The Harvest

A revamp takes a Harvard Square fixture in new directions

by Robert Nadeau

44 Brattle Street/11 Mifflin Place (Harvard Square), Cambridge (617) 868-2255 Open for lunch Mon-Sat, 11 a.m.-3 p.m; for tea and snacks Mon-Sat, 3-5 p.m.; and for dinner Sun-Thurs, 5:30-11 p.m., and Fri and Sat, 5:30-midnight. Full bar All major credit cards Sidewalk-level access

It's probably best to approach the new Harvest without thoughts of the old, but since the new owners have kept the name and put a claim on the karma, let's pause and remember. The old Harvest is widely identified with the string of celebrity chef-owners who once worked there and later succeeded with New American cuisine in postmodern bistros. But when the Harvest first opened, in 1975, no one discussed who the chef was, and all eyes were on the art moderne room designed by principal owners Ben and Jane Thompson. Although Quincy Market was coming off the drawing boards, people then knew Ben Thompson for the Bauhaus glass of the Design Research building, and his restaurant space was quasi-Scandinavian Modern without any touch of the postmodern. Far from being a loud bar, the original Harvest was one of the quietest restaurants in the area, its cloth hangings, including Marimekko sails over the windows, adding to the ambiance. The opening menus were American only in that the dishes were not listed in French; rather, the food was named after its ingredients and was somewhat Mediterranean.

Two things about the Harvest did foreshadow the food scene of today: the kitchen staff was frequently indulged with top-quality ingredients, and periodic disputes between management and staff left a bad taste in everyone's mouth. (Add up that list of famous alumni sometime and ask yourself why they all left.) So if the new owners really wanted to revive the spirit of the Harvest, they'd start with a Japanese beef festival and then fire all the waiters, or at least half the kitchen staff.

This is not the vibe I caught on a recent visit for dinner.

While the new Harvest is promoting ingredients and doing a lot of fancy garnishment, and charging to match, it's far removed from the cutting edge. But it's also serving some very satisfying food, as well as some that's a little too complicated for its own good. Like at the old Harvest, the waiters (almost all men, on my night) seem a little nervous. Unlike at the old Harvest, the current menu offers a lot of comfort food -- mashed potatoes, baked beans -- that is the café's amulet against another recession. The only thing comfortable in the old Harvest was the chairs.

On the table are wicker setting "plates" and a black-iron breadbasket, which is stuffed with slices of terrific sourdough white and rye bread, some perfunctory focaccia, and a hunk of something that tastes like it was once a scone. The accompanying spicy apple-onion jam isn't really any better than ordinary butter.

For the most part, platters of raw and cooked seafood compose the appetizer menu. The chilled New England seafood platter ($15; a more elaborate "Grand Banks" platter is about $50) comes on a tray of ice that stands on 10-inch metal legs (uncomfortably at eye level for this 5'10" critic, so maybe they could get shorter legs). The seafood runs to the tasty but salty: wherever "Moonstone Beach" oysters come from, they get very salty there, and so do the littleneck clams, peppery poached cockles, and smoked mussels. There are several sauces of the horseradish-mayonnaise and cocktail-dip variety and one extraordinary conversation piece: an oyster "shooter" in a shot glass of buttered ale (a much better mouthful than it sounds).

"Old-fashioned New England clam chowder with finnan haddie" ($6) is hardly old-fashioned, although smoked-fish chowders have been done before. Certainly no one else has served chowder by ladling soup over a fried clam cake and some deep-fried parsley. This is rich and complicated, with a lot of vinegar and pepper as well as smoke. What's lacking is a seafood flavor in the broth, although I ate plenty of rubbery clams and a few potatoes.

Spiced squid Rhode Island-style ($8) is a little bready but good, tender and sweet. The "style" comes from mixing in some slices of jalapeño pepper. Finally, you could go light with the house salad ($5) as a starter and enjoy the excellent field greens anointed with vinaigrette.

That would set you up for some excellent seafood entrées. Roasted monkfish "osso buco" ($23) isn't much like the Italian veal dish (for one thing, osso buco is a braise or a stew, and this is a piece of roasted fish over a winey, stewlike sauce of diced root vegetables and vinegar). It works because the monkfish is presented with a length of attached bone to mimic the shank bone of the veal, and because the sauce is so darned good with garlic mashed potatoes. And doing the traditional grated-lemon-peel gremolata as two batter-fried rings of lemon peel is a cute joke.

Oven-roasted halibut with chanterelles à la Grecque ($25) whoopses into French, but again, the dish is quite sour, with lemon and oregano overwhelming the delicate wild mushrooms (and a few fresh fava beans). The fish is impeccable, and the side starch -- basically a cornmeal moussaka -- is very effective. Nothing wrong with red meat at the Harvest, either, judging by a roast lamb dish ($25) with lean, savory slices and a richly flavored eggplant purée.

Roast hen ($19), the compulsory figure for chefs these days, scores pretty well here. The lemony crust is especially good; the legs that were red at the bone cost a few points, however.

The wine list is fancy, almost entirely American, and expensive. Restaurants solved a lot of problems when they began selling a glass of wine for the price of a mixed drink. Now they are creating a problem by selling a glass of bigger-name wine for $7, in our case a perfectly nice four-ounce pour of Robert Pecota sauvignon blanc. There is a beer selection, but a bottle of Samuel Adams Golden Lager was the first slightly spoiled bottle I've ever had from that brewery.

Desserts are quite strong, starting with a tall cylinder of bread pudding artfully flavored with walnuts, chocolate, and cinnamon -- a classic Viennese pastry combination that really works well for bread pudding. Gingerbread with pear sauce could have been more gingery, but couldn't have had a richer pear flavor. A chocolate semifreddo was the first dessert finished as we sampled. And an apple tart with cranberries is the kind of country-cooking-with-finesse that chefs turned loose on New England ingredients aspire to.

I've picked some flaws in this menu, but the overall impression after such a meal was highly positive. Still, Harvard Square already has Henrietta's Table doing rather well with New England country cooking, and the Harvest's kind of high effort is probably more appropriate to modern continental cuisine, which is underserved. If the chef likes visual jokes, sour sauces, and heavy desserts, how about a research trip to Berlin, Prague, Vienna, and points east?

Lastly, the décor isn't distinctive. Even if this restaurant were not called the Harvest, it would be noticeably dull-looking by contemporary standards. It has textured walls, a few quasi-Impressionist paintings, and a plastic outdoor tent for extending the terrace season, but the entrance past the bar and the (now) open kitchen is not good design, and never was. The big wooden door and barrel of apples at the entrance refer to certain New York and Paris restaurants, but once we get inside, we aren't anywhere in particular. It's nothing to cut the dessert budget about, but, you know, a few Marimekko hangings wouldn't be half bad.

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