B&G Oysters is a semi-subterranean boite in Boston’s trendy South End. We visited on a Tuesday, and hoped their no-reservations-for-parties-under-four policy wouldn’t be problematic. Fortunately, it wasn’t (although the restaurant was busy, with a nice buzz). The space is cute. Our table was a bit squishy for three, but I liked the cozy atmopshere. And our service was fine.

I’ve been wanting to visit B&G for a while, but we found the food underwhelming. Nothing wrong with it, granted, but just not special in any way.

Mr. Rabbit had half a dozen oysters, which he reported were good, but, as he said, it’s an oyster bar, so he would have expected no less. He described them as “Legal’s quality**,” which is not bad, but we might have expected better. I have a bivalve allergy (tragic), so I generally get a shrimp cocktail as a consolation prize. The shrimp at B&G were actually kind of sad and small. I would describe them as “sub-Legal’s quality”.

Mr. Rab’s skate wing was reported to be very good. My goat cheese salad was dull, with the cheese being one of those rather uninspired fried balls. Our guest had tuna, which also looked quite good.

Desserts were mediocre… all sounded more interesting than they presented. Fig tart was way too much pastry, and we left most of it untouched. The goat cheese ice cream was interesting at the expense of being good. The semifreddo was OK. Just OK. We left much of it too.

Had a nice bottle of Spanish red. Mr. Rabbit was disappointed that they didn’t have more sparkling options by the glass, and he found his prosecco too sweet (but he always says that, so I wish he’d stop his masochistic prosecco-ordering).

Flat. Nothing really wrong, but as a poster on Chowhound put it recently, the whole experience just didn’t really make me “happy.”

www.bandgoysters.com

** For non New Englanders, Legal Seafood is a New England chain of seafood restaurants (with raw bar). You can find them all over, including at Logan airport, where I’ve written about the Legal Test Kitchen outpost. I personally think this chain is not-too-bad as chains go, but I’m generally a down-with-restaurant-chains kind of girl.

Posted on November 7th, 2007 by rabbit
Filed under: Boston, Restaurant Reviews