Rabbit detests chain restaurants. 

Ordinarily charmless, with soul-less food in stupidly over-huge propositions, and too-often filled with the badly behaved children of suburban breeders, these places immediately make me lose my appetite anyhow. But I’m OK with Legal Seafood.

Through an unfortunate series of events, Rabbitz found themselves at the Burlington Mall in Burlington, MA on a Saturday night. Hungry and in need of a drink, we hit the Legal Seafood at the mall and had a surprisingly good meal. The waiting area was clotted at 7:30, but we shoved our way to the bar and lucked into a couple of seats with very minimal wait time. Note that the restaurant cleared out visibly by 8:00, so those who dine at a civilized hour should have little trouble getting a table at this location.

We started with a gin gimlet for Rab and a glass of vinho verde for Mr. Rabbit. Our genial barkeep warned me that Legal uses its own lime cordial and not the standard Rose’s Lime for their gimlets. I asked her whether this was code for “change your order,” but she assured me that she actually liked Legal’s own better. She proved absolutely right, and in fact the cocktail was so good that Mr. Rab opted for one himself after finding that his wine had gone slightly off. We think this was a poor choice on his part because vinho verde is really only great if it’s a very fresh bottle and we suspect this one had been sitting for a while. That said, we were very impressed with Legal’s wine program. The menu was an interesting read with a well-selected variety of wines and some interesting notes on pairings (for example, in a side bar they recommended specific reds that paired well with fish, pointed out which whites were winsome with spicy food, and they offered a nice selection of sparklers). Rabbit’s fondness for barsnacks is well documented, and a little bowl of mixed nuts and wasabi peas kept me entertained while we contemplated the menu and Mr. Rab worked on his app — a half dozen PEI oysters.  He reported the bivalves very good (no photo, desolé).

I constructed dinner from two appetizers — the crab cakes and a mixed green salad. I liked Legal’s cake, a meaty version plated with a small salad garnished with walnuts and dried cranberries. While Legal’s cake is not overly refined (its spicing is a bit bland). My side salad of mixed greens was unremarkable, but it got the job done — the addition of some blue cheese gave it a bit of heft and I didn’t mind the raspberry vinaigrette.

Mr. Rabbit opted for build-his-own dinner too — a half dozen cherrystone clams and the light chowder, a clear broth-based soup that actually looked quite virtuous in comparison with the ordinary thick and milky chowder.

His clams were pretty, pink, vaginal bivalves that he reported fresh and delicious.

For dessert, I opted for the chocolate pudding cake, a dome of very moist cake plated with a small scoop of vanilla ice cream and an almond meringue with a garnish of chocolate sauce. The cake was as it should be, satisfying and rich, although I didn’t think the meringue added much and would have been happier with another scoop of ice cream. The dessert admittedly had a slight “mall food” flavor, but I expected little more and I wanted some chocolate. And it was a relatively good mall-food rendition.  

In homage to our friend DS (who sometimes orders sliders for dessert), Mr. Rabbit closed with the crab cake having been jealous of my dinner (and nearly stabbed-with-fork when I saw him trying to go for it).

Overall, I think the key to success at Legal’s is knowing what to order. The raw bar is solid. Bartending is respectable and the wine list is notably intelligent in its construction. Salalds and soups are OK. The fish entrees are not particularly exciting and the sides are uninspired. Our neighbour had a shrimp pasta that looked and smelled catastrophic in the worst, gelatinously Olive-Garden way, but that’s the snob in me coming out. Desserts are what you’d expect — they taste a little mass produced, but they’ll definitely quell your sugar craving.

Overall, you could do way worse, and the sad fact is that we think the raw bar here is better than at some quite reputable and “upscale” spots in Boston (yeah, we’re looking at you B&G).

www.legalseafoods.com 

Posted on January 28th, 2009 by rabbit
Filed under: Boston, Restaurant Reviews, Uncategorized