B-Side Lounge

Diving lessons in east-central Cambridge

Dining Out by Stephen Heuser

B-Side Lounge (617) 354-0766 92 Hampshire Street, Cambridge Open Sun-Wed, 5:30 p.m.-midnight, and Thurs-Sat, 5:30 p.m.-1 a.m. Bar closes an hour later. Full bar AE, MC, Visa X Sidewalk-level access Smoking allowed at the bar and in four booths

When Jeff Unger and Patrick Sullivan bought a dying corner dive bar called the Windsor Tap and turned it into a thriving mock dive bar called the B-Side Lounge, they kept the old sign. This was a nice touch. The sign, which says WINDSOR TAP/FOOD DRINK, preserves a little sense of neighborhood identity (this is the corner of Windsor Street, after all), and suddenly, after years in which you suspected that at least half of the sign was a lie, it makes good on its promise of "food."

If you can ignore the jarring streaks of red neon running diner-style around the outside, your only clue that this isn't still a real dive bar is the bustle of twenty- and thirtysomething Cambridge people in the booths. Eventually, of course, you will also notice that the beige stripes on the maroon vinyl booth benches are just a little too Allston Beat to have been here before, and you will detect amid the glass-block windows and refinished wood wainscoting a bunch of arty flourishes, including the found-object light fixtures and, hanging overhead, a wire-frame airplane with two vintage table fans as propellers.

But the old parti-colored flagstone floor is still there, and the main physical feature is still the big three-sided bar that juts into the middle of the room. In a touch that's almost too coyly downmarket for its own good, the bar now offers a wire rack of hard-boiled eggs -- eggs! -- free to anyone having a drink.

If you like eggs, clearly, there isn't much of a reason to order food at all. If you are a Garment District shopper, goateed and penurious, you can knock back a bottle of Schlitz (there's that downmarket fun again) for $2.50 and take care of dinner by shaking some pepper over a couple of free eggs.

But trust me, if you have 10 bucks in your pocket, you should order food.

The secret of the B-Side -- the rest of the story, as they say on the radio -- is that the owners last worked at the East Coast Grill, which more or less invented downmarket fun for the Cambridge restaurant crowd. They must have left on decent terms, because I saw East Coast Grill owner Chris Schlesinger in a booth near the door last Sunday night. He probably didn't recognize many of the dishes: unlike other Grill alumni, Jeff Unger hasn't exported the Schlesinger trick of spice-rubbing meat and throwing it on the grill. (The B-Side, it turns out, is more about frying.) He has, however, exported the more abstract idea of applying intelligence and kitchen skill to very basic dishes that we think of as regional home cookin'. The result is something like a diner menu, only cleverer and without any kind of cheeseburger.

The B-Side's appetizer menu is stuffed with things I wanted to order. I wish I'd had time to try the fried chicken livers, and the Smithfield ham sausage with grits, but we had more than enough as it was. Most everything at the B-Side is big. Not silly-big, but ample: a spinach salad ($5) with warm bacony dressing was plenty for two people; a po' boy sandwich ($6), though dinky by New Orleans standards, was certainly large for an appetizer.

That po' boy pretty much nailed it for me: four oysters fried in a crisp cornmeal batter, laid over watercress in a toasted hot-dog bun and flavored with red-pepper tartar sauce. If the B-Side opened before 5:30, which it doesn't, I'd make the trip just to have this for lunch.

I might make the trip for the fish cakes ($6), too, a crazy falling-apart plate of hashed-up white fish with bread crumbs and diced red peppers and a lot of garlic. Actually, the taste of the fish barely came through, but I couldn't stop eating the cakes, or the white beans underneath. Same with the baked gouda appetizer ($6), which came in a hot cast-iron skillet: a layer of melted cheese coated with caramelized onions, which you mop up with the French-bread toast that sticks up like fins from the middle of the pan.

Like any self-respecting revival bar, the B-Side dedicates a healthy portion of its menu to drinks. It doesn't go overboard with choice; instead of that now-ubiquitous line of 30 microbrew taps there are six good ones, and the list of bottled beer jumps playfully from blue-collar Americana (Pabst Blue Ribbon) to upscale (Anchor Steam). There are eight wines by the glass, all $5. There are 26 cocktails, not one of which is a variant on the martini. Cigarettes are allowed, but not cigars.

The six entrées are all basically blue-plate specials: a big chunk of protein with a couple of vegetables on the side. A plate of steak tips ($10), which was really one long and slightly chewy tip, came with gooey mashed potatoes and a tangle of onion rings battered with the same crisp cornmeal as the oysters; fried chicken ($10) was done in the same batter again, with meat that stayed gratifyingly moist and tender inside. I inhaled the side dishes: a soft, lemony pile of collard greens and a sweet "carrot pudding" (think mashed sweet potatoes, except even more orange). The chicken itself was a huge portion. Much of it is still in my fridge as I type this.

A couple of gourmet touches crept in around the edges. With a plate of baked scrod ($12) -- really excellent fish, flaky and with a lovely crust on top -- came "lobster mashed potatoes," whose light seafood taste turned out to be almost refreshing. And there was a portobello-mushroom "lasagna" ($10) constructed of layers of mushroom, escarole, potato, and ricotta cheese, a goopy falling-over thing that tasted considerably better than it looked.

Come dessert, a tart and brown-sugary cranberry-apple crumble ($5) stayed true to the diner theme; a plate of lemon and raspberry sorbet ($4) veered a little into New Cuisine territory; and the seven-dollar chocolate fondue -- chocolate fondue!-- was all about wacky fun, with banana slices and strawberries and figs and pound cake to dip into a dense, bittersweet pond of chocolate. Pretty trippy stuff for a dive bar.

Service was a bit of a hang-up. Our waitress was friendly enough, but you don't have to be a crotchety-ass reviewer to grow annoyed while your server chats at the door and leaves you staring at empty glasses and bits of food left on the table. The B-Side may be a renovated dive bar, but it's enough like a restaurant that you expect something better. And indeed, on other visits -- both mine and friends' -- the service has been fine, even entertaining. In a way, that's the risk of a place that fits so well into its neighborhood: the staff probably has friends at the bar to distract them while you wonder if you'll ever get to order dessert. On the other hand, that also contributes to the sense of seamless fun about the place, the feeling that for all its updated touches, this is a restaurant that belongs where it is -- and, in most respects, is much, much better than it has to be.

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

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