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Pomodoro
The Italian restaurant every neighborhood needs
BY ROBERT NADEAU
Pomodoro
(617) 566-4455
24 Harvard Street, Brookline
Open daily, 11 a.m.11 p.m.
No credit cards
Full bar
No valet parking
Sidewalk-level access

Siobhan Carew is an Irish restaurateur who broke through with the North End’s Pomodoro, put the flavor back into Irish pub food with Matt Murphy’s, stretched ambitiously into Asian fusion with the ill-fated Bok Choy, and now comes forward with a Brookline Village version of Pomodoro. It has added some frills relative to the North End room, such as desserts and bathrooms, but still takes only cash, and refuses to serve decaf or cappuccino, though the coffee and espresso are pretty good.

Carew’s newest location is not much larger than her North End storefront, being the former bar area of the still-active Village Fish. The bar, newly done in a patinated concrete, dominates the room, which is small teak tables among bare brick walls and large paintings, several of the eponymous tomato. You can eat at the bar. You can have a glass of wine or one of six mixed drinks at the bar, or you can start there while waiting for a table, and sometimes end up eating half or all your meal there.

Either way, the food starts with meltingly hot bread: one night cheese focaccia and an Italian crusty loaf, another night just a plain focaccia. This is served on a zebrawood cutting board, with a large platter of olive oil and assorted olives. The olive oil is resinous extra-virgin. (The readers rise and speak as one: "What, the olive oil isn’t fruity or flowery?" Nope, "resinous" is a third adjective for fine olive oil. A fourth would be "nutty," but we’ll save it for when something like that gets served.) The oil takes some of its flavor from the olives, I think, and on one visit garlic had been added to it as well.

You could fill up on the bread, and then top off with something like Tuscan vegetable soup ($8), a thin, peppery broth filled with carrots and zucchini that I think could have been pre-salted, as there was a slight pickled effect to them. This soup also comes with a crouton of the same bread topped with baked goat cheese.

Bruschetta three ways ($7) is the same bread toasted but still easily crunched, with a variety of puréed toppings. The most predictable is an excellent spring pesto, full of garlic. The most surprising is a white spread, perhaps based on potato like the Greek skordalia, but much gentler with the garlic. Between these two in style and my esteem was a fine purée of red bell peppers, with a little hot pepper thrown in.

One of the most successful main dishes is poached cod with clams ($20). It sounds bland, but the cod is wrapped in Italian bacon to add some salt and savor, and not at all overcooked. The clams — three littlenecks in the shell — are given a little lemon and cheese embellishment. The parsnip purée underneath is more of a sauce than a starch.

Steak ($23) is also a fine platter, the tender beef touched up with a little tarragon flavor, topped with sautéed onion and blue cheese, and served over asparagus and terrific chunky mashed potatoes. The asparagus got slightly overcooked between the meat and potatoes, but that is an easy adjustment.

Penne Bolognese ($19) puts the ragout back into ragu, with a lot of meat in small chunks, rather as though an Irish manager had influenced a chef with good knowledge of Italian practice. The penne pasta was al dente, though not so much as it would be in Italy. Risotto con fungi ($19) was also just al dente, much as it would be in Italy, with the mushrooms and some vegetables in a sweet-and-sour glaze that’s irresistible. It’s also garnished with thin-sliced ham or bacon, and shaved parmesan of good quality, as well as tiny cubes of golden beet or rutabaga. Grilled fish ($20) was a whole snapper, very fresh and good, on a bed of red onions and fennel that was chopped like salsa.

For what is really a wine bar, there are only four wines by the glass, but almost all are winners and served in stemless, recurved glasses that show them well. Actually, the prosecco ($6/glass; $23/bottle) is served in a champagne flute, and was light and clear with mineral flavors in the aftertaste, perhaps the best Italian sparkler I’ve had. Both the Cantina Bostonia red blend ($6/$23) and the 2003 Primativo ($5/$19) showed lovely fruit in the nose, cherry in the former, red berry in the latter. Cantina Bostonia is a non-vintage blend of California grapes made in Jamaica Plain. The Eppan pinot bianco ($6/$23) was a dry and crisp white, but my glass had a mildew flavor in the nose and a bad finish. It might have been an off bottle or last night’s leftover, however. Tap water has fresh mint added.

Desserts are quite nice, especially the fruit crostata ($7), these days including apple and pear and currants, on excellent pastry gathered into an informal tart. The chocolate torta ($7) is powerful cake, though a little dry. The tapioca pudding ($5) has made the chef nervous. It’s a handsome presentation with toasted almonds in a red sauce at the center, but it isn’t sweet enough. Put a little more Irish on it, I say.

The room gets loud, despite a pleasant crowd and the soft, pretty kind of techno as background music that was on most of the time. There is also a draft from the door despite velvet curtains. The lamps are cloth-draped to look like onions. Way up high is an ancient wooden cart; could be from Ireland, could be from Sardinia. The bathrooms have skylights, scented candles, and an interesting floor of rubberized canvas.

The atmosphere is the Irish part, and combining the Irish gift of hospitality with Italian food is a wonderful thing. Servers and manager make everyone’s evening work, so Pomodoro always seems more friendly than crowded and more welcoming than expensive. One even accepts the no-credit-card rule and a rainy trot to the ATM.

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


Issue Date: May 6 - 12, 2005
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