Torch

Sometimes affectation doesn't matter so much

by Robert Nadeau

DINING OUT

Torch (617) 723-5939 26 Charles Street (Beacon Hill), Boston Open for dinner Tues-Thurs and Sun, 5-10 p.m., and Fri and Sat, 5-10:30 p.m. AE, DC, MC, Visa Beer and wine Sidewalk-level access No smoking

Torch has many affectations, but the food is very good. This makes up for the affectations, save one: no salt or pepper on the tables. The presumption here is that the chef is a better judge of salt and pepper amounts than the customers, and on several of our dishes he was not. The chef's judgment must improve (in the direction of less salt), and it would probably be easier if he dropped the no-seasonings-on-tables thing.

A second affectation, "Would you like mineral water or tap water?", is harmless check-padding. The mineral water is still or bubbly San Pellegrino (so much for a third affectation, the all-French wine list) at $6.50 a liter. The waiter removes the warm bottle that sits on the table and opens a cold one.

Appetizers, however, are entirely and unaffectedly wonderful. Though the corn soup ($9) is too salty (and quite peppery), the flavor of seasonal corn is unmistakable, and the pancetta and small rock-shrimp nibbles are delectable contrasts. Endive salad ($8) is shredded with bits of roasted walnut, bacon, and chives. Each forkful bursts with flavor -- now I see the point of walnut oil in salads! Sautéed calamari ($8) is somewhat Korean in style, with a red-pepper sauce I can't get enough of. Those black dots in the calamari? Dried sweet cherries, an idea totally out of left field, yet as smashingly effective as a Fenway triple. This chef, Evan Deluty -- what minor league was he called up from this summer? Sign this guy to a multi-year contract!

A number of expensive bistros these days lead with a strong flight of appetizers, then coast through the entrées. This is not the case at Torch. One member of our party was late, and we ordered him the monkfish with white beans ($20; someone had to try it). Good kitchen technique is key with this chunky fish, and chef Deluty (sounds like a third baseman, hard-nosed fielder, clutch hitter: let's put him at third) got maximum flavor into and out of that piece of monkfish. If there are two things that don't have a lot of flavor and appear on a lot of trendy menus, one is monkfish and the other is white beans. Given the trend away from sauces -- a trend intelligently ignored by our man Deluty here -- monkfish with white beans could make for very dull dining. Instead it was dynamite. The fish was gorgeous, with some kind of very adroit wine sauce, and the underlying white beans were -- hand me one of those clichés, Mike, need a pretty big one here -- to die for.

The chef's agent should have a little talk with him, however, about this business of every dish having the word "with" in its name, as in "salmon tartar [sic] with Japanese rice, wasabi, and soy reduction." I know we are in the postmodern era, and it is very po-mo to deconstruct the names of dishes into basic ingredients. But when every single dish is named something-with-three-other-things, the subversion of our hierarchy of expectations is so severe that some people Will Not Be Able to Order Dinner. One exception: the platter of cheeses.

On to the roast chicken with polenta ($17). Deluty here has good chicken, good technique, and a bit of spice rub -- the only difficulty being the excess salt. The polenta, however, is superb, and so is the peeled and cut-up asparagus. Vegetarian couscous with carrots ($16) will distress some fans of couscous, since it is heavily spiced with ginger. For those of the Jae's Generation, however, this is exactly how food is supposed to taste, and the surprise is that the carrots (and some more of that stealth asparagus) are fully cooked. There are also some fans of couscous who have studied Paula Wolfert carefully and expect the couscous to be light and fluffy, much as Julia Child persuaded a generation that coq au vin should taste like bacon.

The all-French wine list with not-all-French food is not a major handicap, but one affectation does not justify several others. For example, if people are going to order Chateau de la Terriere '97 ($28) with their food, it is an affectation for the list to describe it as a Brouilly and from the gamay grape, when the crucial piece of information for many people is that it is from Beaujolais. Another good thing might be to write that it is a very well-made and somewhat serious Beaujolais, more in the character of a light red Burgundy. Again, there is a crowd that delights in remembering where Brouilly is, that Mentou-Salon is like Sancerre, and so on, but these are the people who, by January, will be staying home and drinking their fine wines, talking about their summer homes in Barnstable County. Also, there's a lot of better French rosé around than '98 Chateau Pêche Redon ($24) from Languedoc and the grenache grape. It is a pretty color, and it is clean, but it is not real tasty.

Dessert was the only course with any letdown, and it wasn't large. Crème brûlée ($7) was just fine, despite nodding to outmoded (Mediterranean) fashion with both lemon and cinnamon. Turns out both is almost as good as either, so long as you keep some of that toasted-marshmallow caramel crust on top. However, a mixed-berry tart "with vanilla bean" ($7) and a caramelized banana tart "with chocolate mousse" ($7) were so loosely devised one could not keep a mouthful on the fork. This is what comes of po-mo deconstruction of desserts. Tarts used to be glued with pastry cream or syrup or marzipan, but that was constraining. Now the berries and bananas are liberated from the pastry shell and are free to roam onto the table -- and one's lap. A very large napkin is needed for post-structuralist tarts.

That said, "with chocolate mousse" is always better than "with vanilla bean," and there was nothing tricky about the chocolate mousse. Eating the mousse with caramelized bananas and tart shell was a treat, and Grandpa will get most of it where it belongs.

The room is decently pretty, without the sumptuary expenses we are seeing in so many restaurant-mausoleums these days. It's more than fashionably loud, with wood floors, sheet-copper wainscoting, plum walls, and windows with a bit of velvet draping and some plastic abraded to look like milky glass. Votive candles and full bottles of Bordeaux line up on a chair rail around the room. It's the '90s with Louis Armstrong singing and a reduction of shrine and San Pellegrino. Service was a little silly around the wine -- pouring a very, very slow teaspoon of, y'know, rosé -- but otherwise was accurate and responsive.

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

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