Print      
It’s late to the bowl concept, but Legal is very good at it
Noodle It Over Shrimp (top) and Tunanimous Choice (above) are two of the offerings at Legal Fish Bowl. (photos by Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff)
By Sheryl Julian
Globe Correspondent

LEGAL FISH BOWL

355 Main St., Kendall Square, Cambridge, 617-712-1975, www.legalseafoods.com. All major credit cards. Wheelchair accessible.

Prices Signature bowls $8.95-$13.95. Create-your-own bowls $7.95 without protein. Protein $1-$5.

Hours Daily 11 a.m.-9 p.m.

Liquor None at Fish bowl; full bar at adjacent Legal Sea Foods, where you can sit.

What to order Tunanimous Choice, Salmon Poke-Manna From Heaven, Noodle It Over Shrimp, Pick Your Hoisin.

I rolled my eyes when I heard that Legal was opening a bowl restaurant. Not a brilliant Anderson Cooper eye roll, but a pretty good one. Concepts rage through fast-casual (the industry word, not mine) like bad forest fires.

This popular concept — a grain from column A, a protein from column B, toppings, add-ons, etc. — has been successful for years at many establishments; I’m thinking of Asian-inspired Bon Me bowls on food trucks and in several locations, and the tiny veggie-centric Whole Heart Provisions in Allston.

What happens in a bowl restaurant is that you stand in a stylish cafeteria line and look at a posted menu board to decide. Many spots have some bowl ideas listed so you don’t have to do too much thinking.

This is mostly what the new Legal Fish Bowl is doing: offering combinations with (too) cute names, all but two celebrating seafood. And though they’re late to the bowl game, they’re very good at it. The place, adjacent to Legal Sea Foods in Kendall Square, has floor-to-ceiling storefront windows that make it feel like a fish bowl. The space was originally the restaurant’s private dining room. There is one table for six, places at a window counter, and picnic tables outside. A large suspended canoe hull is the same whimsical light fixture that’s in the bar and lounge next door, where you can eat your bowl at one of several communal tables, and order a drink, if you like.

You can make up your own bowl ($7.95; $1-$5 to add a protein), or order one of the specialty bowls, which include Tunanimous Choice, Salmon Poke-Manna From Heaven, Noodle It Over Shrimp, Pick Your Hoisin (all $13.95). Seafood is perfectly cooked; so is white and brown rice scooped from institution cookers. Bowls are assembled by lively, friendly workers with big smiles and all choices come with a bag of homemade croutons.

Poke-Manna From Heaven, based on the popular Hawaiian dish (see recipe Page G6), begins with sesame-ginger raw salmon on brown rice; servers plop an avocado half out of its shell and add rainbow carrots, spiced seeds and nuts, and marinated cherry tomatoes and cucumbers. A sesame vinaigrette goes over the dish and Korean red chile sauce comes with it. Even with hard tomatoes, the bowl is wonderful.

Marinated raw tuna is at the center of Tunanimous Choice, with seaweed salad, kimchi, radishes, and charred broccoli. The little green florets are almost too hard to bite into, but the tuna is superb with the seaweed, spicy cabbage, and a sesame dressing.

Pick Your Hoisin features beautifully flaky salmon under a sweet glaze. The fish is farmed in the Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic, Legal CEO Roger Berkowitz tells me later. Also in the bowl are grilled kale, spiralized zucchini, and avocado.

Shrimp here comes from an organic farm in Vietnam. Noodle It Over Shrimp has a base of lo mein noodles, with portobello mushrooms, rainbow carrots, and roasted sweet potatoes. The springy shrimp have a beautiful texture and oceany flavor; they’re every bit as good as my favorite Florida Pinks.

Even a well-oiled operation like Legal can open a place and not dot every i. On two visits, the servers tell us we can take our food to the bar tables next door if we order a drink, which we want to do, and then the bartenders ignore us. Veggies are mostly so cold that they lack flavor until you let them sit for a while to get the chill out. And the croutons, which are deliciously crisp, don’t come with every order.

Legal is going to offer four composed bowls at Logan’s Terminal E, which sounds perfect — a light filling meal to take onboard. You’ll have to watch your bowl like hawk so the passenger beside you, who is already practically in your lap, doesn’t grab a shrimp.

LEGAL FISH BOWL

355 Main St., Kendall Square, Cambridge, 617-712-1975, www.legalseafoods.com. All major credit cards. Wheelchair accessible.

Prices Signature bowls $8.95-$13.95. Create-your-own bowls $7.95 without protein. Protein $1-$5.

Hours Daily 11 a.m.-9 p.m.

Liquor None at Fish bowl; full bar at adjacent Legal Sea Foods, where you can sit.

What to order Tunanimous Choice, Salmon Poke-Manna From Heaven, Noodle It Over Shrimp, Pick Your Hoisin.

Sheryl Julian can be reached at sheryl.julian@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @sheryljulian.