Carambola

The best restaurant yet from the Elephant Walk family

by Robert Nadeau

663 Main Street, Waltham (781) 899-2244 Open Sun-Thurs, noon-2:30 p.m. and 5-10 p.m.; Fri, noon-2:30 p.m. and 5-11 p.m.; and Sat, 5-11 p.m. (No reservations Fri and Sat nights) AE, Di, MC, Visa Full bar Sidewalk-level access with slight transom bump

A carambola is a star fruit, and the Cambodian chef here knows just what to do with one. For the carambola salad ($6.75), she slices them, along with a few greens and a cherry tomato, into a sensational dressing of fish sauce, lime juice, hot green chili peppers, and Asian basil. Carambolas are sometimes sweet and sometimes tart, and this salad is both. It wakes up your whole mouth.

The salad represents the cuisine and tone of this restaurant well. An evening at Carambola is both exciting and refined. The Perry family have taken all the lessons learned at their popular Elephant Walk restaurants and applied them to their first all-Cambodian restaurant. It is their contention that Cambodian food is not really hot and spicy, and what chili peppers there are appear mostly in optional dips and sauces, the carambola salad being the happy exception. The Perrys further contend that theirs represents the palace style of cooking now being lost amid the troubles of Cambodia, and that one should eat in their restaurant Cambodian family- style, with dishes served all at once from five categories: grills, sautées, soups and braises, salads, and noodles and rice. This is very different from the menu categories at the Elephant Walks, which divide dishes into French, Cambodian, and "challenging tastes."

My advice would be to not question anything. Just do what the menu says. It appears that you cannot go wrong. (The challenging tastes, which mostly came down to fermented shrimp-paste dips, have been eliminated.) Factor in our excellent waiter, a really thoughtful wine list, and fine, airy surroundings, and the result is turning into one of Greater Boston's most treasured restaurants. Maybe the family thought they were trying out a risky concept in the provinces, but the increased focus makes Carambola the most immediately satisfying and consistent of their restaurant ventures thus far.

We went with the program, and threw in an order of vegetarian spring rolls ($6.95) and a "pickle" medley ($4.25). The latter has been criticized for lack of piquancy. What you get is a small plate with some red sauce, two kinds of mild cucumber pickles (if they weren't sliced differently, you might not notice the difference between them), and some bean sprouts. It's the red sauce that I think matters, a rough purée of tomato, red bell pepper, and a smidgen of chili flavor. With a little more of the latter, it would be the fresh red chili purée of the original Elephant Walk.

The spring rolls are peerless by any standard. The dinner portion includes five of them, each about the size of an Italian sausage. The vegetarian version is one of the most successful wild-mushroom/pork switcheroos ever accomplished. The key, of course, is real rice skins fried to an impeccable crisp, and the superb dip of fish sauce, lime juice, crushed peanuts, and such.

Our grilled dish was a special on grilled pork tenderloin ($14.95) that any bistro in the area would be proud to serve. The pork was charred outside but tender in the middle, sliced in three-quarter-inch ovals, and sauced with something dark, sweet, and savory, with some black peppercorns for a little afterglow.

Our sautée was vegetable curry ($9.50), a warm, sweet curry like the Thai masaman curry but with an extra hit of Asian basil and without all the coconut milk. This did wonderful things for green beans, zucchini, fresh tomato, eggplant, and a yellow slice that might have been winter squash or yam.

Our braise was somlah kako ($10.95), also a curry, but soupier and drier and a little hotter, like a Malaysian curry, with the mustard-ginger basis of galangal root. The contents were the same vegetables, plus chicken pieces and spinach. I think Thai cherry eggplant would be a good addition to this dish, but I'm not complaining.

Our noodle was chicken mee siem ($8.95), fried rice vermicelli with shredded chicken breast, long strips of sliced omelet, fried tofu, pea pods, and anything else long and thin or cut that way. The dish overall had a very slight glow of pepper. This was about the typical spicing for Carambola.

Carambola's rice (95 cents) is real jasmine rice, done a little sticky so you can pick it up with chopsticks (although the menu says Cambodians eat mostly with a fork and spoon, and use chopsticks only for noodles). The aroma is wonderful, and the rice soaks up the excellent soupy curries and sauces like the one on our grilled pork tenderloin. The plates at Carambola aren't huge -- the menu compares them to tapas -- so the rice completes the meal even if you have already ordered from all five categories. (The number five is generally considered lucky in East Asia.)

The wine list at Carambola is especially noteworthy. Wines are categorized by color and then by taste qualities, such as "spicy" and "bold." The refinements of the cuisine make some real wine matches possible. We went to the white side with a bottle of New Zealand sauvignon blanc, the Giesen Marlborough ($26.50). The listed wine was 1996, and the actual bottle was 1997, which can make a big difference in New Zealand's spring vintages. But this had all the qualities of the emerging New Zealand sauvignon blanc standard: heavy, tropical fruit aromas with a near-dry finish. It's a great complement to a Cambodian meal, where most wines cannot stand up to the salt, lime juice, and pepper, or to the sweetness of some dishes. Although I still think beer is easier with Asian food, this wine list begins to make sound arguments for drinking wine with curry.

Desserts at Carambola are generally Euro, based on the Elephant Walk experience that non-Cambodians will try a Cambodian dessert once. The holdover, sangkhia ($4.50), is a pleasant if starchy slice or two of baked winter squash with a filling of coconut custard. Crème caramel ($4.50) has a fusion infusion of lemongrass and ginger; though this is good, I think a choice of one or the other would be more effective. Chocolate velvet cake ($4.50) is more like a giant candy, fondant chocolate coating a cylinder of chocolate mousse. The baker's choice ($4.50) our night was a frangipane lemon tart. The frangipane part is just almonds in the excellent crust, the lemon was topped with bits of meringue, and I want a whole set of these: lemon, lime, Key lime, grapefruit, raspberry. This is real French patisserie.

Service at Carambola is excellent, even on a busy Saturday night with a restaurant that has found its crowd in downtown Waltham. The room is pretty and upscale in rather non-museum style. The walls are sponged pink and lightly bemuraled to suggest Angkor Wat or some other ancient temple, as well as the fashionable quasi-Tuscan bistro look. It's as though we are in a transition: not up from crimson-Formica Asian eateries, but horizontally from the casual "grilles" and "brasseries" of the '90s.

Robert Nadeau can be reached at robtnadeau@aol.com.