Jae's

The Jae's empire gets a palatial flagship restaurant -- and fires up the Korean barbecue

by Stephen Heuser

212 Stuart Street (Park Square), Boston; (617) 451-7788
Open for lunch Mon to Sat, 11:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.,
and for dinner Mon to Wed, 5 to 10:30 p.m.;
Thurs to Sat, 5 p.m. to 1 a.m.; and on Sun, noon to 10 p.m.
Full bar
All major credit cards
Elevator access to all floors

Over the past several years, Jae Chung has presided sagely over a slowly growing chain of restaurants: Jae's Café & Grill in the South End, Jae's Café in Cambridge, and, recently, a new shopping-mall Jae's in Chestnut Hill. For all the success of his formula, which is to offer the greatest hits of Asian cuisines in an urbane, glossy restaurant setting, Jae himself has clearly been itching to make a Larger Gesture.

His first attempt, the endearingly overdecorated Galaxy Grill (waiters in Starfleet outfits; hinged steel menus), foundered quickly despite a perfectly credible fusion menu. Now comes a different sort of big splash: the usual menu in a magnificent new home, three stories tall, in Boston's Theater District.

For all its audacity of proportion (an elevator takes you from the sushi bar to the main dining room), the new Jae's is still more comfy than grand. It's designed to feel like several restaurants in one: on the first floor, a sushi bar faces a lounge; the second floor is a dining room with Jae's signature tank of tropical fish. Ceilings upstairs are low, lighting is unobtrusive, walls are a faux grasscloth that's reassuring in an '80s sort of way. The cue that we're in slightly flashier territory than Inman Square is the cigar humidor near the front door (1979 Macanudos for $50!), and the rich, polished cherrywood behind the bar.

There's one other deviation from the usual Jae's formula, and this is where the new place gets interesting: the third floor is dedicated to Korean grilling.

The Korean tradition of cook-at-table meals -- or Korean barbecue, as it's generally called --hasn't found particularly full expression in Boston, where most Korean restaurants are at pains to emphasize the Japanese side of their menu. But Korean barbecue is a rewarding cuisine in itself, and an entertaining way to eat: slices of marinated meat are grilled right in front of you, and there is usually a choice of any number of condiments (provided in small dishes) to accompany them.

As far as I know, the usual model for Korean barbecue is hands-on: diners are presented with a plate of raw meat and then left to do their own cooking at a grill set into the table itself. Jae's is selling a supervised version, which may make sense for people unfamiliar with the cuisine, but also diminishes the fun. You sit along a counter, something like a small sushi bar, and a server in an official Jae's khaki jacket handles the messy part -- tonging the raw meat over the convex grill, throwing a few vegetables on the fire (onions, carrots), and finally relinquishing control when the meat is done well enough to turn the gas down.

(Aside from the fun factor, there's something a little strange about the setup here. The seating is arranged in large open squares around grilling stations; each square holds 17 or 18 people, which means a party larger than two ends up strung out in a line along the counter. Everyone can watch the griller, but it's hard to have a conversation.)

Our trip through the barbecue menu involved one order of beef short ribs ($18.95) and one of pork loin ($17.95). Both were prepared in a marinade not too distant from teriyaki -- based, similarly, on soy and sugar, I'd guess. The short rib meat was a long sheet of steak snipped before us into stir-fry-size pieces; once it's cooked, the ritual is to take a few pieces of grilled beef, tuck them into a piece of lettuce with condiments of your choosing, and pop the package into your mouth.

The nice thing about this is that since the beef is quite mild -- a light grill taste and that sweet-salty marinade -- each eater can vary the meal's spice level to taste. With the beef you might try a few leaves of fiery kimchi, a smear of bean paste, and a handful of cool julienned daikon radish; or a dip of sweet, clear barbecue sauce and a chopstick-load of bean sprouts. (There's also a little dish of "Korean sausage" that one could be forgiven for confusing with sliced hot dog.)

The pork wasn't far from the beef in flavor, with perhaps a touch more spice in the marinade, and a touch less flavor from the grill.

In spite of the space dedicated to tabletop grilling, the Korean barbecue menu has only 11 items. On the other hand, the main Jae's menu (which is available everywhere in the restaurant) is so long, and comes in so many parts, that to try to take in the whole thing would be foolhardy, like snapping a few Polaroids of New York City and pretending you've caught it all.

We did take a stab at it, checking up on a couple of appetizers, some standard Japanese dishes, and a handful of sushi. A starter called mandoo ($6.95) consisted of four slim half-moon ravioli-style meat dumplings, which came off a little oily and underseasoned, even with the soy-scallion dipping sauce. A glutinous rice-flour pancake called pajon ($10.95) had a spongier texture but more life, with shrimp, crab, and bell pepper slices embedded underneath the surface.

In certain circles, the sushi at Jae's has inspired almost cultish devotion, so much so that a guy I met at a party recently rented a van with a dozen friends to make a costumed Halloween sushi pilgrimage to each of the four Jae's restaurants. Go figure. At any rate, Jae's does do a nice job with sushi; the nigiri and maki here are fresh enough, with perfectly agglutinated rice, and fish cut to expose the grain quite elegantly. And it isn't badly priced: plain rolls start at $3.50 and the fancier inside-out rolls top out at around $6. Some of those are perhaps a bit too fancy -- Jae's Screaming Spicy Roll 1 ($5.75 for six pieces) had enough red chili in it to overwhelm the delicate, buttery yellowtail inside. It's interesting, but I'm not sure it's sushi.

Jae's is also popular for its pad Thai, which comes in two varieties: regular and "crispy." The crispy version ($8.95) is a fried-noodle dish, where angel-hair egg noodles are precooked, dried till crunchy, and then tossed with hot toppings. The result looks like a prickly yellow Afro and tastes surprisingly good: the chicken is tender, the shrimp moist, and the crunchiness of the noodles adds an unusual textural boost to a familiar dish.

Desserts at Jae's ($6.25 each) are limited, and not Korean in the least -- or Japanese or Thai, for that matter. We had a decent frozen mousse with hazelnuts, and a better pear tart, but there's something strange about dipping into heavy Western desserts after a meal that relies for its effects on delicacy and spice. On the other hand, given the premise of this restaurant -- a place where you can order your favorite Asian foods in surroundings that never feel unfamiliar -- it's also very Jae's.