Part Two
Dinner
In picking a place for dinner, I chose Via Matta after much deliberation. Boston Magazine had just run a piece on the city’s top 25 restaurants, which I read carefully. Via Matta was included.

I generally take these articles for what they are: gutless, gushing diatribes on a city’s hot spots. Many on the list were names I’d seen in print before. I also sought recommendations from various Boston friends.

What made my list to try was Union Bar and Grill, Azure, Café Umbra and two old standby’s Acquitane and Excelsior. One of my friends insisted that we try Via Matta, which wasn’t a bad choice since it was so near the theatre.

One review by a New York Times reviewer some years ago has always stayed with me. Basically he said that a passably good restaurant in New York would translate into the best one in another city.

In Boston Magazine's glowing blurb on Via Matta, it had the extraordinary gall to say this: "Via Matta has unquestionably found its niche with Boston's it crowd."

How true this turned out to be in the case of Via Matta. Because "it" could be the kindest word I could use to describe a room full of drab, dull chompers so un-it.

There has been so much praise in the press about the restaurant, with volumes of reviews, press releases and other babble, an innocent such as me had only to conclude that here was a reincarnation of Tuscany in downtown Boston.

I must be really out of it then. Because as soon as I walked in I could have sworn I had entered an airport lounge in Kansas. Never have I seen a room so dull and lifeless. What’s more, the room was so dark, I felt like I needed a movie matron with a flashlight to guide me to our table.

My friends were less taken aback. Being a doctor’s wife, my friend Carla is used to looking on things optimistically in the face of a grim prognosis. She convinced me to buck up.

After all, how bad could it be?

In reality, there was nothing really frighteningly wrong with the décor. At least it looked clean and tidy, and I prayed I’d find no stray strand of body hair on the tablecloth from some overzealous bus person with loose roots. I guess it’s my fear of lusterless downtown restaurants that put me into a somber Edward Hopper mood.

We were greeted by a friendly maitre d’ and the overall service was, I must admit, exemplary.

The room was packed, packed with a posse of diners who looked like Bostonians from the outer boroughs in last year’s clothes. In New York we’d call them the bridge and tunnel crowd. I’m not sure what local nomenclature would be.

Perhaps what Boston Magazine was trying not to say was this place didn't attract an "in" crowd, and the only other crowd the editors could think of was the tribal race called "the its."

But so, too, were we outsiders. We must have crossed at least three bridges to get to Boston. At least we wore mostly black and blended in unceremoniously with the bleak décor.

I’m banging on about the décor because it’s one of my pet peeves with Portland restaurants. None are flat and bland. I don’t mean that. But none are gorgeous either with architectural excitement.

I still held out hope, for whatever time was remaining before the first curtain, that the night would be saved by a marvelous meal.

The menu seemed as big as the room but more interesting. When I came upon the escarole salad with Montasio fricos, I knew that this was the dish for me. I’ve learned to love fricos at Cinque Terre, who makes these incredible cheese concoctions beautifully.

The entrees were the usual suspects until I spotted a revelation in the name of grilled chicken under a brick.

I make this all the time when summer arrives take the grill out of the garage. Basically it’s a butterflied chicken (not many butchers do this well) that’s marinated in a mixture of olive oil, lemon, garlic and rosemary. There are many variations on the marinade but this one is the simplest. Then it’s put on the grill, splayed across the rack, and weighed down by the biggest, heaviest brick you can find. Using a small boulder wouldn’t be inappropriate. The aforementioned weight is put on a baking sheet of some order that’s placed atop the chicken.

You wind up with a superbly cooked chicken, crispy on the outside and supremely moist within.

Our first courses started to arrive. My salad was a huge green mound. Why, when I could have indulged in more toothsome fare—grilled platypus, perhaps? — did I wind up with such a dowdy starter?

Like a lost soul in the mill, I roamed around the plate until I unearthed these hard, crispy flecks, no bigger than broken cracker crumbs

Alas, the fricos! These are fricos a la Via Matta. What a travesty! They were inconsequential tidbits afloat in a sea of soggy escarole, which, by the way was gritty, as though it had been swooshed in a water bath of axillary cleanser.

My friends urged me to stop pouting, though I wasn’t hearing howls of praise from them either.

Our second—and last—course arrived. Our doctor friend had ordered venison because it’s low in animal fat, a nice, lean healthy piece of meat. What arrived was a dark stew in a crock, with polenta peaking out down below.

Well, he wasn’t expecting Tournedos Rossini. But neither was an Albanese stew on the menu card.

It tasted pretty good, though, and I heard no other complaints from my mates aloft in portions of tuna and veal.

Ah, but my chicken under a brick was a revelation. As expected, it was flat in appearance. The color of the skin had an incredibly unbelievable lacquered hue, which I found intriguing.

It was tender, it was crispy, it was juicy—it was all that it should be when cooked under a brick. The one thing missing was flavor, like a dry kiss in the heat of passion. Where did it go? Was it never meant to be?

I wanted to leave so badly, to erase this indomitable saga of plain, uninspired fare in the face of a national build up and reputation that had placed this restaurant at the 18th hole of pleasuredom.

Fortunately the play was marvelous, and at each of the three intermissions we devoured bags of M&Ms to fill the void left by dinner.

If Bostonn considers Via Matta one of its best restaurants, what, I shudder to think, is mediocre?

Did I like anything about it? Yes. The ability to leave.

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