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[Dining Out]

Limbo
Raising the bar on creativity
BY ROBERT NADEAU

dining out
Limbo
(617) 338-0280
49 Temple Place, Boston
Open daily, 11:30 a.m.–1 a.m.
AE, MC, Vi
Full bar
Valet parking
Access to bar at sidewalk level; main dining room up flight of stairs

I probably haven’t walked down the single block of Temple Place eight times in the past 20 years, and now I’m reviewing two restaurants there in a month. I’ve been predicting a trend away from chefs’ creativity since last winter, and now I’ve enjoyed first Mantra and now Limbo, where chefs push flavor combinations beyond what nature or agriculture ever joined before. So the long-neglected Temple Place is now a center of avant-garde cuisine.

I would never have suspected Limbo of being more than a trendy bar, had I not noticed that the menu was devised by Charles Draghi. Draghi caught my attention at Marcuccio’s, in the North End, with unusual signatures like " tomato water sauce " and chocolate pâté with rosewater. Both are on the menu at Limbo, along with so many other brilliant contrivances that it seems this chef has truly found a home.

Getting to Limbo’s dining room is, well, Dante-esque. You come into a curtained foyer, speak to guiding spirits, and are directed past a crowded bar with interesting square tables of thin marble illuminated from within. (There is also a downstairs bar, intended as a live-performance space.) All the furniture seems very tall. Then you twist past a disco station and up thin stairs to a dining room, not exactly quiet, but above the fray. The house music throbs, although it works more toward Charlie Hunter–type neo-funk jazz as the evening proceeds. The lighting is weak and shadowy, the better to emphasize the wrinkles on people who are too old to be visiting bars. The peachy-gold linen and ultrasuede banquettes and chairs are comfortable, but the bare brick wall, blond-wood floor, and black-wood chairs and tables come off as severe and quasi-Japanese. The staff is dressed entirely in black, and greets us: " Welcome to Limbo. " I think they like saying that.

Once the food is on the table, we are out of Limbo, and on our way to Paradise. (Whoops, wrong club.) Certainly the chilled soubise soup ($6) sets a remarkable tone. What you see is a pale green froth with some droplets of oil on top. What you taste is rich and dry and delicious, without referring specifically to any vegetable or herb. Since a classical soubise is an onion purée, my guess is that the green is puréed fresh herbs (the menu says watercress and sorrel), and the dry flavor is from the sesame oil and sapsago cheese (also a little green) mentioned on the menu. But perhaps it is best enjoyed as an isolated flavor experience. Adam Gopnik of the New Yorker has divided French chefs into those who practice " cuisine de terroir " (of the earth, meaning based on local produce) and those who practice " cuisine des épices " (of spices, meaning exotic flavorings). Here Draghi makes the extreme move to the latter camp.

Fresh salmon poached in tomato water ($7) is also a cold soup, and here Draghi deploys his remarkable sauce, a thing that looks as innocent as clear beer and packs a wallop of tomato flavor. I found this cold soup a little sweet, but the salmon was very good, as were some white beans. Arugula salad ($7) leaned back to New England terroir for a chunk of wonderfully ripe goat brie, mustardy greens, slices of fennel root, and a mysterious herb leaf, perhaps anise hyssop. Heirloom-tomato salad ($8) finally caught up to August with fabulous slices of a beefsteak (perhaps Brandywine) tomato, a kind of creamy goat spread, and slices of fried bread.

The main dishes at Limbo are small plates that are good if you want to eat something with drinks, or to graze, or just to be able to eat all the courses and not feel stuffed. About as substantial as they get is grilled lamb ($15), perhaps a leg steak, on turnips poached in one kind of herbal stock, and onions in another. The vegetables both have surprising sweet flavors, perhaps from scented geraniums, which come with many aromas. Sautéed wild striped bass ($16) is about half the hunk you might get elsewhere, but it’s real wild bass with the meaty flavor of midsummer, served over some stewed fresh corn and what might be more of the soubise.

Lemon linguine with cockle clams ($10) is the kind of pasta dieters dream about, toothsome and fresh, in the lightest, most herbal clam sauce, with perhaps 20 tiny cockles in their shells. I picked out sprigs of lemon thyme and one of a lemon-scented geranium. Everything else got eaten, except for the cockle shells. Sautéed Maine crab cakes in a kataifi crust ($12) sound Moroccan, but Draghi is too modern a chef for the blended flavors of Moroccan cooking. The crab cakes are distinct, in a coat of shredded pastry that makes them look like shredded wheat, and they taste like crab. The slices of preserved lemon are too fresh and lemony for Moroccan tastes, and the cardamom is worked into some mustardy, decorative paste. The isolated flavors are great, though, and the dish is sure to become a favorite.

Limbo’s wine list is sorted by grape, which can be confusing when you see a dessert wine listed as " Sémillon 1986 Château d’Arche Grand Cru Classé Sauternes, France $7/48. " Sauternes is the operative word for most wine drinkers. The selection looks good and serious (and somewhat expensive), matched to the food by general style. We had a Sancerre, or rather a " Sauvignon Blanc 2000 Sancerre ‘Porte de Caillou’ E. de Loury Loire, France $32, " to go with a diverse order, and everyone liked it. It’s been a string of fine vintages in Sancerre, and this was full of fruit, yet acidic enough to stand up to the food. A New Zealand sauvignon blanc might work better with some of the herbal flavors, but might clash with others. We took a sample of the dessert wines and found that a 1985 vintage port ($14 a glass, $110 a bottle) needed some more bottle time, while a Taylor Fladgate tawny port ($9 a glass, $70 a bottle) was rich and savory.

The cheese-and-fruit plate ($9) had a fine, overripe brie and a good green fig, but the other fruit was underripe, and this isn’t necessary in August. There are better peaches and plums than these, and apples can wait a week or two. It’s possible that the best peaches went into the baked native peaches with almond cream ($7), a truly delectable treatment of peach-tasting peaches with a hot coating that looked like mozzarella and tasted like marzipan. The chocolate pâté is truly fabulous ($8), a pyramid of hedonism, just touched with the rosewater and another leaf of anise hyssop. Crème brûlée ($7) — often a vehicle for herbal medicine these days — is very gently scented with anise, and the herbal surprise is a leaf of green shiso, the citrus-y leaf more often served with sashimi.

We caught Limbo a little early in the game, and this probably explains some mild service problems: two waiters served each course, but neither of them knew who was having what, and cups of decaf, though fresh-tasting, were lukewarm. When a waiter asked if I wanted more, he surprised me by taking away my one-third-full cup, then surprised me even more by bringing back a new, full cup of equally lukewarm decaf.

The general idea of having a disco-jazz club on several floors is as new to Boston as some of the food. The way the word has gone out, the bar was quite busy on a Friday night, with very dressed-up young people. I will be interested in how they react to this food.

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

Issue Date: September 6 - 13, 2001




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