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Prairie Star
Fun tone, fine food
BY ROBERT NADEAU
Prairie Star
PRAIRIE STAR
617.262.7575
111 DARTMOUTH STREET, BOSTON
OPEN MON–THURS, 11:30 AM–10 PM; FRI, 11:30 AM–11 PM; AND SAT & SUN, 11:30 AM–12:30 AM
AE, Di, MC, Vi
FULL BAR
NO VALET PARKING
SIDEWALK-LEVEL ACCESS

Prairie Star used to be Baja Cantina. Now it’s no more like the flower Lithophragma parviflora than it used to be like a cantina in Lower California. Probably less so, since it still has Cal-Mex food and more than a hundred kinds of tequila, from agavero ($5.25/straight; $8.50/in a mixed drink) to Vivda de Romero reposada ($12/$16).

Baja, without ever claiming to be authentic, was a lot of fun. And Prairie Star is even more so, with some surprisingly good barbecue tucked in with Mexican bar food almost as fake as what you can get in Cabo San Lucas itself. Bars without imagination feature a brownie sundae for dessert — Prairie Star has one so good they sell the brownies on the Internet. Like Willy Dixon’s best old blues, Prairie Star is built for comfort; it ain’t built for speed. In fact, comfort is where all of Russ and Sherry Burger’s restaurants — from Laurel to Firefly — seem to go.

Food actually starts with what used to be the test of authenticity in Mexican restaurants in Boston: does the salsa have cilantro in it? Prairie Star has cilantro in the salsa, which is served in a stone bowl, and the tostadas, served in a paper cone, are warm. The salsa also has lots of chili pepper.

Appetizers are decent. Even a special on a beef tamale ($6.95) is quite Mexican in style, despite a certain lack of chipotle pepper in the stuffing. The black beans served with it are nicely done. I also liked a crab-and-corn cake ($7.99), two nice patties with some crab flavor, served with plantain slices as thin as chips, fried to taste like them, too, and some dabs of horseradish-cream sauce.

Of course, I had to have the "Prairie Star Starter Sampler" ($9.95). That show was stolen by the smoked chicken wings ($6.95 à la carte), of which we had six segments, and they were quite smoky. The rest was chicken taquitos ($6.99), three fried cigars of vaguely Mexican-tasting stuff, sort of the Toltec answer to Vietnamese spring rolls. Jalapeño poppers ($6.99) sound dangerous, but the biggest burn here is the hot cheese in each fried morsel. The guacamole ($7.99) wasn’t quite ripe, but mostly avocado and some onion flavor, as it really ought to be.

Entrées were less fun, but entirely edible. Steak fajitas ($11.99) were served on a sizzling platter than was actually sizzling. The meat, however, was only medium-well, with plenty of green peppers and onions, various trimmings, and a covered bowl of tortillas for wrapping.

"Hickory Smoked St. Louis Ribs" ($12.99/half rack; $16.99/full rack) were good, with real smoke flavor, slightly spiced skin-on French fries, and grilled cornbread you can actually eat. One reason the cornbread is edible is that it’s so soft and sweet you could use it for yellow cake in Boston cream pie and no one would notice. The half-rack is five meaty ribs.

"Grilled Snake Bite Shrimp Skewers" ($12.99) again has a dangerous ring but no real bite nor snake. It’s an extremely vertical plate, with nicely grilled shrimp and regular onions and green peppers. I didn’t notice the promised tequila marinade, nor the salsa borracha (which would imply more tequila), but I did like what was really Spanish rice with some jalapeño and tomato for bite. Our only weak entrée was a special on flank steak estofado ($13.99). "Estofado" sounds stuffed, but means smothered, as in the old New England specialty, eel stifle. Ours was stir-fried, as best as I could tell, with the onions and the green peppers, on top of a slightly different version of the Spanish rice. It was good eating, but not special.

The hundred tequilas have been hanging around for more than a year. Meanwhile, the bar features specials like the "Billy Juice of the week." On a complimentary taste, our combination of Stoli Razberi, green apple, mango, and melon worked out to something like guava. I like guava, but ordered the "Santa Fe" sangria ($5.50). Do not follow my bad example. This was supposed to combine red wine, black raspberry, and strawberry flavors with classic orange juice, but this time the flavors canceled each other out, and one had something that tasted like sweetened wine, but also very salty, like a margarita. I didn’t finish it; don’t you even start one.

Desserts (all $6) were large and satisfying, if again not at the cutting edge of modern patisserie. The clear winner was the double-fudge-brownie sundae, two brownies of impressive quality and chocolate content, topped with many scoops of vanilla ice cream. I think a table of six could probably share one of these. Coconut flan is large and filling, pretty good flan on a bed of sweet coconut shreds. Real coconut flan is made with coconut milk, and would be smaller, denser, sweeter, and creamier. But you don’t always want dense, intense, and creamy. Banana-and-New-Mexico-pecan bread pudding is large and dull, but again, these are often virtues in a bread pudding. A little more caramel sauce would send it to the moon.

Service on a slow and early evening was excellent. Our server was not actually Mexican, but came from a near-enough Latin American country to tout the tamale, although he might have warned us off the sangria. (He provided the Billy juice, so maybe that was a fair attempt.) He brought everything we ordered in good time, cleared nicely, spilled nothing, and all that made him an excellent waiter in today’s restaurant scene.

The atmosphere at Prairie Star is not much like the prairie, although it has been partially redecorated, with cowboy kitsch replacing some of the Mexican kitsch. My review of the original Baja Cantina noted that "sometimes a spirited fake is better than a tired original," and I think that holds true. Here you can have a good time, and drink the water, if not the sangria.

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


Issue Date: September 30 - October 6, 2005
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