Dovetail.(Restaurant review)

Dovetail seems at first like a version of Blue Hill transported north. There is the town-house location and discreet entrance, the understated decor, and the menu so emphatically New England in character that several of the ingredients claim to have come over on the Mayflower. Above all, there is the cooking, which never seems to falter. But where Blue Hill maintains earnest simplicity, Dovetail's chef, John Fraser, indulges a taste for whimsicality, such as pairing skate wing and chicken wing, or deconstructing the New Orleans muffuletta sandwich: the traditional pressed meats and olive salad strewn in little piles across the plate and the bread replaced with two licks of lamb's tongue, breaded and fried.

Once you start looking, unexpected and inventive touches are everywhere. Fraser enjoys eye-catching matches--cod with cocoa beans, bass with bacon, monkfish with foie gras, oysters with sunchoke and pineapple. A tiny but dietetically deadly beef-cheek lasagna accompanying a sirloin steak was pasta-free, made instead with thin sheets of celery root, parsnip, and potato. But what impresses far more is the attention lavished on less showy ...