review: restaurant pava

restaurant pava / 1229 centre street / newton ma / 617-965-0905 / m-sat 11:30-2:30 + 5:30-10pm, sun 11-2:30 + 5:30-10pm / reservations accepted (and recommended, by me) / entrees moderately expensive ($18-25)

yes yes, i know i've been remiss in updating foodlust. but in repentance, i will now add several posts (or, as many as my almost-completely-shot memory will offer up). i've been meaning to write a review of restaurant pava for several weeks now, especially given that i was there on nov 18 - more than a month ago.

i found restaurant pava through the boston globe restaurant reviews. i was initially attracted to the restaurant by the globe's review of its bread, which consists of three different types: a small chewy roll studded (cliched word nowadays, huh?) with caraway seeds and golden raisins; a french bread with a supersoft inside and a supercrispy crust; and a crispy flat "bread" that was somewhere between potato chip and bread, whose main ingredients i tried in vain to guess. all this comes with a dish of extremely green, extremely excellent olive oil. back to my initial thoughts: it is almost always true that any restaurant that does its bread so well is probably not going to disappoint. cold butter can sometimes be forgiven in the case of very good food, but mediocre bread is not a good way to start any meal.

restaurant pava is actually a companion restaurant to the Tess clothing store - by which i mean that it's located next to the clothing store in newton and it shares the same general decor. the decor is minimalist with overtones of boston - ie new york, but friendly. the interior is white, with black wooden tables and green accents. we were seated next to the front plate glass window, which i thought was going to be cold, but turned out to be just fine. this place is pretty small - seats maybe 20-30 - and the waitstaff is accordingly small, and thus friendlier. the menus are sheets of paper tucked under a band of green elastic that is attached to a heavy matte plastic board. the menus are kind of heavy because of this aforementioned plastic board, but i suppose i can forgive and forget.

because the food is pretty amazing. the chef is lydia shire, formerly of biba, and is known for being pretty adventurous. the food here is billed as "mediterranean" but is really the all-encompassing "new american," which is better described as "upscale cuisine (not "food") from any culture." we started with scallops and a small pizza; i've now forgotten exactly what the scallops came with, but i believe it might have been lobster sweetbreads (richer than normal sweetbreads) with some sort of crackery bread. mostly i just remember the scallops being very good. i liked the pizza better, though, which had smoked tomatoes and housemade pepperoni on it. 99% of the time, i despise pepperoni because it tastes like spiced plastic, but this pepperoni could do no evil - it was smoky, meaty rather than plasticky, and all together quite amazing.

when it came to entrees, i had a truly difficult time picking what i wanted, so let me give you a list of all of the things that sounded good: beet chitarra (short rib, candied ginger & blossoms); tagliatelle alla bolognese (which always looks really good to me, and which i need to make before my craving for it overtakes my life); pasta pyramids (fresh ricotta, pea shoots & pancetta); sole bianco (riso nero); chestnut crusted lamb (chestnut polenta and red russian kale); heritage berkshire pork (honeycrisp apple ravioli); wood oven chicken (black truffle, lovage, celery). so you can see that i had a serious dilemma here; usually i don't have this much trouble picking something.

i picked the chicken. and let me tell you: forget about hammersley's bistro. nothing could possibly be better than this chicken. the chicken is roasted and is superbly cooked. ok, it's on the verge of being too tender, but luckily it doesn't quite go there. i didn't think the black truffle was necessarily needed, but the addition of celery is amazing. celery, in the world of marissa, is having quite a comeback these days. the celery was in a cream sauce that came with the chicken, and it was divine. i don't think i can properly express how good chicken is with celery. it has a delicately vegetal flavor that makes the chicken taste like spring. one could argue that, it being fall, this is the wrong message for a chicken to give, but that's just sour grapes on the part of anyone who has not had this chicken. yes, it seemed more french to me than mediterranean, but in a good way. this is a chicken worthy of your daydreams.

to top it all off, we decided not to have dessert because my mother had made a cake - but tess, the owner (who dresses not like an owner but like a server), told us we should have brought it, because they would have served it for us. and there you have it: it looks like a new york restaurant, but it's definitely boston.

p.s. so now my top restaurants (for nice restaurants) in the boston/cambridge area are: 1. craigie street bistrot; 2. restaurant pava; 3. pigalle. yes, it's that good. i wish it was located in boston, but what can you do.