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B&G Oysters
Superb seafood, with confidence
BY ROBERT NADEAU
B&G Oysters
617.423.0550
550 Tremont Street, Boston
Open Mon–Fri, 11:30 am–11 pm, and Sat–Sun, 2–11 pm
AE | DC | Di | MC | Vi
Full bar
Valet parking $14
Access down at least five steps from sidewalk level

It’s a little odd to review B&G Oysters two weeks after Neptune Oyster, since the latter is a variation, if not a clone, of the former, which invented the category of upscale oyster bar in Boston. So we get to B&G after its first round of adjustments (and a few small price increases), with a sense of what others have taken from it. Still, it’s not hard to see why Boston diners were excited right away. Superb seafood is news at any price, and B&G has that, with even a little more select sophistication than Neptune. The room is beautiful and stylish, and the owners have enough confidence to skip the usual escape-valve chicken or steak entrée. The menu is oddly divided between traditional dishes — brilliantly prepared and priced about double what they are elsewhere — and novel chef creations, likewise superb.

Food starts well with a crusty sourdough bread, perhaps a little too glutinous, with sweet butter. For appetizers, it’s hard to get past the list of a dozen oysters, all priced at $2.25 each. We had a few each of the saltaires from Nova Scotia and the Kumamotos now grown on the West Coast. The latter have distinctive fluted, deep-dish shells, and amount to a morsel each of sweet, salty oyster, with perhaps some of that "watermelon" overtone that the same people who smell apricots in wine can find in oysters. The saltaires are just plump, meaty, classic oysters, sweet as the Wellfleets waiting out the red tide. Soft-shell crab ($14) is marvelously fried. It’s served with a mustard-butter sauce that brings up the subtle flavor of these crabs, as does a little side salad of cress.

On the chef’s side of the menu, the tuna sashimi ($14) is actually a bowl of cold cucumber soup, with a little round of cucumber stuffed with cubes of raw tuna. It’s topped with a long cumin-seed cracker/bread stick. This is elegant and fun to eat, and also enables you to vary the flavor of each bite.

Back to the traditional. Fried clams ($24) are an important test, because it’s hard to get the clams and the potatoes each fried correctly in the same kitchen. These were both very good, but unlike at Neptune, the batter on the belly clams was a little stiff, while the French fries were truly excellent and well salted. The plate also brought some delicious sweet mustard pickles and homemade coleslaw. Still, some will be shocked at a clam basket in the mid $20s, and some by the "Maine lobster roll" for the same price. However, at these prices your lobster roll has top-quality lobster salad, the same French fries, pickles, and coleslaw. It disappoints only with the hot-dog roll, which, in keeping with tradition, should be white bread.

On the chef’s end, I was very impressed with an order of sea scallops ($24), only three, but immense diver scallops, with lots of flavor. The scallops were cut the way Chinese chefs cut squid, to make dragon scales that hold the sauce, here a cream sauce with bits of smoky bacon. Side dishes of lobster-flavored creamed spinach and ratatouille were small but exquisite. And a special on seared tuna ($27) was actually seared, which is to say raw at the centers but with enough of the outside fully cooked to get the contrasting flavor of cooked fish, as well as a crust of three kinds of crushed pepper. This came with snap-pea pods and buttery-soft wild mushrooms.

The wine list is very good by the glass or the bottle. Since you must have oysters, you must have Chablis, and the 2002 Grossot ($10/glass) is the real thing, tart enough to make the oysters sweeter, with a hint of oak and vanilla to complement that sweetness. The Nino Franco prosecco rustico ($9) is non-vintage, like French Champagne, and less aromatic. Still, the Italian sparkler likewise complements fish and shellfish perfectly. Tea ($3.50) is served in a metal filter pot with loose leaves. Coffee ($3.50) and decaf ($3.50) are very good as well.

You need this information because B&G has some very good desserts. A peach cobbler ($8) resembles upside-down cake, a cylinder rich with caramel, topped with broiled peaches, and then with white-pepper ice cream. Pepper is remarkably good in ice cream, as I first learned at Vong in New York. The banana royale ($8) is a sundae of homemade ice creams, terrific strawberry and vanilla but an icy chocolate our night. The fruit was ripe and included strawberries and cubes of other fruits, as well as the banana slices. And don’t forget the little pitcher of unforgettable chocolate sauce. The weak link, and it wasn’t that weak, was the "Kurova cookie and cherry parfait" ($8). The cookie was a layer of what tasted like Oreo crumbs at the bottom — no problem there — and the layers were a cream as rich as mascarpone, but the cherries were dull.

Service, in a restaurant that is always crowded, was rather good. A nice new wrinkle is offering you a drink while you wait, and a very nice idea is letting people seated at the bar move to a table when it opens up. Reservations are available for parties of four or more, but can be made only after 11 am on the day of the reservation. Still, on summer nights there is an outdoor dining area that improves your odds of walking in.

The room is a wonder of understated luxury, with gray metalwork, pickled gray woodwork and tabletops, and a marble bar. The candles on each table have flip-lids, making them bivalves — get it? On hot nights, I would avoid the end of the bar near the stove in the open kitchen (and the front door), which gets warm. The open kitchen makes some noise, but not intolerable amounts.

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


Issue Date: July 15 - 21, 2005
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