A Quiet Place to Start
La Brace
North End / Boston
Dinner: antipasti, salads $6.95-$14.95; pasta $13.95-$20.95; entrees $14.95-$29.95.
Desserts $8. Lunch: Mon-Fri noon-3 p.m.
Dinner: Mon-Thu 5-10 p.m., Fri-Sat 5-11 p.m., Sun 4-10 p.m.
Reservations accepted. All major credit cards accepted. Fully accessible
On any given night, diners troll the streets of the North End like fishermen seeking their catch. On an autumn evening recently, there is the usual line in front of Giacomo’s on Hanover. Customers are packed into little Neptune Oyster on Salem, and others boisterously crowd Trattoria Il Panino on Parmenter. It seems that there are enough people to max out even this restaurant-heavy area.
But inside La Brace, it’s quiet. A couple sits at a table, and a group of men who look like they might have been gathered for a segment of ‘‘The Sopranos’’ animatedly chat at a large, round table in the back. In the glassed-in kitchen, chef Mark Fredette and his cooks can be seen grilling meats, saucing pastas, and assembling plates. The aromas are enticing. The waitress is cheerfully efficient. The space, simply decorated but uncluttered and streamlined, is pleasant. The wine list is fairly priced, although rather limited. But still, we wonder fleetingly, why is La Brace so empty?
That quizzical thought is magnified on this first visit as we share countneck clams tossed with bits of tomatoes and parsley in a white wine sauce. The clams are tender, the sauce light, the herbs fragrant. It’s a fine dish to banish the day’s mundane cares. So is the pesto over tagliatelle and fat shrimp. The pasta has just the right texture — a slight bit of resistance in the bite before it slides down the throat — and the garlicky sauce doesn’t overwhelm either the pasta or the shellfish.
Chef Fredette previously worked at Bricco and Umbria, both more ambitious places nearby. He’s a good cook with a deft technique and point of view — a very important trait in a neighborhood that can drown in sameness. La Brace means ‘‘red-hot coals’’ in Italian, he explains in a phone interview. He concentrates on straightforward grilled meats and fish with traditional accompaniments, what he calls nuovo Italian. Striped bass gets this treatment, and emerges crispy-skinned and slightly smoky with a backdrop of nutty fregola sarda, that Sardinian couscous-like grain, sprinkled with lemon.
A veal chop, grilled on the bone, captures attention — it’s huge, but moist and cooked to just the right pink degree of doneness. A platter of seafood — salmon, bass, and swordfish — is all carefully grilled. But this is an instance where simple is too plain. Some sort of lemony or herbal salsa would have brightened up the fish. However, a beautifully roasted half chicken needs nothing else than its reduced juices touched with sage to make an appealingly rustic dish. A special one evening of braised lamb riblets is a rather odd creation. The ribs are a little fatty, although the meat has good flavor. But the lavender bread pudding with them seems as though it wandered in from some other dish, or even some other restaurant. There’s nothing wrong with the construction, but the savoriness of the lamb overwhelms any hint of lavender in the rather heavy bread pudding.
Other dishes across the menu also vary. Mozzarella and tomato salads are so popular that restaurants offer them year-round these days, often without apology for tomatoes that taste like rubber. Fredette compromises by using good grape tomatoes, fine cheese, and a well-made vinaigrette. The salad can’t bring back summer breezes, but at least it reminds us of balmier days. A slightly updated version of shrimp cocktail in a big martini glass doesn’t fare so well; the spicy tomato sauce under big shrimp does not mask their dryness.
And a double dose of calamari, rings fried in semolina and bodies stuffed with sausage, adds up to a hefty overload. The stuffed calamari are quite interesting and should have been allowed to hold attention without needing to grab the masses with fried squid. In fact, I’m thinking of leading a campaign to relegate fried calamari to bar menus only. Even if the breading is light and the frying perfect, the taste of soggy, greasy calamari flits through the palate memory, just as chicken wings in barbecue sauce taste the same no matter who cooks them.
Cannelloni stuffed with spinach and ricotta would have been fine, if the pasta hadn’t been undercooked. But the old-fashioned, crowd-pleasing rigatoni with Bolognese sauce is delicious, worth stopping by for. The homey dish outshines a more trendy construction of big raviolis stuffed with butternut squash and served with a creamy, cheesy, truffle-scented sauce. One bite of this is delightful, and then for your heart’s sake, you’ve got to stop.
Desserts also have ups and downs. Tiramisu one evening is classic and deliciously creamy; on another visit, it’s too sweet and gooey. A portion of creme brulee is giant-sized but very nicely made. And a dense chocolate cake is much too solid in texture.
There are definitely plusses and minuses at La Brace. Fredette, in a phone interview, says he makes much of the pasta and cures some of the salamis, such as duck prosciutto. It’s a first-time venture as an executive chef for him and for the owners, Gail LaRocca and Thomas Dettore, and their enthusiasm shows. Consistency would help smooth out the experience at La Brace — and bring in the crowds in as well.