Rustic Kitchen

In a few short dining years, Park Square has gone from being the dim dining and empty edge of Back Bay and the Theater District to being Restaurant Central. A certain category of restaurants has sprung up here -- big, exuberant, patronized by business types and theatergoers, out-of-towners, and locals. Rustic Kitchen, which opened in October, is a prime example.

Restaurants often reflect the personalities of their owners, and this one seems to mirror the ebullient Jim Cafarelli -- the over-the-top design, its long menu, large portions, and rich flavors. Cafarelli, who had a hand in the House of Blues concepts and other restaurants and was one of the founders of the city´s premier restaurant construction company, Cafco, first opened a Rustic Kitchen in Faneuil Hall Marketplace with Todd English. The partnership didn´t stick, nor did the restaurant or another Rustic Kitchen in Cambridge´s Porter Square. However, Cafarelli has had success with a Rustic Kitchen in Hingham, and he´s obviously thrown himself -- and a lot of money -- into this one. He´s everywhere in the several dining rooms most nights, leading tours, talking to patrons, checking on a big party one evening.

The space, once a rather ghostly descendant of the old 57 Restaurant, has been completely remade. The ceilings are higher, the kitchen is exposed, a glassed-in room affords a cityscape of Stuart Street, and there´s maybe a tad too much decor. Walls are spackled to look like distressed stone. Half-circle banquettes could swallow a half-dozen diners. Fabric lampshades, designed to resemble zucchini flowers and mushrooms, dangle and smaller versions decorate a wall. Pasta bowls, also designed especially for the restaurant, have cutout indentations to facilitate twirling spaghetti or linguine. There´s a long wine list, with changing specials. The studio at the back for cooking classes, which may someday be televised, according to Cafarelli, gleams with equipment, screens, and mirrors.

In this sensory overload, it takes a few minutes to concentrate on the food under executive chef Tom Holloway and chef de cuisine Dario Copia. However, a stroll past the exposed ovens where pizzas are displayed on wooden boards can snap you back to attention. The pizzas are enticing and illustrate the best qualities of the dishes here: Simple outdoes complicated; classic trumps trendy. An Italian sausage pizza, presented on a rectangular wooden board, boasts a thin crust, spicy pork sausage, a film of tomato sauce, and just enough mozzarella to temper the spice without making the pizza gloppy. Fried calamari, the current darling of scores of bar menus, could be a tutorial for how the dish should taste. The exteriors of each ring or tentacle are crispy, but the taste of the squid is also evident; in other words, you´re not just ingesting greasy breading. A generous sprinkling of jalapenos and pine nuts and a creamy aioli sauce add plenty of oomph.

Unlike many Italian menus these days, Rustic Kitchen doesn´t skimp on pasta offerings. The most appealing are the lighter ones and the filled versions made by Copia. Shrimp spaghettini features fat crustaceans, a good white wine and lemon sauce, and slices of sauteed garlic. A dish of linguine gets a dramatic presentation from crab claw meat arranged over the pasta, but the flavors are clear and straightforward -- a spicy tomato sauce wrapped around chunks of crabmeat, breadcrumbs, and mint. Agnolotti dal plin (veal and ricotta-filled ravioli) float in a broth packed with wild mushrooms. Delicious and light, this is a dish rarely found on menus and shows off pasta-making skills.

But another, involving all the popular ingredients of wild mushrooms, wide-cut pappardelle, and truffles, suffers from overkill. The truffle butter makes the pasta rich, but somehow the final taste is bland.

There´s nothing shy about the entrees. Veal scallopini crusted with Parmesan comes with enough proscuitto, fontina, and roasted tomato sauce to feed an extra couple of diners. A double-cut pork chop is moist and tender, and the oven-roasted fennel adds an interesting acidic note to the flavors. (The mound of mashed potatoes with the chop could feed several also.) Grilled salmon, unfortunately, has been overdone, though the braised beet greens and celeraic puree are interesting and complementary.

After touting the classic, two tuna dishes step out of the mold, one very successfully and one less so. An appetizer of tuna tartare could be banal -- after all, you see it everywhere -- but instead is vibrant, the brilliantly red chunks clean and fresh in the mouth, and the sauce, rather oddly arranged inside rings of onion, spicy hot. But in an entree, thick triangles of rare tuna are heavily encrusted with spices. Not only is it not classic Italian, it´s odd, so strong as to be almost unpleasant. The accompanying lentils with plenty of bacon and excellent broccoli rabe are much more pleasing.

Desserts seem superfluous after the big portions, making a light version of creme brulee, more like a creme Catalan, a good choice. Apples in a puff pastry get a nice accent with a citrusy sauce, although the vanilla gelato would have been just right on its own.

Rustic Kitchen has many advantages -- its location, much of its food, and friendly and generally competent service -- particularly if the chefs keep the dishes simple. For Cafarelli, his third try at a Rustic Kitchen in metropolitan Boston seems to be the charm.