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Dining Out

At Kendall Square restaurant Study, a journey continues

Slices of raw scallop with mushroom mousse and yuzu sorbet. Katherine Taylor for The Boston Globe/Globe Freelance

Years ago, I sat down for dinner in a first-floor Somerville apartment that looked like any other Somerville apartment. A dog named Gnocchi butterballed around, sniffing for crumbs. My friends and I brought the wine. And the couple who lived there, running an underground supper club in their spare time, cooked us an extraordinary, inventive dinner. I can still taste the smoked potato bread, the lamb rillettes, the macarons they were just learning to make. “This is one of the best restaurants in Boston right now,” I remember thinking.

Sunchoke with sunchoke chips and purple and white petals of onion.Katherine Taylor for The Boston Globe

Eventually the couple — Diana Kudayarova and Tse Wei Lim, a historian and a sociologist/analyst for an IT consultancy — quit their jobs and went legit, opening the restaurant Journeyman in Union Square. They soon added the adjacent backbar. In an old pasta-sauce factory sequestered in an alley, the two businesses retained some of the supper club’s underground feeling. A meal at Journeyman, I wrote in my 2010 review, was an hours-long epic filled with brilliant and frustrating moments.

At the end of last year, they expanded again, to Kendall Square. First they opened Ames Street Deli, which is a deli like “Finnegans Wake” is a novel. Shortly followed Study, the ilk of restaurant where food is alchemized into jewel-like compositions that occupy approximately 15 percent of available plate surface. Like Journeyman and backbar, the two share a space and support one another, a lofty concept and a more-accessible one side by side. It’s very smart. It’s a lot like having a day job that allows one to pursue a passion for cooking at an underground supper club by night. It’s no coincidence that Study’s front-of-house staff seems largely comprised of artists and poets, likeminded souls.

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Study is a spare and angular space, with red accents and columns covered in moss. A meal here is a more even experience than those I had at Journeyman in its early days — not as long and drawn out, with fewer failures but fewer breathtaking highs, without as much heart. The menu originally featured four small courses. One could order a la carte, or opt for a four- or 12-course tasting. This was just revised in favor of a more-traditional format, with courses labeled “nosh,” “light,” “entree,” and “share.” (Most of the meals I ate here were of the original format.) Kudayarova and Lim are eternally adjusting: They switched from several tasting menus to just one at Journeyman, then scrapped the standard reservation system, selling tickets for dinner instead.

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At Study, chef de cuisine Jon Sanchez, sous chef Nick Anichini, and team create beautiful landscapes on the plate. In a glossy black bowl, slices of opalescent raw scallop are served with mushroom mousse and yuzu sorbet, a study in white accented by a frill of maitake mushroom and a line of grated wasabi root. The flavors are as elegant and cool as the presentation.

A sunchoke dish puns colorfully, the tuber stuffed with sweet onions, on the plate with sunchoke chips and purple and white petals of onion, ingredients curving heliotropically toward a bright golden yolk.

Study’s take on rabbit is everything one wants from a dish at a restaurant like this: stunning, delicious, whimsical. Cured and smoked loin, leg confit, liver mousse, and vinegar-touched Brussels sprouts leaves provide a mixture of bright and grounded flavors and crisp and chewy textures. They are arrayed on a lidded bowl that contains smoked cherry wood, lending a campfire scent. On the side are big, black raisins, adding sweetness to the mix. (I cannot say whether their resemblance to rabbit scat is accidental or intentional.)

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A coconut dessert also plays with ingredients above and below a lid, this time one made of sugar set atop a glass jar. It is edged in white sesame seeds, strewn with bites of ginger sponge cake, dots of mango puree, and a scoop of coconut sorbet, sprinkled with a few black sesame seeds. Beneath are more sponge cake, black sesame Anglaise, and candied jalapeno. Crash your spoon through the glass ceiling to combine all of the flavors.

Smoked loin of rabbit, leg confit, liver mousse, and Brussels sprouts leaves.Aram Boghosian for The Boston Globe

As arresting as they look, some dishes feel overthought and undertasted. Squares of roasted monkfish are stacked like dominoes on a vast white plate, surrounded by dots of lobster-grapefruit sabayon and rounds of gold beets that have been edged in their own black ash. Slashes of beet juice and sprinkles of lobster roe powder provide punctuation. But the fish is watery and cold, the beets not roasted long enough, the lobster flavor lost in all that preparation.

Squid ink gnocchi march along the edge of a plate, looking like little lumps of coal, ink pooling below. They are strewn with white rings of squid and diced mango, served opposite pieces of abalone mushroom. It’s eye candy. The flavors and textures don’t make the same impression.

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A dessert of coconut sorbet sprinkled with a few black sesame seeds, mango puree, sponge cake, black sesame Anglaise, and candied jalapeno.Aram Boghosian for The Boston Globe

Pork shank is formed into a puck, embraced on one side by barley with pomegranate seeds, on a plate painted with violet mustard. This might be the closest Study gets to Irish stew. The mustard and pomegranate don’t provide enough pucker to lift it above homey tastiness.

The closest Study gets to a Twinkie involves a rectangle of vanilla sponge cake thickly frosted with foie gras. It comes with quince and celeriac ice cream. It’s delirious and quite delicious, except on one visit, when the foie gras is so intensely salty it is nearly inedible.

On the new menu, entrees are scarcely more substantial than “light” dishes. It was a good idea to add the “share” category, both in order to please the hungry and to give the kitchen a chance to cook with less restraint and more generosity. The cheek and collar of a tilefish are presented at the table in a skillet with a puff of shredded, fried purple potato and sections of fennel, the juicy fish bathed in a saffron-hued bouillabaisse sauce. It’s gorgeous and tastes glorious.

If the meal itself can sometimes feel mannered or precious, all of the peripherals are in place. There are so many fine touches at Study: The house-made bread with funky, flavorful butter. The crisp cornet of smoked fish pearls and roe (very Thomas Keller-esque, but Sanchez comes by it honestly, having spent time at Bouchon) that starts the meal, and the dish of pates de fruits, caramels, and other bonbons that ends it. The cheese cart. The wine list, stocked with sherry and vermouth, grower Champagne and orange wines, and a range of mostly Old World bottles with enlightening, enticing descriptions. (“Lemon curd beneath a pile of pea pods. Astounding Chenin.” “Made by a foul mouthed ex-physicist. Pure, bloody Syrah.”) And the generally excellent, well-informed service, able to gauge the party’s mood and interact accordingly.

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Pork shank served with barley and pomegranate seeds.Katherine Taylor for The Boston Globe

Then there are the odd departures — the chip in the plate that holds the beautiful dish, an improperly dried bowl that ruins some of the mignardises. Arriving right after opening one evening, without a reservation but hoping to squeeze in dinner before a show, we are told it is impossible. All of the tables in the empty restaurant are reserved. We adjourn to Ames Street Deli, where we attempt to get full on tiny sandwiches. Several hours and cocktails later, someone comes to fetch us: There have been cancellations, and we can come over to Study if we wish. The place is 75 percent empty and remains so until we leave, three hours after our arrival. Was the staff so concerned with the comfort of potential guests they slighted the ones actually in hand?

These are the tides one must ride: a pitch-perfect dish followed by an overreaching one at Study; a small, expensive, and oddly seaweed-heavy sandwich for lunch at Ames followed by some of the best French pastries in town (don’t miss the kouign-amann and caneles). Kudayarova and Lim oversee the baking program themselves, arriving early each morning. Maybe they never sleep. They have come a long way, from academics cooking on the side to the overseers of a restaurant group. But their singular, sometimes eccentric approach to food and the business of serving it remains a constant. The effort and its outcomes are admirable.

Roasted monkfish surrounded by dots of lobster-grapefruit sabayon and gold beets.Aram Boghosian for The Boston Globe

Devra First can be reached at dfirst@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @devrafirst.