Five Dishes at North End Grill Under review this week is North End Grill, Floyd Cardoz's welcome return after his 12-year run at the Indian-fusion restaurant Tabla. This time, he's not tethered to any one cuisine, giving him freedom to cook simple dishes like scrambled eggs and whole grilled turbot. Still, he retains a profound understanding of how to build flavors through spices, as became clear in my phone conversation with him this week. Here are some dishes worth trying at North End Grill, and the stories behind them. Pumpkin-crab soup ($14) "This was a dish I made for my kids at home," Mr. Cardoz said. They loved it so much I said I've got to put it on the menu. The heat might scare off the smallest children, but anybody with a mildly adventurous palate is likely to be taken by the interplay of sweetness and spice in this soup. The recipe starts with roasted squash - at the moment, the restaurant is using kabocha - that is cooked with a mirepoix, some pasilla de Oaxaca chilies, coriander seeds, ginger, garlic and rosemary. This gets puréed into a shellfish stock made from roasted crabs. White port and brandy add a fruity sweetness that is offset by lemon juice and Champagne vinegar. Shelled peekytoe crab with a little mint garnishes the soup, along with some pumpkin seeds. Hashed brussels sprouts and lentils ($8) Another recipe from Mr. Cardoz's home repertory, this side dish appeared on the Thanksgiving table last year by special request from his son, a college freshman. "For the longest time people thought brussels sprouts had to be overcooked, mushy, smelly things," Mr. Cardoz said. It's a great ingredient if you just take care. The brussels in this hash spend a scant four minutes in the pan, he said, giving them no time to overcook. Inspired by the cuisine of southern India, Mr. Cardoz quickly stir-fries thinly sliced brussels sprouts in a small amount of oil and butter, along with mustard seeds, slivered curry leaves, ginger, shallot and chili flakes. The hash is fortified with yellow split peas and urad dal, sometimes known as black lentil. In the south of India, urad dal is used, strangely enough, as a flavoring agent rather than as a main ingredient. It has a nutty flavor. I find it adds another dimension, and a little bit of crunch. Halibut with pine nuts, green raisins, clams ($29) The kitchen at North End Grill uses three grills: one open wood-burning grill and two closed Josper charcoal ovens. This Nova Scotia halibut is done in the Josper, which runs about 550 degrees. It takes about three minutes to cook in that oven. I've never seen anything cook so fast without drying out. It's almost a moist heat. The sauce is based on the clam juices that are a byproduct of the restaurant's clam pizza. It starts with garlic slowly sweated in olive oil. Shallots are stirred in next, then some spices: ground anise, ground coriander seeds, julienned chipotles. Finally some ginger sizzles in the pan before it is deglazed with clam juice and some orange juice. The sauce is used to poach green Iranian raisins as well as some tiny carrots, turnips and potatoes. These surround the fish, along with steamed razor clams and the sauce, which is finished with a bit of saffron. For some toasty flavors and a bit of crunch, the halibut is topped with fried shallots and ginger and roasted pine nuts. The result is extraordinary: a smoky but moist halibut filet in a broth of considerable complexity. Bacon-shrimp burger with spice-dusted fries ($18) When he came up with a burger for North End Grill's lunch menu, Mr. Cardoz, who said he is "not much of a burger person," left out the ground beef in favor of two ingredients he loves: shrimp and bacon. Rock shrimp and applewood-smoked bacon are run through a meat grinder and then mixed with Aleppo pepper and gently cooked onions and garlic. The patties are dipped in panko and cooked on the plancha to crisp them up. The patties are served on a house-made pretzel roll with house-made tartar sauce, arugula and fennel quickly marinated in salt and sugar. After extensively testing every French fry technique he could think of, Mr. Cardoz fell back on the first method he ever learned: frying them three times. This is the way they did fries at the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai, where Mr. Cardoz worked after graduating from culinary school. He seasons the fries with a spice mix he used to sprinkle on popcorn at Tabla, a blend of chaat masala, cumin, cayenne and paprika. Lemon meringue pie with candied almonds ($8) When Alexandra Ray auditioned for the job of pastry chef at North End Grill, she saved this dessert for last. It had the desired effect. "I knew I had to hire her," Mr. Cardoz said. I was blown away by how beautiful it was. I still have a picture of it on my iPhone. The pie hews closely to the classic recipe. The craftsmanship shows up in the details: how finely Ms. Ray hones the sweet-sour edge in the lemon filling; how crisp she gets the crust without resorting to loads of sugar; how tall and soft she gets the meringue by adding the sugar very slowly to beaten egg whites. While many pastry chefs would never dream of serving a wedge of pie, Ms. Ray makes it work by fussing over the presentation. Apart from the first slice, which "we may lose," Mr. Cardoz said, each slice is clean and precise. "A lot of attention goes into plating it so that it is perfect," Mr. Cardoz said. I feel that when you cook you've got to pay attention to everything along the way. If you are just doing something for the sake of doing it, it's going to translate at the end.