Oleana
134 Hampshire Street, Cambridge; (617) 661-0505.
In the Inman Square neighborhood of Cambridge, clapboard multifamily houses are interspersed with small businesses, many of them high-tech offspring of nearby M.I.T. The area’s most delectable surprise, Oleana, snuggles midblock on workaday Hampshire Street northeast of Central Square, its entrance tucked on the side.
The understated exterior belies the bold flavors on the menu. Ana Sortun, chef, part-owner and the guiding palate behind Oleana, is passionate about sultry Mediterranean food, melding Greek with Turk, Armenian with Moroccan. Her warm olives fragrant with oregano and sesame seeds quickly put us in mind of wind-ruffled blue-green waters in spite of the arctic chill outside. Tangy-toasty Armenian bean and walnut pâté with homemade string cheese provided the perfect prelude to subtle cinnamon-poached halibut with almond-spiked spinach and garlicky celeriac mash. Each flavor and texture was individually discernible, yet the cumulative effect was dynamic in the most delicious way. My husband’s grilled spiced lamb steak with fava bean moussaka was no less good and satisfying — rendered better still by a half bottle of Adelsheim pinot noir 2000 from the Willamette Valley in Oregon ($24), chosen from the reasonably priced short wine card organized by color and flavor from light to full.
Ms. Sortun’s food, served in a gently lighted earth-toned room bustling with diners, is at once rustic-traditional and deeply inventive, invested with techniques mastered at La Varenne in Paris and an abiding respect for field-fresh ingredients, whose producers are credited on the menu alongside the kitchen staff’s names.
Persuaded by the evident pleasure that others were taking in the desserts concocted by the pastry chef, Maura Kilpatrick, we sampled the baked Alaska with coconut ice cream and passion fruit caramel under gilded meringue and the warm chocolate soufflé cake with salted almond ice cream. We never intended to finish both, yet we found ourselves reaching for just one more morsel.
Plagued by major service problems when it opened in 2001, Oleana today employs some of the most engaged and often witty help in the Boston area. They juggle an overflowing reservation book and 67 dining-room places. In warm weather there are also 50 sought-after seats in a back garden burgeoning with vines.
INMAN SQUARE, CAMBRIDGE: Oleana, 134 Hampshire Street, Cambridge; (617) 661-0505. Dinner only. Open daily. T-stop: Central Square (Red Line). $60 a person.
