Florida breezes carry gentle hint of fine dining to Bosley

Journal Sentinel Online
Journal Sentinel dining critic
July 14, 2005
By Dennis R. Getto

Key West may not be considered one of the world's foremost culinary capitals, but chef Peter Carew is doing everything he can to bring a piece of it to Milwaukee.

Carew, the chef at the new Bosley on Brady restaurant, nightly prepares dishes like Florida grouper ($24), Key lime pie ($6) and ceviche martinis ($9) for a growing crowd of fans.

The restaurant's owner, Michele Green, took over the space on Brady St. that used to house Konohana restaurant.

She's redone the restaurant in bright yellows and reds and decorated it with equally bright paintings on the walls.

During the summer, the best seats are the tables and chairs outside the restaurant, which allow diners to enjoy the weather and sample the flavor of Brady St.'s west end. The only distraction noted on a recent visit was an occasional motorcycle that stopped conversation for a moment as it roared past.

Not all of the dishes on the Bosley menu are Floridian, but of the four entrees my friends and I sampled on two recent visits, that Florida grouper rated pretty near the top of the offering.

The fresh fish had been simply floured and sauteed, then accompanied with a mango lime salsa that carried gulf breezes.

While grouper is not as light as sole or walleye, the meaty fillets rewarded us with a delightfully delicate flavor, accented by the citrus and sweet flavors of the fresh salsa.

The major drawback of the dish was the two potato pancakes served beneath it. They had lost all trace of crispness, their sogginess making them less enjoyable than the ones many Milwaukee restaurants serve with fish fries. In addition, the small portion of the house garlic spinach had too much of the first ingredient.

Carew's skills with meat, however, proved as formidable as his talents with seafood.

A bone-in ribeye steak ($28), weighing in at a full pound, impressed us from the moment our server set it on the table. The dark meat was covered with a beautifully browned mound of wispy homemade onion straws. Beside it stood a small mound of horseradish mashed potatoes and bright orange carrots that had been slowly simmered in stock with a little sugar.

The tender beef's hearty flavor emerged perfectly, and every other element on the plate added its own flavor note. First came the crispy sweetness of the onion straws.

I liked the steak best when I could pin a few of those straws to a piece of meat with my fork and then chew the sweet and savory tastes together.

Slow cooking had mellowed the carrots, which added their own sweetness. Best of all, chef Carew had reined in the horseradish as he whipped it with the potatoes. All too often, horseradish mashed potatoes taste so strongly of the hot root they overpower the flavor of the foods they accompany.

The chef's version of a bone-in veal chop ($29) had it dipped in enough crumbs to give it a crunchy coating. It was sauteed just long enough to give it a reddish-gold color before being baked until the meat set up nicely. Then it was onto a plate beneath a gold-green blanket of crisp-fried leeks. It took me a minute to fully appreciate this combination.

The shredded onions atop Carew's steak had a flavor strong enough to play nicely off the steak's richness. But for the milder-tasting veal, the chef chose leeks, a milder-flavored member of the onion family.Our fourth entree, free-range chicken ($17), might not have been Floridian, but it showed some Southern influence.

Count on a Southern cook to get the best flavor out of chicken. Like the veal, the chicken had been sautéed, then roasted, and it arrived both moist and flavorful. But wild mushroom risotto, made with chicken broth, was lacking in flavor and contributed little if anything to the plate.

While dinners were mostly delightful, so, too, were the appetizers.

Listed under the title "small plates," a crab cake ($12) was practically all sweet, juicy lump crab (the best grade available) with a few fillers and a satiny garlic mayonnaise to top them. That same mayonnaise accompanied an order of crisp calamari ($8) that had been dredged in a cornmeal coating and then fried to the perfect degree of golden crisp. The ceviche martini mixed shrimp and scallop with sweet red bell pepper and mango in fresh lime juice.

We got one of our dinners off to an equally impressive start with a roasted beet and walnut salad. Nestled between baby greens were oven-baked beets and candied walnuts, which added earthiness and crunch beneath the salad's lively Cabernet-port vinaigrette. And corn chowder ($4), made with fresh cream, a little bacon and sweet corn kernels, was rich and substantial.

I wouldn't be doing Bosley on Brady justice without heaping some praise over the top of the whipped cream on the house Key lime pie. Made on a gingersnap crust, the pie was wonderfully tart and cut any remaining garlic flavor from our mouths. Corn cake ($6) a poundcake-like creation made with cornmeal and served with sweet cream, was a close competitor in the best dessert category.

Our choice to sit outside, pretending the breezes came off the Gulf of Mexico instead of Brady St., had the slight effect of slowing our service.

But on a lovely night in early July, we really didn't mind.

Three stars - ***

full article at: http://www.onwisconsin.com/dining/dining.asp?id=3616