A good chef doesn't mean fine food
CENTRAL 37
21 Broad St., Boston. 617-263-0037. central37boston.com. All major credit cards accepted. First floor wheelchair accessible but upstairs dining room is not.
Prices Appetizers $9-$18.
Entrees$22-$36.
Dessert $8-$12.
Hours Mon-Fri 11 a.m.-2 a.m., Sat5 p.m.-2 a.m. (kitchen closes at 10 p.m. Mon-Wed, 11 p.m. Thurs-Fri).
Noise level Conversation easy.
MAY WE SUGGEST
Green and white asparagus, grilled sandalwood brined squab, rack of lamb, tagliatelle with meatballs, organic beef ribeye.
Earlier this year, a pipe burst at the Copley Square Hotel, which houses Saint and what was then Domani Bar & Trattoria. When the water poured in, chef Rene Michelena moved on after several years in the kitchen. The tide carried him to Central 37, a new restaurant in the Financial District space that used to be the Black Rhino, and the adjoining lounge, MKT. Shortly after the restaurant opened, a water main broke, shutting down many area eateries when gas pipes were flooded. Central 37 was relatively unaffected.
There's something biblical, or at least literary, about twin floods announcing a departure and an arrival. Perhaps the people at Central 37 should have interpreted it as a sign. A rush of unexpected water has the potential to leave you washed up.
I had real hopes for this place, despite its nightlife-oriented ownership - it's a partnership between the Cronin Group (Sanctuary, Boston Beer Garden) and DJ Tim Collins - and its location in a neighborhood that sometimes seems surrounded by a force field that makes it difficult to open a good restaurant. Michelena himself has been a force in many a fine kitchen, from La Bettola to Galleria Italiana to Centro - he is famously peripatetic. The menu at Central 37 sounded interesting, featuring the likes of sandalwood brined squab and lamb kebab with cauliflower falafel. But on each visit, with the exception of a few dishes, the food was mostly mediocre and occasionally poor. To paraphrase Woody Allen paraphrasing an old joke: And it took so long to get to the table!
Central 37, which is actually at 21 Broad (apparently the building used to be an inn and the restaurant takes its name from the original address), is a four-story affair: a bar/dining area on the first floor, a dining room on the second, and above it a private dining room and a roof deck. The kitchen is located on the fourth floor, which means someone must descend with precariously laden trays of food, usually quite a long while after you've placed your order. Banquettes line the walls of the narrow second-floor room; a wall of windows set in dark wood and rough-hewn wood ceiling beams create an old-fashioned effect. We sit in the often stuffy room, which is quiet aside from a clubby soundtrack - on several visits, we're the only party there for much of the evening - and eat:
A baked artichoke, filled with "artichoke brandade" (it looks and tastes like mashed potatoes), topped with cheese and set on pieces of Serrano ham. There's a tasteless arugula salad on the side. It's not bad, but it's highly weird - American comfort food grafted to Italian sophistication, with the results as disjointed as the celebrity baby composites on "Late Night With Conan O'Brien."
A Caesar salad that feels prefab, with the chill of the fridge still on it. We were lured by the promise of our beloved white anchovies, but there are no actual fish, just a fishy taste in the dressing. The soft-boiled egg has lost its innocence, well on its way to being hard-boiled; it, too, is icebox cold. A "tri color salad" isn't any colors in particular - it's basically lettuce with some radicchio, broccoli (many stalk pieces), and asparagus. These are ostensibly the spring vegetables described on the menu. As for the herb vinaigrette with fresh citrus juices, we just can't taste it.
Pizzette bianco that's so sad it makes us want to cry. Why would you do this to pizza, beautiful, innocent pizza? The crust is nice and thin, and there are enticing grill marks on the bottom, but the little pie has been cooked and reheated until it's suitable material for crafting a pair of vegan shoes. The cheese on top is just as leathery, and slices of meat curl up at the edges like Shrinky Dinks.
A king crab leg tart, one of the worst dishes I've been served in a long time: two cold slabs of puff pastry that taste like they were baked a week ago, sandwiching an ugly amalgam of frisee and crab meat that also tastes old. There's supposed to be avocado, but there isn't, though there are some sad, limp grapefruit segments in there. The tart is impossible to eat because the top layer of cold puff pastry slides off when we try to cut it. We remove the top and eat a bite or two of filling, then push it away. The waiter clears the $18 appetizer virtually untouched and says nothing.
We have to feel sorry for the guy, who seems overwhelmed having three parties in the room. When another table tells him something tastes off, he just hangs his head and says miserably, "Yes, you're right." Why is the kitchen sending out food in this state?
Some of the appetizers are better, such as green and white asparagus in warm truffle-bacon vinaigrette. The mushroom and bacon flavors are subtle, and there are no actual bacon chunks on the plate, but the asparagus is nicely cooked. Grilled squab is delicious and pretty, the meat in tender slices here, on little bones to gnaw off of there, with an intriguing perfume of spices. It's served with scallion pancakes unlike any others I've had before - they're quite chewy and scallions are scant, but they're pleasant. The one misstep is the fresh dill scattered over a little salad on the side. The herb's flavor doesn't match the rest of the dish. Lamb kebabs are also good, generous chunks of meat, slightly too salty but with plenty of animal flavor. They're served with sides of cauliflower in a falafel-like batter, an excellent combination of flavors and a great idea, though the fry job on them is a bit soggy. The mojito sauce on the side is sweet and syrupy, but it does cut the salt of the meat.
Lamb seems to be a strong point at Central 37, where the rack of lamb is juicy and well executed. It's served with a stylish white tagine of couscous and vegetables that needs salt. Pork tenderloin is less well executed, dry but for one perfect rosy bite that shows what could have been; it comes with peas, favas, mushrooms, and fairly tasteless bits of foie gras. Organic beef rib eye is better, a nice piece of meat that's cooked just a minute too long, served with excellent, complex house-made steak sauce redolent of tamarind and pepper. Tagliatelle with meatballs is also good, if unexciting, the meatballs rich, the noodles silky, but the red sauce more perky than fiery as promised. Cumin-spiced scallops have no sear on the outside - they're greasy and unappealing, as if cooked by someone making scallops for the first time.
The wine list is short and full of personality - it bills a red Burgundy as "the real pinot noir" with no apologies to the Oregon pinot also offered, suggests chardonnay alternatives, and includes an overbearingly tannic lambrusco. Alas, the reds are served far warmer than room temperature.
As for dessert, the visual highlight is the magic cube, a block of layered white and dark chocolate mousse covered in chocolate. It tastes a lot like a Carvel ice cream cake. The sorbet of the day, blood orange, is good one night, served with segments of blood orange and shortbread on what looks like a metal plant tray. The following week the sorbet of the day is still blood orange, and possibly the same batch - it's full of ice chunks this time, and the shortbread's been replaced with packaged cookies that bend when they should break. Sometimes it's better to just not serve a dish, and there were many such times at Central 37.
Something is amiss in the kitchen. If Central 37 were just another Financial District stop for the after-work drinker, well, that's what it would be. But with a known talent in the kitchen, it becomes something more, or less: a disappointment.
Devra First can be reached at dfirst@globe.com.
