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[Dining Out]

Clerys on Columbus
An Irish bistro? Not as crazy as it sounds.
BY ROBERT NADEAU

dining out
Clerys on Columbus
(617) 262-9874
331 Columbus Avenue (South End), Boston
Open Tues–Sun, 5–10 p.m.
AE, DC, Di, MC, Vi
Full bar
Sidewalk-level access
No valet parking

Given all the Irish-themed bars opening in Boston and surrounding towns, you would think that the owners of a large, successful, Irish-themed bar at the edge of Copley Place would be holding their cards and matching all bets. But no, here we have a big chunk of Clerys set apart, brushed up, and repositioned as “The South End’s newest bistro” serving “Modern American Cuisine.” It’s “the serene side to the Clerys you all know!”

Is this some kind of New Age Franco-Irish-American thing? Atlantic-rim fusion food? Nope, the menu is really less bistro than grill, offering the kind of dating-bar snacks preferred by those smoking and drinking beer in the other room (the original Clerys pub facing out on Dartmouth Street), but that taste better in a smoke-free room with soft seating and a wine list.

Take, for example, that old Irish-bistro specialty, coconut shrimp with pineapple salsa ($9). I, for one, found it delightful. The deal is six very large shrimp, battered and rolled in flaked coconut, and deep-fried to a convincing crisp. I do like the way the coconut tastes after you do this. The pineapple-cilantro salsa is freshly chopped, but doesn’t stick to the shrimp at all.

For vertical food, try grilled prawns with lime cilantro and chilies ($9). The chef has played Tinkertoys with orange sections and three skewers to make an 18-inch spectacle out of six large, nicely grilled shrimp and three real jalapeño peppers. Some of the orange sections showed grill marks as well, and the orange on our day was sweet and ripe.

Homemade baba ghanoush and hummus on flatbread points ($6) is a nod to the neighborhood: the South End was once a Syrian-immigrant center. However, the chef has added curry to the eggplant paste, and cumin to the hummus — a mistake that is somewhat redeemed by the very good grilled pita “toast points.”

The salad of fresh mozzarella and beefsteak tomato ($7) is seasonal, and we’re not in the season. The tomato slices are gorgeous, but haven’t enough flavor yet. The chips of fresh white cheese (like chopped egg white) are fun, and the basil oil is surprisingly good, but this should go on the menu in mid July and no sooner. A salad of baby spinach, snow peas, and feta cheese ($8) is seasonally appropriate, but badly fused. Sesame dressing is good with spinach in an Asian-style dish, and feta cheese is good with spinach in an Eastern Mediterranean dish. But sesame dressing and feta cheese don’t go together at all.

The basket of knotted white rolls have no crust but some weight, and they are warm enough to melt the garlic butter.

Our favorite entrée was “seared shrimp in garlic & herb butter with cockle and fresh fettuccine” ($14). The fresh pasta really was fresh, as well as light, and held a wisp of seafood sauce. Cockles would have been more Irish, but the local mussels they actually served were probably tastier, and the shrimp was again handled well.

“Atlantic salmon, seared & served over citrus couscous, gingered broccoli, and lemon & herb butter” ($14) was rather good, although there is a lot of rather good salmon around these days; time will tell if the chef decides to make something genuinely new out of it. The broccoli was plain steamed, but the ginger had migrated to the couscous — the large Israeli style, which had sat too long and was served clumped together. Fresher gingered couscous might work, with or without the mandarin sections.

“Habanero and coriander mahi mahi with lentil and sweet corn salad” ($14) sounds like something at the Green Street Grill, but unfortunately it isn’t. I liked the fish, which was darker and more interesting than a lot of schrod-like mahi mahi I’ve been served. But I had to scrape off most of the sauce, which was red-hot paste with a hint of smoke and no evidence of cilantro — it was canceled out by the sheer force of the pepper. The lentil-and-sweet-corn salad was sweet and crunchy and pretty. In fact all the platters at Clerys are pretty, suggesting that at least some of the chef’s taste has been diverted to the visual cortex.

The wine list is an important part of Clerys on Columbus, but it isn’t large (12 reds, nine whites, four of each by the glass) and it is quite pricey at the bottle level. There are only two bottles under $30, and the red one was sold out on a recent visit. That left us with the 1998 A. Rodet Pinot Noir ($35), the only red that might conceivably go with grilled shrimp. And it did. It’s actually what used to be sold as Bourgogne rouge, the original “hearty burgundy,” though the color was relatively weak. It offered an excellent example of what wine tasters call a “vinous” nose — an aroma that is substantial, pleasant, and non-specific. “Smells like wine” is a better compliment than “tastes like chicken,” but that alone isn’t going to win the firm of Rodet any gold medals, and at $35, it’s not likely to win over Boston hearts either. How about the newest bistro serving a bistro-type red, like Beaujolais?

Wine service is in huge glasses, which I like, although the small tables and vertical presentations make this a little risky. Our servers did a good job of removing plates, so there were no disasters.

There was only one dessert on our night, and it wasn’t chocolate! This is neither Irish nor bistro nor modern American. The two lemon tarts ($7), made of lemon meringue, were rather good. But if Clerys is looking to draw some third-date business, it must do more with dessert — offer more variety to go with the very good decaf coffee ($1.50).

The design features bare brick (the sine qua non of South End bistro décor), French prints, a fancy tile floor at the front that gives way to polished hardwood, and a soft-rock soundtrack. The separate entrance on Columbus has a distinctive blue awning over café windows that open almost fully in warm weather. The only drawback here is the view: two mailboxes, a lamppost with a bicycle chained to it, the backs of a couple of no-parking signs, and the passing crowd. As with the food, the theme is no theme at all, but you can make a pleasant evening out of coconut shrimp and the feeling of summer.

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

Issue Date: June 14-21, 2001