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.