Like newlyweds moving into their dream house, chef Michael
Madden and chef Clarissa Madden have been unpacking their knives and rolling
pins at Om. It’s a homecoming of sorts. Michael had worked with chef Rachel
Klein before at Providence’s Lot 401 for several years, and she coaxed him to
come on board at Om a scant eight months after the restaurant first opened.
After leaving for a short stint in Florida, he returned to Boston to work with
her once again. “All told, I’ve worked for Rachel for eight years, including
time in Rhode Island and most recently at Aura at the Seaport Hotel,” Michael
says. That’s a long stretch of a career, given that he is only 31. But the
young chef is especially revved up now that he’s taking over at Om in his first
executive chef position. “I am more excited than I’ve ever been to be back at
Om. This is the food we’ve wanted to do from day one!” Michael crows. He admits
he’s a little anxious — “big shoes and all that,” he says in a nod to his
award-winning mentor — but he’s committed to creating “upscale food that
doesn’t have to be stuffy or fussy or over-the-top expensive.” As he says, “You
shouldn’t need a food dictionary to know what you are having for dinner.”
And Om diners now get two Maddens for the price of one: chef
Clarissa Madden (another Klein protégée who spent time on the Aura staff) is
serving as the pastry chef, and her sweet courses are anything but an
afterthought. The Maddens’ return is primo news for Om lovers (including yours
truly) who’ve been a little let down since Klein departed in December 2007 and
the concept changed from nouveau East Asian to a pretty routine menu of roast
chicken and steak frites. It’s not that the food was bad, but the menu was at
odds with the subtlety of the surroundings. When Om first opened just a few
years ago, it stood apart. Everything was two — possibly three — notches
above expectations, from the towering antique Nepali door that you had to muscle
aside to enter, to the street-side bar with its exquisite mural-length Thangka
temple painting, to a menu unlike any other, courtesy of the up-and-coming
Klein, who’d crafted a bill of fare that offered a blend of South Asian
cooking, cutting-edge Continental cuisine, and the best of snack food, like
freshly popped truffled popcorn in the place of the standard breadbasket. And
that’s without even mentioning the phantasmagoric desserts that did things like
erupt while diners watched in delight.
The Maddens are very much a duo — a trio if you count their
three-year-old daughter, who, her parents say, already possesses an asbestos
palate —
and they are reinventing Om with a vengeance. Chords of Thailand and
South Asia are mellowed into of-the-moment comfort-food fare, a menu of noodle
soups and terrific salads at spot-on prices, shareable entrees at $20 or less,
and desserts you just won’t find elsewhere. Most delightful is the
pitch-perfect flavor continuity between the savory and the sweet, a reminder that
the husband-and-wife chefs share a common sensibility. The flavors sing
harmoniously from appetizer through dessert. A week later, I’m still calling up
the taste of the momos and the steamed pork buns, fantasizing
about the barbecued lamb ribs my husband mostly hoarded, remembering greedily
the cardamom-scented pistachio kulfi and the Vietnamese
coffee-and-chocolate parfait concocted by Clarissa. It’s food that grabs you,
appeals to your sense of value in terms of taste and price alike, and resonates
with the aura of the space it inhabits. Welcome home, Maddens times two. You
were missed.
