Italian exuberance in Porter Square

Rustic Kitchen's Porter Square location used to be home to Metro. The interior look has been softened with lamps, wine cabinets, and other details; it looks a little like a comfortable parlor. A cook bakes pizza in an alcove with a tiny shelf so that diners can sit on stools and watch, and in another alcove a pasta maker stretches and flours dough. On a first visit, a hostess leads us to the back room, but we sit for only a minute before deciding the empty room with its heavy furniture feels like limbo, and we ask to be included in the front room's bustle. Here booths line the walls and other diners sit at high tables near a big bar. On a warm evening, the outside patio is also full.

It's an Italian scene, with everyone talking and laughing and sharing food. Very good food, too, though the waitstaff in this less-than-two-month-old restaurant can be maddeningly inept. Tom Holloway is Bradley's chef de cuisine, with Mark Uscewitz, formerly of the Independent in Somerville, as sous chef.

Bradley's pet project in this second Rustic Kitchen is the oysteria menu: raw and marinated seafood in Italian preparations, with 20 or so raw fish selections. We start one evening with slices of tuna splashed with unfermented aged grape juice and sprinkled with chopped chilies. Each bite lilts on the tongue, and since the grape juice tastes very much like the Japanese mirin, the flavors are familiar. We have wild king salmon, its color a brilliant red, in a shallow pool of bright green pesto. Anchovy fillets boast another green sauce; this one tingles on the palate from finely chopped and mashed capers, parsley, and garlic.