Restaurant Review #3 - Birch Street Bistro

Restaurant: Birch Street Bistro
Address: 14 Birch St, Roslindale, MA
Website: www.birchstbistro.com
Rating: C+

The up-and-coming Roslindale Center has a dizzying amount of new dining options. Last night my friend Josh suggested the Birch Street Bistro, as he is friendly with their new executive chef, Marcelo de Oliveira. Juggling three jobs, Marcelo may be one of Boston's hardest working chefs. Birch Street features "new American" cuisine via a generic and slightly overpriced menu offering. Generally when I dine out I expect an amazing experience. While the service was impeccable and Marcelo obviously went out of his way to treat us like royalty, this experience just simply didn't measure up.

The three of us started off by splitting a bottle of grossly marked-up Kendall Jackson Chardonnay. I was kind of surprised that a restaurant attempting to be of a higher caliber not only served Kendall Jackson, but that it was in fact that only chardonnay they had available. I expect that a bottle of wine in a restaurant would be more expensive than it would in a regular package store. I don't, however, expect to be charged $33 for a $7 bottle of wine.

Moving on to dinner.....

The waiter promptly brought us all waters and a basket of remarkably fresh Italian bread. Josh and I ordered caesar salads ($6) which featured croutons made from that remarkably fresh Italian bread. For my main entree I chose the chicken piccata ($14) which was garnished with capers (I love capers!) and served over penne. Though it was a very good pasta dish, it had obvioulsy been under a heat lamp for a little bit which lead to a slightly crusty top layer.

Because Josh and Hallie were friendly with the chef and are regular customers, Marcelo brought us all free desserts which was nice of him and very unexpected. Incidentally, the desserts were the best part of the meal. Marcelo brought us out two of my absolute favorite desserts - creme brulee and a brownie sundae. He also brought us each a dish of sorbet with fresh berries on top - it was the perfect way to end a nice evening.

In my humble opinion, the new American cuisine thing is a bit overdone. The Birch Street menu features everything from fish and scallops to burgers and brick oven pizza. I think that they need to have a clearer vision of which direction they want to head in as far cuisine offering and stick with it.

Birch Street would be the ideal place to meet up with a couple of friends for desserts and drinks, especially on a Thursday night when the Birch St brings in live jazz musicians.

The Birch Street Bistro is located across from the commuter rail station in Roslindale Center. Parking is available on street as well as the MBTA parking lot.