Ribelle Review

Overall rating: 93

Food rating: 94

(Note: Updated rating as of October 2014: Ribelle has gotten better and better, and is now has some of the best food in the Boston area.)

Ribelle: Great new restaurant from the chef at Strip T's

We've been waiting to go to Ribelle since we learned, slowly, that it was coming to Brookline. We'd initially had the impression that Strip T's was opening a branch in Brookline, but later learned that it was to be an Italian restaurant in Washington Square; that it was named Ribelle; and eventually that it was actually open and feeding people, though they currently seem to be trying to hide that last piece of information as they get up to speed. Even the link I've provided above is to their Twitter feed, since they don't yet have a web page. They have, however, been serving customers for about six weeks.

Tim Maslow, the son at Strip T's who returned from New York and reinvented his father's restaurant (that appears from outside and in to be a sports bar) with wonderful Asian-inspired flavors and recipes at reasonable prices, has now opened Ribelle.

Ribelle is much larger than  Strip T's, is more upscale, and has somewhat higher prices. It's in the location in Washington Square that was previously occupied by Tamarind Bay. It has an open floor plan with one long wall half occupied by the bar and the other half by the kitchen. Along the other wall are individual tables, and in the middle is a very long row of connected tables apparently to be used for communal seating.

We went early, having checked ahead of time whether they could provide food for a child, and arrived while they were nearly empty, but that quickly changed as they became quite full for a restaurant that's only barely announcing itself to be open for business.

Our waitress, who looked somewhat like -- and sounded a lot like -- Jodie Foster in Silence of the Lambs, was energetic, knowledgeable, and quite helpful in working through the menu, including offering my wife samples of two of the three house red wines (listed as 1, 2, and 3, and by characteristics rather than by name) so she could choose. The chosen wine was good as was a mixed drink, though neither was great for the price.

The menu is divided into Vegetables, Fish, and Meats, with each section running from smaller to larger dishes. Telling exactly what this means is assisted by the price of the item and by the wait staff. The menu is much smaller than at Myers+Chang, but the ordering experience is similar, as is the delivery where they prefer to have foods come out as they are ready, with the expectation they will be shared, rather than as courses.

We had a roasted carrot dish, sprinkled with chopped hazelnuts and buckthorn jam, and accompanied by a carrot puree. It was wonderful. A slice of thick toast with an egg in the center served with truffles was also great. Pasta with pickled mussels and chicken of the woods mushrooms was good but not amazing, though it was the only dish we had where the flavorings seemed similar to dishes you might get at Strip T's. A pasta dish with pork sausage, peppers, Swiss chard, and tomatoes was wonderful and spicy. A vegetable dish with peppers served in a broth was also quite good. A sliced Wagyu tritip steak dish was tasty but much tougher than I would have expected.

Several of the dishes had sauces or remnants that seemed to call for bread to mop them up. Bread was not automatically served, but when we asked, some thick lightly toasted white bread quickly appeared.

We also ordered a pasta dish with butter for our child, and it came in a creamy sauce that was wonderful. The waitress worked with us to come up with a vegetable side that would work, and we ended up with green beans prepared with oil and some garlic.This, too, was delicious, and we checked on the preparation in the hopes of imitating it so as to encourage more consumption of vegetables at home....

Portions were larger than we'd been expecting given the arrangement of the menu and the suggestion to try various "smaller" dishes; we had quite a lot of food in the end. Even the child's portions were very large, and we decided not to have dessert.

It's hard to be sure of a restaurant on one visit, particularly when the cooks and staff are still working kinks out, but overall this seems like another great restaurant from Tim Maslow. It was warm, friendly, and fun, and many of the dishes were wonderful. We will certainly plan to head back there soon.

Buca's Tuscan Roadhouse Review

Overall rating: 73

Food rating: 75

Buca's Tuscan Roadhouse: Good Italian food on Cape Cod for very high prices

We were in Harwich for a few days, and Buca's was one of two expensive restaurants we tried in two nights. The second night we ate at Fin.

Online reviews of Buca's are mostly superb. We arrived early in the evening, and parking in their lot was quick and easy. The hostess and wait staff were welcoming and pleasant, though the dining area itself was a bit crowded with tables close to each other and to walls.

We started off with some specialty drinks that were fine, including a "Sicilian Margarita" made with blood orange liqueur, and a bourbon/rye drink. Bread served with olive oil was excellent.

The menu is very large, and we asked for recommendations, and were told that the specialty of the house appetizer was "Carciofi Ripieni Alla Buca": grilled artichoke hearts stuffed with gorgonzola and mascarpone, and wrapped with prosciutto, with a balsamic reduction. While this sounded amazing, it really wasn't very interesting to eat.

For entrees, I again had a specialty of the house, listed on the menu as "Caccuicco", but pronounced "cacciucco" by our waitress, though when I asked about this she quickly said she wasn't sure. I checked Google later and the waitress was correct; presumably she knew the spelling on the menu was a typo. However it's pronounced, it's a Tuscan fish stew that they described as similar to a bouillabaisse, but with a tomato base. This was made with fish and various shellfish, all cooked perfectly and with some nice garlic toast. Again, though, the dish as a whole wasn't really that interesting or tasty. Other dishes at the table were similarly well prepared but not that special.

Rather than  having dessert, we went out for ice cream at one of the local places we like in the area.

All in all, this was a perfectly nice place to get a somewhat upscale Italian dinner. The food was good but nothing special, though the bread was delicious. The problem is the price. The Cacciucco was $32 and the artichoke appetizer was $14 for a small portion; drinks were similarly priced. All of this would be fine if the food were as wonderful as it sounded, but for food that was just nicely prepared and moderately tasty, Buca's does not provide good value.

After our dinner there and before we went to Fin, I was left wondering whether the summer tourist nature of Cape Cod means that prices are inherently exorbitant for food that is only okay. We go to the Cape fairly often, but only rarely eat in fine restaurants. We had an experience of a restaurant on Nantucket a number of years ago where again the price seemed out of proportion to the setting and food quality.

Fin Review

Overall rating: 85

Food rating: 89

Fin: Delicious food, somewhat tense atmosphere

Fin was the second of two expensive meals we had in two nights on Cape Cod. The first at Buca's was overpriced and had us concerned about what this second meal would be like.

We were staying in Harwich, and had a fairly late reservation at Fin, which meant a relatively dark drive to Dennis. Despite help from the GPS, we had some trouble figuring out which entrance to take to park for the restaurant.

Fin is located in an antique house, and we were seated on the second floor. We were on time for our reservation, but had a several  minute wait as they got things ready to seat us. The hostess and the wait staff seemed harried and tense. They were perfectly pleasant, but there was nothing relaxing about the atmosphere from the moment we arrived.

The antique house was pretty, but probably contributed to the problem. Both we and the wait staff had to deal with a steep flight of stairs to reach the second floor. Tables were close together, and the space was overly air-conditioned, with cool air blowing on us during dinner.

The floorboards were such that anytime a patron or wait staff walked by, our table and my seat bounced up and down. Writing this, it sounds like some odd picky complaint, but it was actually quite distracting to have our meal and conversation disrupted whenever someone walked past our table.

We started off with two martinis: a pomegranate martini and a sour apple martini. Both were good but overly sweet for my taste, though my wife liked both of them. Rolls were slow to come to the table but very good.

We asked for recommendations,  and both of us had the house specialty appetizer, the oyster chowder. It was cream based, with bacon, chive oil, and white truffle oil and was amazing: much lighter and fresher than a typical clam chowder. For an entree I had hoped to get a halibut special, but it ran out just as we ordered. Instead I had grilled "garlic-thyme shrimp" served with some fried polenta and accompanied by spinach and roasted tomatoes and peppers that was delicious though not as amazing as the chowder (hard not to be disappointed after that initial course). My wife had scallops prepared with raisins, pine nuts, and prosciutto, and accompanied by a cauliflower puree. This was all wonderful.

For dessert, we were told that Fin has its own pastry chef, and we had a very nice chocolate tart with a raspberry puree.

It was hard not to compare this experience to Buca's, where we had been the night before. Each course was several dollars less expensive than at Buca's, but was dramatically tastier and more interesting. If Fin were in Boston, the food would place it among the best Boston seafood restaurants.

The tense atmosphere was unfortunate. It made for a less relaxing night out than it would have been otherwise and makes me hesitant to recommend Fin as strongly as it deserves for its food. That said, we will certainly go back the next time we are in the area.