Phantom Gourmet: Comedor In Newton Centre

NEWTON - It's one of the hottest new restaurants in Greater Boston, and its success can be credited to a perfect marriage of ingredients and flavors. It can also be credited to another marriage: that of Jakob and Fernanda White.

The pair met in culinary school, worked together in kitchens around Boston, and are now the proud owners of Comedor in Newton Centre. Just as these young chefs have merged their lives together, the food they serve is also a marriage of their different cultures.

"I'm from Chile and my husband's from upstate New York, and we just thought it would be a really great idea to combine our personalities, our backgrounds and our cooking experiences, and kind of mold those two cultures together," said Fernanda.

What they came up with is an ever changing menu of small plates inspired by the cuisines of Chile and America.

"We'll come up with ideas and a lot of times I'll tell him something that I want to do and it will be missing something and he has the perfect idea or ingredient that needs to go into it," Fernanda said. "So we're always working with each other and bouncing ideas off each other."

"We work really well together. Our styles kind of complement each other. We spend all of our time together, so I couldn't think of a better person to send my days with," said Jakob.

The menu at Comedor changes with what's fresh and available, but it's always broken down into four sections: Meat, Seafood, Vegetarian, and Sweets.

"Our concept is to be almost like a neighborhood everyday place, and the menu is all small plates," explained Jakob. "You can pretty much design the way your experience is here by ordering a lot, ordering a little bit, grabbing a beer and a snack, or just going all out and just ordering everything."

Be forewarned, the food is so good here, ordering everything is probably what you'll end up doing.

There's handmade pasta with linguisa; braised lamb with heirloom carrots and Yukon gold potatoes; Padron peppers with housemade salt and vinegar chips; and an ever-changing Burger of the Week, like one with Vermont blue cheese and, extra crispy bacon.

If you want fries with that burger, the Papas Fritas are a must order, topped with scallion salsa, cotija cheese, and a special Chilean seasoning called Merken.

"It's a traditional spice from Chile. It's sundried and smoked chili peppers mixed with coriander and salt. It's really good, and it smells like bacon," Fernanda laughed.

Comedor's seafood options are deliciously inventive, like the Tempura Fried Octopus with smoked tomatoes, Littlenecks with lardons and sweet potato strings, and Bay Scallop and Fontina Empanadas.

"We make them fresh every day and we deep fry them to order," said Fernanda. "We normally don't do them with Bay Scallops in Chile, but we thought it was a cool way to integrate a local ingredient like Nantucket Bay Scallops, and mix them with cheese and this amazing dough that we make in house, and we deep fry them. They're super crunchy, and that's really a nice taste from home for me."

Another taste of home for Fernanda comes at dessert, with the Semola con Leche.

"It's a very traditional Chilean dessert made with milk and semolina, and it kind of sets up like a custard. It's really good. We serve it with caramel. It's really yummy. I had a Chilean lady come in the other day telling me she hadn't eaten it in like ten years, and she was so happy."

No matter what country you're from, the Tempura Fried Brownie guarantees to please.

"We deep fry them until the batter is crispy. The inside gets super gooey and hot. Put it with dulce de leche. So you get sweet, salty, the cold sauce, the hot brownie, it's like a lot of contrast, and it's just so good," described Fernanda.

Comedor means dining room in Spanish, and that's exactly what Jakob and Fernanda wanted the restaurant to feel like.

"We wanted people to feel like they were at home, in their dining room, with an open kitchen where their mom was cooking, and they could really smell, see everything," Fernanda said.

So they built the kitchen right in the front of the restaurant, giving diners, and people passing by on the street a view of all the action.

"It's kind of a unique setup where we cook in the windows. People can walk by, even when we're not open, and see us prepping all the food, rolling empanadas, frying the potato chips, doing all that kind of stuff. When people walk by, they know that we're here, it's almost like they can look in the windows and see what they're gonna come in and get later on. It's kind of a unique thing," explained Jakob. "And we decided to wrap a bar around the kitchen. We call that our chef's bar, and people get a front row seat to all of their food being made."

It's an interactive way for the customers and chefs to feel like they're part of one community, because they all really are.

"We actually live in West Newton, so when it came to opening a restaurant, this is where we wanted to be," said Jakob. "The people in Newton are cool. When we found this spot, we really went for it and we really enjoy being in Newton Centre, and this is the place we call home."

You can find Comedor at 105 Union Street in Newton, and online at comedornewton.com.