Following a buzz to the suburbs
By Joe Yonan, February 24, 2006
We Sauciers are an urban lot, at least when it comes to restaurant-going. The West Roxbury restaurant West on Centre, for instance, is about as far west on Centre as we ever get come mealtime.
The buzz on Chiara, a new "Mediterranean bistro" in the suburbs, was so strong, though, that we made the trek, borrowing a car in one case and hitching a ride in another. On a frigid night, we parked at the unassuming strip mall and hustled toward the glow emanating from behind the crimson awnings and potted topiary.
Inside, the hostess juggled a rush of arriving diners and pointed us to some low couches at a low table, where sweet and not-spicy-enough nuts awaited. With our outerwear piled in our laps, we felt like nervous guests at a house party whose host remembered to set out the munchies but forgot to take our coats.
The short wait gave us a chance to look around. Done up in tan and gold and green, with soothing redwood here and Italian tile there, the design is nifty. An open kitchen on one side of the dining room gives the place an offhand air without the sort of noise and fire that can come across like Cirque du Saute.
We couldn't get a handle on the crowd: In the parade of people who passed by our table, a 30-something woman in the trendy combination of culottes and high boots followed a long-haired guy who looked like he came straight from his Careers in Jazz Composition course at Berklee. A 60-year-old man in moccasins and white socks brought up the rear.
Our waiter, a cross between Lyle Lovett and Rupert Everett, started us out with some cocktails: a dressed-up Old Fashioned called a Bashful and an even girlier margarita takeoff called the First Date. Then came a mushroom bisque whose bowl was fresh-from-the-kiln hot; it came with a warning and a potholder. A good thing, because we nudged it around the table for tastes of the deep broth, as silky as the drapes hanging on the window next to us.
A boudin blanc -- whose French name means "white pudding" -- belied any idea of sausage as heavy. Made from capon and pheasant instead of the traditional chicken, it sat next to steaming braised lentils and a sweet-tart apple and celery slaw. A roasted beet salad paired intense bites of our favorite root vegetable with a pungent horseradish cream.
If this is what the food was like when chef and co-owner Steve LaCount was at The Country Club in Chestnut Hill for all those years, then maybe we should've gone to medical school after all.
We began to awaken from our reverie as the entrees started arriving.
Flavors popped in a dish of cinnamon-roasted duck, and its fig risotto nicely played chewy against creamy. The single best thing about well-cooked duck -- crispy skin -- was missing, though, and that made us want to cry into the flabbiness. Perfectly cooked scallops paired well with a fennel-arugula salad and a tangy tangerine beurre blanc. But the braised lamb seemed to forget that its menu description (oregano and lemon gremolata, white bean and goat cheese puree, eggplant, olives, sun-dried tomatoes) promised it would be interesting. It wasn't.
Even worse, the soundtrack had dissolved into something you'd hear while shopping at Mervyns.
We took refuge in dessert, spooning up airy and rich gelatos (tiramisu, pistachio, and rum raisin) and knocking into the dark, chewy crust and bright curd of a blood orange tartlet. Finally, Billie Holiday came to the soundtrack's rescue, and just in time. Without her, things were feeling a little too suburban.
