Ruby's new home offers same comfort, good food

In April, Ruby's on Bainbridge became the third restaurant in five years to occupy the handsome Tudor manor house built more than a century ago by Emmanuel and Edna Olsen. For 10 years, Pleasant Beach Grill flourished on the site, a grassy slope overlooking Rich Passage. When that restaurant moved to Winslow in 1998, Moonfish eventually took its place. But the house has been vacant since October 2001.

From their little cafe across the street in Lynwood Center, Maura and Aaron Crisp, the owners of Ruby's on Bainbridge, could see the empty house on the hill, and it made them sad. "We thought it needed a family," says Maura. So the Crisps worked out a lease-purchase deal with the building's owners, harnessed a work crew of relatives to help paint the walls a moody shade of burgundy and moved in.

Among Bainbridge Islanders, the Crisps' move from diminutive storefront bistro to a sprawling two-story mansion must have evoked the same anxiety as sending your kids off to college: You know things will be different, but you hope they won't change too much.

The neighbors can safely uncross their fingers; Ruby's seems to have survived the transition, although judging from the full houses on weeknights and weekends alike (no mean feat with 120 seats to fill), the neighborhood has already figured that out for itself.

Chef Aaron Crisp goes looking for comfort food in all the right places.

France and Italy exert the strongest influences, as evidenced by the deftly crafted soups, silky sauces, voluptuous filled pastas and tantalizing little pizzas that are the mainstays of this eclectic menu.

French onion soup ($3.25/$4.25) satisfies utterly with its perfect balance of potent broth, caramelized onion and melted cheese. Soups du jour ($3.50/$4.50), whether cream of asparagus or prawn bisque, are supported by stocks so sturdy that flavor resonates in every spoonful.

Sauces are also well-tuned. A red-wine-fortified demi-glace graces supple medallions of beef tenderloin ($23.95). Apple juice and rosemary lend a sweet yet savory complexity to the brown sauce cloaking a golden breast of chicken ($17.95), baked to an uneven moistness.

Bright, herb-flecked tomato coulis complements tortino di melanzana ($17.95), a stack of grilled eggplant, mozzarella and marinated tomatoes. Most impressive is the gossamer white sauce laced with sherry and Gruyère that swaddles scallops, prawns and salmon spilling from an elaborate vol-au-vent, a puff pastry shaped like a fish ($21.95).

Agnolotti, triangular pasta filled with lobster and ricotta, is all the better for the intensity of its creamy pink, lobster-flecked sauce ($23/special), though the fine ravioli Veronique ($17.95) — two large pillows stuffed with chicken, mozzarella and ricotta and garnished with pistachios and red grapes — are submerged in so much Riesling-spiked cream that the pistachios float and the grapes bob like buoys.

Ruby's handmade focaccia ($6.95) is a misnomer; these are really lovely little pizzas. Cooked in a wood-fired oven, the crisp yet pliable crust is reminiscent of naan, the tandoori-baked Indian flatbread. The choice of toppings includes roasted garlic with feta and olives or roasted tomato with basil and mozzarella, but we opted for the daily special: sweet roasted fennel and onion tucked under a mozzarella veil.

This is just the kind of nosh you want to pair with a libation in the Library Lounge or on the patio. Also appealing are taro and sweet-potato chips dusted with spices and brown sugar ($3.95) and dipped into low-voltage, chili-spiked aioli, though some may be more limp than crisp.

Forgo the pallid chicken-liver pâté ($7.95) in favor of a plentiful bowl of smoky, paprika-rubbed olives ($2.95), a nice nibble with wine. In their new larger quarters, the Crisps can stock a wider selection of wines; 16 are offered by the glass and the full list travels well beyond the chardonnay-cabernet-merlot axis. Unfortunately the servers' knowledge of the wines doesn't have the same breadth.

Expanding the restaurant meant adding staff as well. Though attentive and accommodating, their hesitancy shows; some are not yet as polished as their buttoned-up collars and knotted ties would suggest.

One evening, our server rearranged the meal for our party of four. Our salads were brought first, along with one of the appetizers: six lovely prawns ($11.95) baked with a kicky combination of chilies, cilantro and lime, awkwardly perched on rafts of bread toasted to the texture of teething biscuits. Two soups showed up after the salads were cleared, and eventually the focaccia appeared.

Whether the snafu was the server's error or the result of timing problems in the kitchen, we never knew, but we had plenty of time to ponder the mystery in the long interval before the entrees arrived.

If the rich and rustic dessert tray holds little appeal after a rich and rustic meal, try the vibrant house-made raspberry sorbet. You won't feel deprived, even if your dining companions are oohing over a pair of pots de crème or swabbing cinnamon bread pudding through a bourbon-laced puddle of caramel and whipped cream.

Providence Cicero: providencecicero@aol.com