Steel & Rye chef Brendan Joy’s resume is a who’s who of great kitchens. In Boston alone, it includes Radius, Clio, Toro, No. 9 Park, and Sportello.
Joy took the helm at Steel & Rye in 2016, replacing chef Chris Parsons, who opened the restaurant in 2012 with owners Dan Kerrigan and Milton native Bill Scannell. The massive kitchen was built for creating elaborate preparations, for the traditional preserving of seasonal commodities, and for proofing and rolling homemade pastas and breads.
“We do lots of bulk purchasing during harvest periods to preserve products for the colder seasons,” said Kerrigan.
A satellite kitchen, with a blazing wood-fired oven, is installed across the big space in a red-painted corner with high shelves that hold 50-pound sacks of flour and grains.
THE LOCALE
Steel & Rye is tucked into a hillside in Milton Village, a.k.a. Lower Falls, right on the Dorchester border. Originally built as the garage for a DeSoto car dealership, the 7,000-square-foot space is operatic in scale: You could fly stage sets up into the 30-foot rafters, raising and lowering them for scene changes.
The most pleasing part of this gorgeous restaurant is the whole right-hand side, where a long spacious bar faces a long spacious banquette of comfy tables. High windows span one wall, and all you see through them is trees. If part of what you love about dining out is being in a beautiful space, this is one to for you.
ON THE MENU
The menu is small. There are snacks, apps, pizzas, mains, and a couple of sides. For the most part, the dishes are elaborate, the result of putting each of many ingredients through labor-intensive preparations.
On only two visits, I’m not sure we ordered the best it has to offer, but we’ll be back. Do not miss Joy’s stellar seeded sourdough bread. Among the snacks, the fried olives ($5) are funny little deep-fried breaded ovals, carefully perched on nickels of peppered cream cheese. The coal-roasted oysters ($3 each) — each shell balanced on a pile of rock salt — are covered in a tasty but coarse breading.
The appetizer plate of fried clams ($8) is a small skillet of tiny, local mollusks served with a tartar sauce that makes us suddenly wonder if the condiment’s name derives from the word tart. The confit duck wings with Jamaican jerk sauce ($13) pop with the pungent flavors of freshly ground spices.
The pizzas here are great: Our margarita ($15) is perfectly charred and bubbled. The outstanding Maine halibut ($35) is exquisitely prepared and served in a beautifully composed plate: The filet is set over a small pool of straight-forward celery sauce, surrounded by roasted mussels and small creamy potatoes wearing fascinators of shiso leaves and parsley.
Never a pretty dish, the (black) squid ink campanelle ($28) has that delicate flavor of the sea infused in every frilly bell of pasta. Another of the chef’s homemade pasta dishes is the good hubbard squash gnocchi ($27), served with a light pork ragu. A side of baby Brussels sprouts ($9) comes from the wood-fired oven, all charred and delicious.
The apple upside-down cake ($10) is served in a pool of caramel sauce, with ginger ice cream and oat streusel scattered around. Wonderful.
Steel & Rye, 95 Eliot St., Milton, 617-690-2787, steelandrye.com.
Joan Wilder can be reached at joan.wilder@gmail.com.
