds a 15 percent gratuity to the check automatically and doesn't allow additional tipping.

As a postscript, careful where you park. The Seaport Hotel is in the middle of nowhere, unless you count the World Trade Center as somewhere, so you have to drive. One Saturday night, a valet took our keys and watched our car for free while we ate (he didn't even take a tip); three nights later, same valet stand, we were socked with an $18 parking fee. Eighteen bucks turns out to be the normal valet charge, so the smart thing to do is park in the downstairs garage. At $7, it seems downright cheap.

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