After my negative review of Todd English’s Bonfire, I’d planned to give the English empire some time off, but curiosity got the better of me. A month later, I was sitting down to supper at another restaurant named after the same chef. Would this be another evening of salt, pepper, and char over substance? I’m happy to report otherwise. Todd English Rustic Kitchen aims a little lower than Bonfire, but it hits much more often. The Quincy Market location limits the comfort and space, probably in the kitchen as well as in the dining room/bar, but the culinary mission is perhaps clearer. You can eat a three-course dinner here, but the real focus is on small plates, flatbreads, and wine by the glass. These are expensive (the rent must be paid), but generally solid.
The place is generally Italian-inspired as well, and that’s good. It certainly carries the breadbasket, with a suitably rustic, crusty wheat loaf cut into chunks, some good, oily Tuscan-style white bread, and a terrific terrine of white-bean paste topped with olive oil and a few olives.
Then you could get one of the flatbreads ($11.50–$17), which are, of course, the ultra-thin-crust pizzas that were an early Todd English signature, still baked fresh in the open semi-wood-fired oven. We had a special artichoke flatbread ($14). It’s a rounded rectangle about 10 inches long, but cut into eight pieces to make an easy appetizer for a big table, half of a light dinner for two, or a dandy lunch for a very hungry person. The finely sliced artichokes — certainly balanced with onions, red potatoes, parmesan, and an effective undertone of, I’m guessing, marjoram — have an effect almost more textural than flavorfully dominating.
Another big hit is the roasted-Chioggia-beet salad ($11), not a symphony, but a perfect string quartet of pink-beet slices, walnuts, blue cheese, and field greens. Another small plate with big flavor is the " giant shrimp cassoulet " ($12.50). The shrimp aren’t that big, but the dish has the right amount of the filling white-bean/ham/tomato casserole, topped with a lot of toasted crumbs, and the two very fresh-tasting and certainly large shrimp.
Even the fried calamari ($11.50), which I’d found inedibly over-salted at Bonfire, is a good portion with a few peanuts and snow-pea pods mixed in, and the same dangerous slices of jalapeño. There was a problem our night in that the dish carried an aroma (but no flavor) of scorched oil. Either the oil was just starting to go off, or the frying job was so nonabsorbent that only the aroma gave things away.
Nana’s Calabrese chicken polenta ($15) is hard to call a small plate, since it comes to the table as a large board layered with corn-meal mush and sausage-tomato sauce, and topped with a crispy roast-chicken leg. The sausage sauce our first night had some of the over-salting problems I reported at Bonfire, but the polenta was buttery and delicious underneath, and the chicken leg was impeccable. On the way out, I noticed a real rotisserie. Anything off the rotisserie is a better bet than the " buttermilk fried chicken " ($17.50), which is half a large chicken, on top of over-salted sausage gravy, over a waffle. It would work if the chicken were more interesting. As it stands, the breast meat is overcooked and dull, and the leg and thigh are overcooked and decent.
Ginger-soy beef short ribs ($18.95) are a successful venture into Asian fusion. The meat is cut thin like Korean kalbi, leaving us with barbecued beef with floating squares of rib bone. This dish has great sides, too: chunks of braised fennel that reminded me of some grilled radicchio Todd English made for the opening menu of Michaela’s, and some nice, quasi-Korean sesame-seed spinach.
But the dish that really squelched my memory of Bonfire was cowboy steak ($24.95). It was wonderfully tasty sirloin, done medium-rare as ordered, with fried onions and tomato, and an irresistible side of whipped (very) sweet potatoes. The two dishes that do need some work are a side of maple-roasted carrots that are too big and tough to start with, and then burnt on the bottom to finish them off; and a special of lobster bucatini. The pasta was overdone, which this thick shape usually prevents, it was badly over-salted and over-peppered, and it had a fishy aroma. The lobster meat, while not generous, was delicious. A little kitchen organization and some nosing around the sauce station could fix this in a hurry.
The wine list is expensive, and it’s a loud, drafty room for tasting good wine. If you’re not on a budget, the ’99 Westport riesling ($10.50 glass/$42 bottle) is spritzy and floral, about as good a German wine from Southern Massachusetts as I’ve ever tasted. Campo Viejo crianza ’98 ($10/$40) is a big red that started out too cold, too strong, and too astringent, but then mellowed into a too-young but substantially fruity wine. The decaf ($2.50) is almost as good as the decaf at Bonfire, which is some of the best ever. Tea ($2.50), however, is served in those new one-piece china pots that let the water cool. It might brew if they’d put a tea bag right in it, but no, they have to bring you a tray with a choice of six flavors, none of which will brew in lukewarm water.
Desserts are good, not great. The Italian-cookie plate ($2.75) is fun, since the cookies all dip well: two chocolate crescents, an S-shaped butter cookie, and a ball with chocolate filling. Triple-chocolate cake ($6.95) is a suitably dense disc of chocolate. The hazelnut cake ($6.95) is what I would call a torte, with layers of pastry, hazelnut, and chocolate. Banana-cream pudding ($6.95) is all cream, but delicious.
Service, by Pre-Raphaelite waitresses, is good, although the restaurant gets slow when full. The physical limits imposed by Quincy Market are basically slate floors and glass walls. Add stone café tables and it’s loud, so they turn up the sound, which is that Ally McBeal kind of music: Natalie Merchant/Sade/Vonda Shepard, sometimes techno. They have these ceiling fans with fishing-rod fittings that are kind of cute, and the lamps that look like breasts are abstract enough for deniability. The big problem with being in the Market is that you have to leave the restaurant to go to the public bathrooms located under the Central Market building. Also, they only take reservations for parties of six or more, so you need a back-up plan or an odd hour, although I walked in without difficulty before 7 p.m. on Saturday night.
Robert Nadeau can be reached at RobtNadeau@aol.com.
