Laurel

Between the South End and Back Bay, a restaurant halfway fancy and halfway hip

by Robert Nadeau

142 Berkeley Street, Boston (617) 424-6711 Open Mon, 12:30-2:30 p.m. and 5-9:30 p.m.; and Tues-Sat, 12:30-2:30 p.m. and 5-10 p.m. Visa, AE, MC, DC Beer and wine Access up half-flight of stairs

Russ and Sherry Berger -- owners of a series of fun and innovative restaurants -- recently closed the hip Blue Wave and turned it into the quieter, more upscale Laurel. Blue Wave was hot and cool and too loud; Laurel is warm and relaxed and not too loud. And more expensive, but sometimes worth it.

It's as though the odd location, physically between the bistros of the South End and the luxury restaurants of the Back Bay, has also determined the culinary vision, which is exactly in the middle of that spectrum.

Certainly the look is post-Ritz, with gray-green wall panels, tall windows, quasi-Hepplewhite chairs, and two linen tablecloths on every table. The lowered ceilings solve the noise problem and even allow background music: jazz piano and a little swing band.

The menu is full of unfamiliar ingredients done in familiar ways. For example, "maplewood-smoked Chilean sea bass" ($21.95) turns out to be a white, flaky update on finnan haddie. I'm not sure why so many menus now list every possible ingredient -- maybe it saves wear-and-tear on the servers' brains, but it risks eyestrain on whoever reads, say, "grilled portobello and porcini on rosemary skewers with roast-shallot curry broth" ($8.95). This is also a menu with credits for executive chef (Cory Comeau), sous chef, pastry chef, and so on.

Chef Comeau generally keeps these six-car pileups of ingredients from canceling each other out, but his vegetables make a Chinese stir-fry taste like a New England boiled dinner. Crunch we get, but a new term, such as "steam-seared" or "nano-sautéed," may be in order for Comeau's penchant for undercooking.

The bread is certainly good: crusty, soft inside, without sweetness. A salad of fresh greens ($5.95) was impeccable, and a salad of fresh "spring beans" ($6.95) might have been even more impressive in midsummer had not the four varieties been so crisply undercooked.

The chef shone on an apple-parsnip soup with fried carrots ($4.95). Fried carrots -- thin strips fried nearly crisp and highly flavorful -- are an inspired soup garnish and ideal with this white, starchy, spicy soup that leaned more on the peppery parsnip flavor than on the apple sweetness. I could imagine a cold version of this, too, and a winter one, and another with celery root . . . yes, Cory, more of this. Less, however, of the gazpacho ($4.95), which lacked summer-tomato flavor and was overwhelmed by cucumber and onion crunchiness.

Hand-rolled potato gnocchi ($7.95) are as fabulous as the apple-parsnip soup, but they are somewhat misnamed. These puffs are so fluffy, and crisp where fried underneath, that it's hard to associate them with the starchy dumplings we know as gnocchi.

Of the entrées, I was most impressed with grilled duck breast ($19.95), perhaps for the effective seasoning of the boneless slices, perhaps for the triumphant cylindrical cake of lightened potato slices and magic stuff. The port-wine "demi" (I guess this is an informalism for demi-glace) was rich and savory. And the baby carrots with stems were cooked to maximum flavor.

Red snapper ($19.95) was another winner. The fish had been steamed inside lettuce leaves so as to meld the pieces together into a kind of warm terrine, and the flavor was excellent and clean. The underlying saffron sauce was effective as an option, and the six neatly placed mussels were both pretty and tasty. The vegetable was white asparagus, interestingly pencil-thin and acceptably undercooked.

The same shellfish and saffron sauce was more problematic in shellfish bouillabaisse with lobster ($24.95). The lobster was beautifully cooked, but the shellfish -- littlenecks, cultured mahogany clams, and mussels -- were overdone and already skimpy in their shells, as summer shellfish can be. The sauce was overconcentrated and oversalted. (Laurel doesn't place salt or pepper on the table. A server offers to grind pepper at each course, but salt is left to the chef. This bit of attitude, though authentically French, is outmoded; people really do vary in their taste for salt.)

No issue with the maplewood-smoked Chilean sea bass ($21.95). Despite the name, Chilean sea bass is a white fish with a flaky texture similar to cod or halibut. It is rather lean for smoking, but this version held the smoke well. The underlying squid-ink fettuccine was a contrasting purple-black, but its subtle flavor was obscured by a creamy sauce with a few mussels.

The month's special has been Argentine beef, recently a sirloin steak ($21) marinated in red wine. The cut and the marinade give plenty of flavor, but not a flavor distinct from a choice-grade American steak. The favorite Argentine way with beef can't be imported -- the Argies like to barbecue meat so fresh it hasn't stiffened up yet, whereas the rest of the world ages beef until it relaxes again. Still, this beef is intelligently served with superb garlic mashed potatoes; undercooked, ultrathin green beans; and undercooked corn-off-the-cob (which is okay in August).

The wine list is extensive and reasonably full in the $20 to $90 range, with fruit-emphasizing wines from everywhere. I saw a Mirassou pinot noir but couldn't find any of their superb recent chardonnays. The Hugel Pinot Blanc ($25) from Alsace would probably satisfy that urge, but our wine was a sauvignon blanc from New Zealand: Selaks Marlborough 1997 ($26). What with spring vintages from the southern hemisphere, this is pretty new wine but already excellent drinking, with spicy and floral aromas and the flavor profile of a lesser Sancerre.

Desserts are good, though compromised by a less-than-forceful chocolate pâté ($8), more fudgy or buttery than bittersweet-powerful. I liked the cookie jar ($7), actually served in a glass jar with an enormous goblet of milk on the side! The cookies weren't those precious shortbread wafers, but chocolate chip, tuille, oatmeal sandies, chocolate fudgies -- real cookies.

Just as fun was a "fresh fruit martini" ($7), a martini glass filled with raspberry sorbet, custard sauce, giant blueberries, and blackberries. Poached-pear crème brûlée ($6) stuffs the cholesterol-killer dessert into the dieter's fave fruit, making for several delicious bites. We had a bitter decaf that had to be sent back, and a good replacement. This happens a lot: decaf goes bad quicker than regular coffee, and waiters don't seem to be trained to smell before they pour.

Our service at Laurel was generally fine, at an early hour when the room was mostly empty. Generally our waitress was on top of the complicated menu and our requests. I'm getting a general feeling that the restaurant novelty train is cresting the hill these days, but I think Laurel's apt neo-classicism should survive and thrive.

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