Finally, outdoor dining that is worth the wait
When did patio seating become such a badge of honor around here? It works in Europe, where slurping oysters with a soupcon of bus fumes seems appropriate. Even if the tradition started somewhere else, who but the bourgeois-minded would pay to sit down for a meal on the street? In some cities, as a friend recently rejoiced, it doesn't feel like you're eating on the street. Well, it does here.
In this town, restaurants offer patio seating sometimes just to stay competitive, and diners start making crazy decisions. A place could have lots of empty tables inside, but we'll wait another hour for a spot on the patio. It's so nice outside. The ugly truth is there aren't many accommodating ways for people to eat this way. Last month, I ate dinner wrapped in a blanket on Washington Street while the cops shook down a group of dirt-biking tween boys across the street. This week, in Park Square, one of the great lunches of all time had to compete with a parade of delivery trucks barreling down Park Plaza. Let's face it: A few of the best, hottest restaurants in this city have the least plausible outdoor seating.
Rocca, a new, discreetly Italian place on Harrison Avenue in the South End, is not one of the best restaurants in town -- not yet anyway (it's been open a few months). But it does have the best patio. It's behind the building that houses the restaurant's two floors, and it's the serene backyard to just about every other place's crazy front porch. No one will walk by and stare at your plate and comment to whoever is at their side or on their Bluetooth, "That looks good. I want some."
At Rocca, there is no sidewalk, so there are no gawking pedestrians to make you feel like an otter feeding at the zoo. Dinner al fresco at Rocca also happens to be an improvement over dinner inside. The interior seems over-designed (the light fixture over the downstairs bar is a mini mothership), and the furniture isn't terribly comfortable. Upstairs, the dining room is vast but stuffy all the same. A meal there recently felt like dinner on a cruise ship (that autumnal décor). I could hear Sting's "Fields of Gold," and it wasn't even playing.
The patio changes everything. If there's a wait, it's worth it. The service out here isn't perfect yet -- the timing of the dishes' arrival, for instance, was off. (The restaurant is scheduled to close between July 2 and July 8 for service upgrades.) But two friends from out of town who've never eaten outdoors here were impressed, anyway. The setting helped: The air was warm and still as the sky changed from orange to violet.
They were also taken with the food, which is pretty simple, but of excellent quality. No one expects much from an antipasti plate (it's a cold-cut platter!), but this one has such rich salami, spicy pecorino cheese, lean prosciutto (it practically dissolves in your mouth), and wonderful pickled ramps that the bar you didn't know existed for antipasti just went up. Farinata (a chickpea bread with mushrooms, sage , and caramelized onions) was spongy and kaleidoscopically flavorful. Spaghetti with pine nuts, herbs, light tomato sauce, and some lemon was easy but pleasing.
The entrees were just as deceptively basic, but not as heavenly. Veal rolled with mozzarella, prosciutto, and basil wasn't as tender as it needed to be. And the risotto it came with was soupy. The chicken Genovese (juicy pieces of chicken) was actually pretty good but upstaged by flanking mounds of wild mushrooms and spinach with golden raisins.
Rocca serves a whole fish special. On the night we came, it was branzino, and a good branzino can make your head spin. Not tonight. It was well cooked but roasting it whole seemed to compromise the opportunity for alchemy -- it came with a meager vegetable medley (look, a tomato). This is where simple actually equals boring. The kitchen should just call this entree what it is: the whole protein special.
Yet on such a night, an underwhelming fish and some so-so risotto are good enough. You can push away your empty plate and nod in a fog of contentment at your friends. While admiring the calm of these surroundings, you can all sit back and tilt your heads toward the placid, cloudless night sky. There are stars.
Rocca Kitchen and Bar, 500 Harrison Ave. , 617-451-5151, roc caboston.com; entrees, $19- $ 24, wines by the glass, $6-$8 
