review: pomodoro, my love

pomodoro / 24 harvard street / brookline ma / 617-566-4455 / 11am-11pm / reservations accepted (and recommended, by me) / cash only / entrees moderately expensive ($18-25)

of all of the restaurants i've been to, pomodoro is possibly the fairest of them all. understand that The List is not a ranking of all of the restaurants i have ever been to. rather, The List is a ranking of the restaurants i would go back to. if it were the former, alinea and the french laundry would surely be on it; but i'm a student, and i'd rather pay my tuition than fritter away my summer savings on incredible, incredibly expensive food.

i've been to pomodoro twice: once when charles' parents were visiting, and this past sunday for my birthday. and my, oh my. the first time it was great: they had to add a table extension to fit all of the food on the table, and appetizers magically expanded to fit the size of our party and then some, without asking and without extra charge. and the food: the food is amazing. this is the best italian restaurant i've ever been to, and one of the best restaurants i've been to in general. this is the restaurant with the warmest service i've had - and for that flawless, generous service, i am really thankful and surprised.

for my birthday dinner, we started with some calamari. this is the first place i had actually ate calamari - i have a history of disliking it - and it's just fantastic here. it's not cooked too long, or too briefly - it's perfect. it comes with a tomato sauce that's nice and thick, impossibly and brightly red, and is the best such sauce i've had at any restaurant. they brought us some mussels just because, and they were amazing - this is also the only place where i will eat mussels. they were cooked in a sort of cream sauce with fennel sausage in it, which was a surprisingly good combination.

as a main course i had risotto with crab, mushrooms, and some sort of sweet, mild squash. it was rather delicate, almost sweet, and extremely good. didn't overtake the crab at all, and i thought it was an excellent and unusual risotto. i have a bit of a bone to pick with the pretty but useless crab claws that were in my bowl - they had meat on them, but the only way to get it was to gnaw at the claws. i generally dislike any food that's difficult to eat. i hate working too hard when i eat - i'm willing to work had to taste the flavors and texture, but i don't want to spend the whole night trying to extract the food so i can eat it. my mother had a steak with mac and cheese, which was also good - the steak was aged, so it had a pretty mellow flavor that i had some trouble identifying as beef. i wonder if it was the cut, the aging, or the source of the beef? at any rate, it was tender, but not too tender.

the weak point of many italian restaurants is the dessert, and when we came before, it was true. we had the creme brulee, and it was kind of watery and definitely too eggy. this time, we said no to dessert, but they brought us two, anyway: a fig bread pudding and a tiramisu. that tiramisu was fantastic - not too light, not too dense, with a perfect balance of coffee and creamy mascarpone. the fig bread pudding was a little bit less toothsome, since it had a bit too little liquid. i thought it tasted like their leftover bread made into bread pudding. i have no problem with this - i just wanted a bit more eggy creaminess to it. the chocolate sauce that came with the bread pudding was amazing, though - dark, not too dark, and not too sweet, with depth. mmm.

it's a little difficult to describe why i like pomodoro so much. it has to do with comfort, in a way - when you're having dinner at pomodoro, you feel like you're having dinner catered to you in your own very chic living room. it's like the chef is focused just on you, even though you know they're not. rarely is the service in a restaurant so warm - it can be very efficient, noiseless, seamless, friendly, but ultimately it's usually professional and a little cold.

i thought the food was better this time than it was last time - a little more interesting, a little more polished. this is also the only italian restaurant i've been to where so many of the pasta dishes look interesting. i guess i'll just have to go back.

p.s. i do have a bit of a pet peeve with the restaurant - one they've tried to remedy. in the winter, when it's cold, every time the door opens, the whole place gets a blast of cold air because the restaurant is small. there's a heavy curtain at the entrance, which gets some of the cold air, but it's too close to the door to do much good. your warm cocoon is thus interrupted by the cold, uncaring world outside at times, but not enough to deter you from feeling very, very good by the end of the night.