Humble food, done grandly
A Beatles song is on the playlist, and we've just polished off meatball sliders ($11, above) on toasted brioche with homemade tomato sauce. They're very good. A cast-iron pot of meaty Boston baked beans ($5.25) arrives. Someone is serious about this humble dish, which isn't cloying or overrun with molasses, and is plenty soupy and smoky.
Rarebit, the popular Welsh melted cheese, has become "rarebits" here. Gruyere, fontina, and cheddar, in a thin layer in a cast-iron skillet, are topped with crisp bacon. Brioche toasts are warm; the dish is wonderful.
Downstairs at the newly renovated Marliave, the 123-year-old bar still serves Prohibition cocktails such as the Great Experiment, a fine drink with gin, cucumber, citrus, and mint. It also offers inexpensive wines and nicely priced fare. You can eat local grass-fed beef, air-chilled chickens, and other carefully sourced ingredients. Dishes don't top $18 (Cheap's limit).
The understated room boasts an old tin ceiling and pendant lamps, glossy black paint, and a slab of marble for a bar. Down another few steps, you'll find six stools at the Oyster Bar. Our plump Rhode Island Moonstones are irregularly shaped; unusually large Cranberry Ledges from Maine are a briny mouthful. Sip a sparkler. On a weekend, you'll have the place to yourself.
In the cafe, even if it's not a Sunday, Sunday night gravy ($16), with potato gnocchi and lamb, pork, and beef, is in an intense, long-simmered Italian-American red sauce. Moist flattened chicken ($16.50), from celebrated purveyors D'Artagnan, sits on creamy mushroom risotto, like the Italian pollo al mattone. Chef and owner Scott Herritt, who also owns Grotto on Beacon Hill, tells me later on the phone that Marliave was both French and Italian in former lives, so he cooks both cuisines.
A grilled ham and cheese sandwich called Mister Marliave ($9) probably began crisp, but is covered with a cheese sauce, so the bread tastes doughy, though the ham is splendid. Mrs. Marliave ($11) comes with an over-easy egg.
Another meaty, cheesy dish gets everything right. Gorgonzola butter bathes rare slices of flat-iron steak from Wolfe's Neck Farm in Maine; the fries taste deliciously homemade.
Bread pudding ($10) is fancier than anything else. This rustic dessert is a perfectly cut square of brioche slices baked in an eggy custard, surrounded by dabs of sauce, uncharacteristically grand.
It's the ungrandness about the place we like so much. SHERYL JULIAN 