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Baker’s Best
Expanding a good thing
BY ROBERT NADEAU

 Baker’s Best
(617) 332-4588
27 Lincoln Street, Newton Highlands
Open Tue–Sat, 5–9 p.m. (Also open daily for breakfast, lunch, and take-out)
AE, MC, Vi
Beer and wine
No valet parking
Sidewalk-level access

These days it seems like everyone is opening a bistro, but Michael Baker’s path to bistro-dom has been somewhat unusual. Before there was a bistro, there was a catering business. Then there was a take-out counter with a few tables for lunch. The lunch business became so popular you had to take a number. It was loud and confusing, and someone might’ve bought your soda right off the countertop when you looked the other way. It survived and thrived because the food was inexpensive and delicious. But when Baker expanded, he expanded the commissary kitchens underneath. Only recently did he acquire a second storefront, taking almost a year to double the restaurant space. And when the renovations were complete, the counter service for lunch was just as confusing as ever!

The long-awaited dinner-serving version of Baker’s Best has also been a work in progress. What happens around five, five nights a week, is that a dining area toward the back is spiffed up a little bit (but not to the point of tablecloths), and candles are lit. As the last cafeteria customers linger over coffee, a host begins to greet people for dinner. A jazz tape comes on. In the bistro area, there are fancier lamps and photographic prints, but the same lemon-yellow walls and ceilings. Noise quickly rises as customers arrive.

The opening menu was bistro-like, but many dishes showed their roots in a catering mentality. Vegetable portions were generous but unseasoned. Chicken and veal entrées were obviously made to order, but had a similar generic quality. If the lunches had seemed as vivid and variable as a vast table of antipasti, the dinners were sometimes like wedding food.

However, a recent visit found a new menu in place, as well as signs that Baker’s team is mastering the craft of the bistro as it has mastered everything else in the food business. We began with a basket of hand-cut scali bread and a saucer of olive oil with red-pepper flakes and rosemary. The current version of bruschetta ($6) features grilled bread with loose salad of halved cherry tomatoes (tossed with fresh herbs and cheese). You can’t actually eat this as an open sandwich, but the tomatoes are so unseasonably good I don’t complain. Baked clams ($6) are simple and delectable — six littlenecks heated up with buttered crumbs that enhance the natural flavor.

A perfunctory caesar salad ($6) does make me wonder why they don’t just dress up a daily pick of the composed salads under the counter. But the shrimp-and-lobster martini ($11) points another way, toward lavish use of seafood, as this fancified shrimp cocktail offers four very large shrimp and a lobster tail split into two shrimp-like curls. Maryland crab cakes ($7.50) are wonderful croquettes, served here with a hotted-up mayonnaise.

My basic advice for food at weddings is to make it an Italian wedding, so the percentages favor Baker’s pasta of the day. A recent special of shrimp à la vodka ($16) featured nicely al dente bowties in a sauce that left a little alcoholic bite in a tomato base, held together with a little cream. There were a lot of shrimp, plus some baby-bella mushrooms. On an earlier day, the " four-cheese agnolotti " ($15) offered half-moons of gloriously toothsome pasta, ribboned green and white, stuffed with ricotta and covered with a cheese sauce to make Alfredo himself jealous.

A recent fish special, Pommery salmon ($18), ought to be on the regular menu. The fish itself was glorious, and the topping of the seedy French mustard added both a spicy crust and a basting of tart sauce. I do have to say that the underlying pilaf and green beans were each a step back toward the bar mitzvah buffet line. When you have a choice of side dishes, try the grilled asparagus, with a flavor concentrated by dry heat, and just freckled with char. Or the mashed potatoes, with a little skin mashed in for an earthy note.

" Baker’s Best Signature Meatloaf " ($13) is another winner. It is low in fat, but not too chewy, with a clear, beefy flavor and just a hint of allspice. The " natural " gravy is even better, so here is a good place to make the mashed potatoes one of your side orders.

The wine list is very reasonably priced, with a number of bottles in the $20s and $30s. Beers are all in bottles; I tried the Haake-Beck ($3.50), a non-alcoholic import. I’d rate it close to Clausthaler among the faux beers, with only a flash of malty sweetness against a good balance of hops. The coffee here has always been outstanding, especially at the cappuccino ($3.25) level. I had a very clean, if not overpowering, decaf ($1.20) and enjoyed the service of white and brown lumps, with a few star anise scattered in. Break one into your cup for a non-alcoholic " sambuca. "

Desserts are where caterers make memories, and this tendency works all to the bistro’s benefit. A server presents the desserts on a tray, and they are varied and nifty. All but the cheesecakes are baked on-site, and this should cue you to look for the prettiest confection, as the prices cluster reasonably around $4. My recent favorite was a strawberry profiterole ($4), really a bubble of choux pastry filled with whipped cream and fresh strawberries. This worked because the pastry was as tender as it looked. The well-purchased cheesecake ($4) is presented as an individual cylinder. A three-berry tart ($3.75) looks neat, but has a gluey blueberry-blackberry jam painted onto a dull nut filling of an ordinary pastry shell. There’s always chocolate as well.

Table service is pleasant and well organized in an establishment that never before had table service. There was a discernible pause before dessert, however, and since all the desserts are cold, this suggests a bottleneck in the kitchen. At a function, you can usually program the dancing or speeches for this part of the meal, but in a bistro, the management needs a better serving plan. But for fine dining reasonably priced in Newton, Baker’s Best is already a good destination plan.

Robert Nadeau can be reached at RobtNadeau@aol.com

Issue Date: May 9-16, 2002
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