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The Red House
New American finds a comfortable home in Harvard Square
BY ROBERT NADEAU
The Red House
(617) 576-0605
95 Winthrop Street, Cambridge
Open Tue–Sat, noon–3 p.m. and 5–11 p.m., and Sun, 5–11 p.m.
AE, MC, Vi
Full bar
Validated parking at University Place lot
Access up several stairs

It was always curious that one person owned both Charlie’s Kitchen — the last cheap, crude student hangout in Harvard Square — and Giannino’s, an upscale Italian café in the courtyard of the Charles Hotel. Of course, his name is Paul Overgaag, not Charlie or Giannino, and when the Italian café lost its lease, he took over another building, the 1802 house next to the just-closed House of Blues, and set up a New American bistro, the Red House. The new restaurant is neither a hangout nor Italian, but it is very comfortable, unusually redecorated, somewhat Mediterranean, and, during my recent weeknight visit, not entirely up to the cuisine of restaurants like this. The food isn’t bad, just pedestrian. But with so much else right about the place, I’m sure it will be very useful and popular in a dining area where a number of places are perhaps a little too avant-garde.

In old house full of small rooms, Overgaag made one into a neat little bar; turned three into private dining rooms, each with one large table; and built a large dining room and a small dining deck in the back. The average diner comes in past a small private room, the bar, the kitchen, and a long hall before emerging in a green, modern dining room. The only "Cambridge white" is the wainscoting. "I feel like we’re not in Cambridge anymore," said a guest, unconsciously paraphrasing Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. We weren’t in Kansas, either, or in the Emerald City.

The menu is short but versatile, as most entrées are priced in either full-plate or small-plate versions. Servers are young and dressed in black, but very helpful about things that often require extensive negotiation, such as an improvised vegetarian platter for one diner, or serving the soup garnish on the side.

The soup in question was an excellent roasted-parsnip bisque ($7.50), topped with crisp fried pancetta (fresh bacon) that my vegetarian friend wanted me to be able to try. It was good enough both ways, although once you soup up a white root vegetable with cream and potatoes, you might as well garnish with fresh chives. Confit of pheasant ($8.95) is a good idea, as pheasant is blander meat than most game, and would benefit from the spicy cure of confit. But this is a mild cure on a leg and some thigh meat, moist enough but not as crisp as the duck confit I enjoyed at Ariadne the week before. The garnish of red cabbage is good, but a hazelnut crème fraîche lacks seasoning and just seems out of place.

Caesar salad ($5.95) is nice enough, but not special except for the white anchovy garnish. The house salad ($5.95) is a more interesting choice, with micro-beet greens and pink pickled onions for zest. The Red House does have a big-league breadbasket, with a sourdough flatbread and some slices of a crusty loaf, and pour-your-own olive oil, fairly light stuff.

The best entrée we tried was cardamom-scented pork loin ($10.95 small plate/$17.95 full plate). The larger portion is four large slices, a little overdone and chewy, but actually scented with cardamom, and garnished with a lively onion-cabbage sauté, some braised apple slices, excellent smashed potatoes, and pretty ordinary yellow and green snap beans. (Remember, local snap beans are still in the farmers’ markets, and they can be special.)

Roast-golden-beet risotto ($17.50) hinges on another seasonal vegetable, golden beets, which can have a rich concentrated flavor, but these nuggets were bland. The risotto had a good texture and enough creamy fontina cheese, but there was no organizing flavor. A risotto ought to be held together by the stock and wine cooked into the rice. For a beet risotto, a vegetable stock with onions might work, or a more assertive meat stock as a contrast. This dish didn't seem to go in either direction, so most of the flavor came from prosciutto and a nutty cheese added at the end.

A special on red snapper ($18.50) was fresh-tasting fried fish, but with an ordinary Creole sauce and the same smashed potatoes and sautéed snap beans. Our vegetarian guest had a plate of side dishes: ratatouille from one entrée, broccoli rabe from another, and the beans. The ratatouille was sweet and full-flavored, and anchored the platter. The rabe was simply steamed, so with the beans I took away a bland impression of the plate. On the plus side, we were charged only $12.95 for it.

The Red House list of beers is quite good, and the wine list quite decent. From the former, an Anderson Valley Amber ($4.25) has a complex, winy flavor, somewhat like Anchor steam beer. St. Supery sauvignon blanc ($8) is a good crisp white with food, but I found the Trinchero pinot noir ($6.50) overly dusty, as though a load or two of unripe grapes shouldn’t have gone into the blend. The current merlot ($7.50) is much cleaner.

Desserts are inexpensive and somewhat basic. My favorite was lychee sorbet ($4.95), with a true fruit flavor. I also liked the banana ice cream ($4.95). The "ultimate chocolate cake" ($5.50) isn’t ultimate, but it isn’t bad, with a hint of raspberry as though in a nod to sachertorte, the ultimate chocolate cake of Vienna. Tiramisu ($5.50) is exactly like the usual tiramisu, except the kitchen twists it up and puts whipped cream on top so it won’t look like the square tiramisu at all the other restaurants. I’d rather mess it up myself, thanks.

One could say that the Red House is only a menu away from greatness, or perhaps a menu and a pastry chef. But greatness may not be the goal. Reliable goodness can be a real achievement, and that aim would suggest simplifying the food and shortening the wine list. What the Red House already has, and some restaurants never find, is a setting that transports the diner out of his or her expectations. With enough romance in the surroundings, no one notices if the risotto is classically flavored or not.

Robert Nadeau can be reached at RobtNadeau@aol.com


Issue Date: October 3 - 9, 2003
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