Campus feel overruns Z Square Cafe
This is confusing. There's a new place on Newbury called Cafeteria that serves Italian food. And there's a new place in Kenmore Square, Z Square Café, that serves cafeteria food. But dinner a few nights ago in a college dining hall was better than dinner at either restaurant. Huh?
In defense of Z Square, it's in Kenmore Square by way of Boston University's campus, where it sits unassumingly at the foot of a building. So maybe it's going with the flow. But have you been to a college dining hall recently? Some are better than staying home - and depending where you're headed, better than going out. Z Square has a location in Harvard Square, and the space that houses it is a lot more impressive than the food. Yet the street-level take-out cafeteria is more than convenient. A lot of what's on the menu is delicious.
The BU edition doesn't have the same split-level set-up. It's also missing the crowds. On a recent Thursday night, the only other diners for a while were a table of girls rehashing episodes of "quarterlife." (Dear producers of "My So-Called Life," here are the five people watching your new show.) The space at this second Z Square is conducive to diner food. It seems like a fine place to meet buddies for brunch. Dinner's a different proposition.
For one thing, the ingredients suffer from a lack of freshness. The slack citrus coleslaw that comes with a pair of decent, but over-fried crab cakes has no detectable citrus. The spicy chili-rubbed shrimp are seasoned to a degree where you taste rub but no shrimp. The ramekin of roasted mushrooms, goat cheese, and red peppers is serviceable but not terribly attractive after four people have swirled it with flatbread.
Once someone uttered the words "TV" and "dinner," it was hard to see anything else. A grilled flank steak was just this side of dry, a situation that an unconvincing chimichurri didn't really improve. A similar version of that dish was available as a sandwich - producing a real "six in one hand, half dozen in the other" situation. When in doubt: a cheeseburger is a reliable option; a spottier choice is the Café Z salad (apples, fennel, feta, toasted walnuts, and raisins, all tossed with balsamic vinaigrette and greens). Some bites worked. Some bites didn't.
It was equally unclear what to make of the service. Having someone check in and see how everything is was nice. Having her urgently clear your table was not. By 10, it was closing time, and the hospitable mood had shifted - basically, "We loved having you. But we really need you to go."
There is no dessert at Z Square BU, just the polite smiles of the servers and the cooks as you're headed out the door. It brought back memories of being the last one in the dining hall while the staff straightened up. No restaurant should leave you nostalgic for how you ate in college. But you depart Z Square misty for plastic trays, hairnets, and metal pans of food. How absurd is that?
Z Square Café. 580 Commonwealth Ave., 617-425-0101. www.z-square.com Entrees $9.50-16, wines by the glass $5-32
