Boston's Alternative Source! image!
   
  · Dining
  · DJs
  · Gossip
  · Party Pics
 

Feedback

[Dining Out]

Marcello’s
Persian delizioso!
BY ROBERT NADEAU

dining out
Marcello’s
(617) 536-1004
272A Newbury Street, Boston
Open Mon–Fri, 11:30 a.m.–10 p.m.; Sat–Sun, 11:30 a.m.–11 p.m.
AE, Di, MC, Vi
Beer and wine
Up one step to outdoor tables; down eight steps to indoor dining room

You have to stay alert about restaurants in the Back Bay these days. At one time, I was working on a review of a Szechuan place called Chrysanthemum. I went back to finish the review with daughter Stephanie and The Boyfriend, but when we got there, it had turned into Delhi Bistro. Stephanie doesn’t like Indian food, so we looked around the area. Stephanie likes Italian food, so we went into Marcello’s. But when I turned a page of the menu, there was a whole list of Persian dishes. Italo-Persian fusion restaurant? Nope. Crypto-Persian restaurant, with a front of red-green-and-white umbrellas, plus an Italian menu and name. Stephanie and The Boyfriend ate decent Italian food; I had decent Persian.

Two weeks later, Mrs. Nadeau and I return. Will Marcello’s still be there? Yes, it is. Will the Persian menu still be there? Yes, it is. We have Persian dinners. They are terrific.

So what can I tell you? Marcello’s was good the first visit and excellent the second — and it could be a Nepali dumpling joint by the time you get there.

Meanwhile, Persian food at sidewalk tables is about as good as alfresco gets. Start with something like kashko-o-bademjan ($6.95), a familiar roast-eggplant mash with an unfamiliar sour dairy dab on top, and a dribble of saffron butter on top of that. Each bite is delicious, and it goes well with the basket of cut-up flatbread, similar to a good pizza crust.

Another Persian appetizer is tahdig and khoresh ($8.95). Tahdig is the crust left at the bottom of a pot of Persian rice. This is such a treat that it usually goes to the master of a household, or to the cook. I’ve never seen it on a restaurant menu before. It comes as a cake of Persian white rice, about a half-inch thick, and caramelized on the bottom, with saffron butter worked in. Khoresh is stew, one of the glories of Persian cuisine. Marcello’s has two kinds of stew; you can have either with the tahdig, and both are superb. The beef-and-bean stew is actually ghormeh sabzi ($16.95 as an entrée), an intensely green beef stew, flavored with spinach, cilantro, and something very dry, perhaps fenugreek. The beef-and-vegetable stew is actually ghimeh bademjan ($17.95 as an entrée), a curry-like stew of yellow split peas with a number of vegetables and a whole dried lime, with a sour overtone of fresh lime juice.

Rice-wise, you can move up to a main-dish pilaf, of which I tried the morasa polo ($22.95), an exotic pilaf with pistachios, almonds, and currants mixed into the rice, and a skewer of nicely charbroiled chicken kebabs, perhaps over-salted. But the basic rice served with stews and kebabs is the most amazing. Persian rice is white and super-long-grain — it looks like cut-up vermicelli. But the rice on our second visit was also as aromatic as basmati, and lightly touched with saffron butter as well.

Kebab-wise, I had the kabob soltani ($18.95), a combination of steak kebab ($17.95 on its own) and a skewer of ground-sirloin kebab ($15.95 alone). The latter was neither fatty nor overly spiced, but the tenderloin-steak pieces showed good effects of both marinating and broiling. There are also seafood and lamb kebabs, all of which come with the marvelous rice, and a very nifty salad with a lemony-minty dressing.

Marcello’s is also a perfectly serviceable Italian restaurant, although pricey. The fried calamari ($9.95) was a good pile, and so lightly fried that the tentacles were just crisp, while the rings were still soft and a little greasy. They were served in a giant soup bowl on some marinara sauce that had a little too much tomato paste and a little less simmering than it needed. But this same sauce seemed appropriate with chicken parmesan ($18.95) — another nicely fried object — on a bed of linguine, with lots of toasted cheese.

Insalata caprese ($9.95) had the right little balls of fresh mozzarella and leaves of fresh basil, but not quite the right tomatoes at the end of July. A caesar salad ($8.95) had dressing that was lively with garlic, and the salad was good eating. Seafood alfredo ($19.95) seemed like a bad idea — mixed seafood and broccoli on rigatoni in an orange cheese sauce — but in fact the sauce is kind of an insulating flavor that doesn’t harm seafood, and helps the broccoli and pasta along. Ordinary salmon can take over a mixed-seafood dish, but the cheese sauce seemed to keep the salmon in this dish separate and savory, along with a large shrimp and a bunch of squid. It was not an opulent dish for the price, but it worked.

The only desserts are Persian ice cream ($5.95) and double-chocolate cheesecake ($4.95). The former is bright yellow with saffron, but the overwhelming flavor is rosewater. Stephanie thought it soapy, but I enjoyed the whole large bowl. The cheesecake went the other way: I found it an ordinary marble cheesecake on an ineffective chocolate-cookie crust; Stephanie inhaled it.

You get the best of the atmosphere here at the outdoor tables on a summer night. Downstairs is a well-air-conditioned room with linen tablecloths, carnations, and candles at every table, old-master still lifes and a line of nonspecifically ethnic clay pots around the top of the walls. Like I say, crypto-Persian. Meanwhile, the restaurant’s Web site, www.marcellosrestaurant.com, is all about the Persian food rather than the Italian, and of late the outside hostess mentions the Persian menu to passers-by.

Robert Nadeau can be reached at RobtNadeau@aol.com

Issue Date: August 30 - September 6, 2001




home | feedback | about the phoenix | find the phoenix | advertising info | privacy policy


© 2002 Phoenix Media Communications Group