Gala

Arlington gets a curious -- and inexpensive -- little trattoria

by Stephen Heuser

138 Mass Ave, Arlington (781) 646-1404 Open Mon-Sat, 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Beer and wine AE, Visa, MC Sidewalk-level access

Arlington Center is restaurant-rich in a strange way: in the last few years, it seems to have grown exactly one of everything. There's one trendy bistro (Flora), one Italian seafood house (Village Fish), one exotic ethnic joint, one Middle Eastern, one diner . . . the list probably goes on, but it now includes one restaurant that nobody else has: a Portuguese-Spanish-Italian bistro.

Gala isn't a fusion restaurant, exactly; the cuisines don't so much mingle as coexist. No linguiça ravioli or Chianti sangria -- it's more like a corner trattoria where you can try something new, like salt cod or chourico pâté, while your cousin can fall back on pasta.

From looking at the surrounding block, you can imagine that Gala's corner space was pretty nondescript before the owners painted the walls yellow and hung them with pottery, framed the windows in Christmas lights, and embedded a fork, knife, and spoon in the cement just outside the door. All this gives the place a homey and inviting look; the wiggly red half-wall framing the kitchen adds a little sophistication without making it feel exactly trendy. We didn't have to wait for a table at Gala, but after nine months in business it feels discovered: early in the week we found the tables mostly full -- and, was that Harvard chaplain-about-town Peter Gomes at the table behind me? Yes, I think it was.

I didn't see what Gomes was eating, but if I were his waiter I'd have recommended the chourico pâté ($7.95). Chourico is the excellent spicy garlic sausage (chorizo in Spain) that the Portuguese pulverize into a spread and serve with queijo fresco, or fresh white cheese. Here it was served with a flourish: four half-slices of Portuguese white corn bread arranged around a ramekin of the pâté, each topped with a little round slice of soft, white cheese and a wiggle of marinated red pepper. When you spread the chourico over each one, it adds a rich and smoky layer to the soft, clean base of the cheese.

The chef here, Bob Buoniconti, used to work at Vinny's at Night, a quirky East Somerville convenience store-cum-pasta den with an outrageously big antipasto table. Antipasto ($6.95) is special at Gala, too, but not as profuse. It changes from night to night; we were served skinny grilled stalks of asparagus; lightly grilled half-slices of eggplant (perhaps too lightly -- they almost crunched); a fine rustic salad of white beans, tuna, onion, parsley, and diced tomato; and artful little zucchini cups stuffed with a mélange of mushrooms, cheese, and other goodies.

"Tapas Tuesdays," when $13.95 buys four dishes from a 10-item tapas menu, gave us another set of options, but we found the tapas stronger on value than flavor. An octopus salad had large and tender pieces of tentacle but was a little short on the acidity that makes this dish come together. A serving of feijoada, more famous as a Brazilian stew than a Portuguese one, consisted of a large pork chunk and vegetables in a mild tomato base that reminded me of bean-with-bacon soup. A plate of grilled quail, served with grilled asparagus, had a great-tasting skin and a pungent berry sauce, but the meat was a little tough.

The obligatory gourmet pizzas are handled with both verve and restraint; they have clever names, slim crusts, and modest quantities of ingredients. The result is a sharper and more streamlined pizza than usual, at least in the "Georgia O'Keefe" ($9.95), which was topped with blue cheese, caramelized onion, and pine nuts and cooked to an almost flatbready crispness.

Otherwise there's something just slightly hit-or-miss about the entrées, though the generally low prices diminish the risk. The risotto pescatore ($13.95) earns the "pescatore" part of its name, loaded up with mussels and clams in the shell, plus shrimp, squid, scallops, and even chunks of whitefish. But it was by no stretch of the imagination a risotto -- more like a paella in a light tomato-fish broth. As with a lot of restaurant risottos, it tasted just fine but didn't hold together as risotto is supposed to.

The marinated grilled chicken was one of your finer $9.95 dining experiences, not discernibly elegant but certainly competent, with a tasty blackened exterior and moist meat. Around the plate were roast carrots, puckered and sweet and just crunchy; sweet-potato halves; and a white potato mashed up and pan-fried into a cake, with a crispy surface and a salty hash-house taste.

The great staple of Portuguese cooking is salt cod (bacalhau), which the Portuguese historically fished from the Grand Banks, preserved at sea, and restored to edibility back in Portugal by soaking it in cold water for days. There are numberless salt-cod recipes, but the version served here ($11.95) is straightforward and a little daunting, unless you already love the stuff: a single giant salt-cod steak, the shape of an airplane hangar (and just a little shy of the size), roasted and festooned with strips of red pepper. The fish has a curious texture -- the familiar broad white flakes of cod are firm, almost stiff, but not at all dry -- and is, for all the soaking, still quite salty. I'm not sure I've quite acquired the taste for bacalhau yet, but as with the chicken, there was plenty else on the plate: carrots, sweet potato, mashed-potato cake.

Gala has a few desserts; one was a decent flan ($5.95), served in the middle of a big white plate and dusted with chocolate. Another (it's a special, but they'll make it anytime someone asks) was off the three-cuisines track entirely: a pineapple pizza so original even our server hadn't tried it yet. She should: it was sprinkled with cinnamon, served on a puffy crust without any sweetness, and coated with a clear white-port sauce. It was a pastry for the '90s: more fruit, less oil, and the word pizza in the name. Lucky Arlington.

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Okay, enough Mr. Nice Guy. Time to mock the Globe. Last week the Boring Broadsheet's restaurant reviewer broke the following trend news about restaurant bars: people are now eating at them. Go on! Never mind that this practice graduated from "trend" status during Clinton's first term and is now pretty much a way of life for those of us who like good food but can't afford what most good restaurants charge. Better yet was the opening sentence of the article: "Bars used to be those smoky adjuncts to restaurants where unfortunate would-be diners were sentenced to listen to the boorish patter of drunks while waiting for a table." Ah yes, those smoky adjuncts. I am picturing the bar at Hamersley's, maybe Olives, overrun with bozos in dirty T-shirts hogging space in front of the TV, sucking on longneck Buds as a worried Globe reviewer perched on a neighboring stool waits to be called by the maitre d'. The guy with the dirtiest T-shirt shoots a look. The maitre d' tries to intervene but is interrupted by the most tedious story about a bass-fishing trip, or a bowling triumph, or the rising price of bodywork on a Plymouth Duster. The patter is slurred but unmistakably boorish. Dark days, those. Thank heaven for trends.

Vent your spleen to Stephen Heuser at sheuser[a]phx.com.