upstairs again; tomatoes at craigie; a new find

this year, upstairs on the square must have a new chef, because the food is a lot more exciting and adventurous than it usually is. it also appears to be suffering a bit business-wise, even though the food is better than it has ever been; so i'm doing my part towards the country's economic recovery by having had lunch twice at upstairs in the past two weeks. the first time wasn't particularly worth talking about - a clam chowder that tasted mostly of creme fraiche and a fish sandwich on too-thick bread - but the second time was really quite wonderful. i went with my mother and sister, and we had:

- chilled yellow tomato soup with a hint of scotch bonnet; crouton of wild salmon and avocado tartare

- antipasti of lourdes' mozzarella; peach and sweet summer pepper relish

- lemon tagliatelle; chiogga beets & greens, lobster knuckles, sauteed cod cheeks

- bbq pork piadina sandwich; giardiniera of farmer's market vegetables, crisp onion strings

- cheeseburger on a potato roll; gruyere, niman ranch bacon, cucumber pickles

- market fruit galette; candied almonds

- crema catalana; cinnamon & orange, pecan shortbread cookies

the tomato soup was absolutely delicious - i often find tomatoes to be too sweet, but these were sweet and plenty tart. the addition of the scotch bonnet is also quite wonderful - adding a crucial bit of warming heat to the cold soup. the avocado was delicious, but unnecessary.

i had the bbq pork sandwich as my main course - it was also quite good. it turns out that a piadina is a sort of italian flatbread, slightly thicker than a tortilla; this one was corn-based. the bbq pork was great - a lot of bbq flavor, a bit of char - and i think that it may have been cooking in the grill we saw right at the entrance to the restaurant, as the smoke from the grill matched the smoky flavor in the pork. the giardiniera, which is an actual name for an italian side dish that is a fancy name for pickled vegetables, was forgettable and a bit too vinegary for my tastes. the crisp onion strings were absolutely delicious - very lightly battered, razor-thin slices of onion - basically, ephemeral bits of onion essence.

i had a bite of my sister's lemon tagliatelle, which is fresh, house-made pasta. not as delicious as the lobster dish i had a few weeks ago, but still quite good. i also had a bite of my mother's burger, and i may have to amend my decision to name craigie's burger as the best burger around here. i've had the upstairs burger before, but long ago enough that craigie had replaced it in my esteem. however, now that i've had each burger within a week of each other, i can safely compare them. while it was worth the wait for the tomato in craigie's burger, the upstairs burger actually tasted beefier and more satisfying. the upstairs burger also earns some brownie points with its inclusion of homemade mayo for the burger or fries (mayo with my fries is one food-related affection that i've developed in my grown-up-adult phase of life). i also prefer upstairs' thick-cut fries over the shoestring fries at craigie, although this time, at least craigie had regular potato fries (i am not a fan of sweet potato fries). there is just no way to effectively eat shoestring fries; it robs you of both a high rate of potato consumption (a debatable loss), but more importantly, of the satisfaction of chewing a mouthful of potato. and that is definitely a crime.

unfortunately, although the first and second courses were delicious, dessert was disappointing. i generally caution against dessert at upstairs, unless you choose the butterscotch pudding, which is absolutely wonderful. both desserts were clunkers - the galette wasn't sweetened enough (and i'm pretty sensitive to overly sweet desserts), its crust was completely soggy, and it came topped with whipped cream that was whipped almost to the point of being butter. i really wanted to send it back, but i never know what the etiquette is for that type of thing. the crema catalana was better - it was basically a spiced creme brulee, and the shortbread cookies were good, but it was overall an average dessert.

as a side note, exciting news! i have now been to craigie enough times that i apparently am a trusted enough customer that they don't require me to secure my reservations with a credit card. i'm moderately flattered.

***

also last week, i did restaurant week lunch with my sister at asana, which is in the mandarin oriental hotel on boylston. the entrance is unmarked as far as i could see, both from the street entrance and from the hotel entrance; much as it may denote high levels of cool, i am not a huge fan of such displays. luckily, the food was wonderful, and the decor is quite nice design-wise - simple, with accents of texture and volume.

per the restaurant week menu, we had the following (the simplicity of the way the menu is worded masks some of the preparation techniques):

- heirloom tomato and lemongrass soup; watermelon, flowers

- ahi tuna sashimi; wasabi greens, yuzu vinaigrette, squid cracker

- bento box; asian bbq beef, sticky rice, wakame salad, steamed pork dumplings

- atlantic salmon; mizuna, citrus, mint, basil, sake vinaigrette

- grand marnier parfait; marinated raspberries

- jivara chocolate tart; roasted banana ice cream

i was slightly underwhelmed by the tomato soup that i had, although this is more due to my cultural conception of what a tomato soup should be. this tomato soup was more of a tomato consomme, in which the tomato juice is extracted from pulped tomatoes. it wasn't like v8 tomato juice - rather, the consomme is to v8 as fresh orange juice is to oj from a carton. it has a wonderfully fresh, delicate flavor, but i think my liking for florals in my food is pretty limited, so i was less a fan of this soup. (the two notable floral concoctions i've had were the lemonade from cafe baraka, which has rosewater in it, and the floral scent-infused sea bass chowder i had at alinea.)

the tuna sashimi that my sister had was really delicious - a good balance of ingredients in addition to very good tuna. as usual, no ability here to taste yuzu.

main courses were really good - the salmon i had was seared on one side, skin-on on the other side. the sear was very well done technically - the salmon was perfectly cooked, the sear perfectly crispy. the salmon was unadorned, really, save for the grapefruit - grapefruit with seafood is a favorite combination. i can't remember what salmon is usually paired with at restaurants, but it seemed to me that mashed potatoes and salad were slightly out of the ordinary. it was a well-orchestrated trio - the mashed potatoes were similar to the salmon in richness, while the mix of arugula and mint acted as a refreshing foil to that richness. it's not often that one gets mint in a salad, instead of as a garnish or in a pesto, and i was somewhat surprised to find that it pairs so well with arugula - the peppery flavor of the arugula and the coolness of the mint are well-balanced. i did also have a dumpling and a bit of beef from my sister's bento box, which were good and excellent, respectively. the beef was very complex in flavor, the spices balancing out the sweetness of the sauce. you could also tell that the way the beef had been cooked in the sauce was a distinctively asian preparation, not unlike char siu pork - it wasn't beef in sauce, but rather, the sauce had been reduced and the beef seared and cooked in it for some time.

it seems rare to me that restaurants do both sweet and savory well, but the desserts here were really impressive. i find that it's more difficult to find good places for dessert in the boston area than for dinner, so it's great to find a place that does everything well. the parfait that i had came in four small cylinders laid on a plate like logs, their tops scattered with a smattering of raspberries that had a sheen of some kind of "marinade" (like a syrupy reduction of sugar or wine), and a traditional caramelized-sugar tuile. the cylinders were the "grand marnier parfait" and tasted like a semifreddo, but firmer - as if it had been firmed with whatever the molecular gastronomy types use to solidify frozen things. the end result was that throughout eating the dessert, it didn't melt, still tasted cold, and had the slightest bit of chew to what appeared to be a soft ice cream. well, it was delicious - just a very simple preparation to end an excellent lunch. my sister's dessert was equally good - the jivara, i believe, corresponds to a specific blend of valrhona chocolate; both tart (of the dense, flourless-chocolate-cake ilk) and the banana ice cream were great.

in addition to lunch, we had a couple of tonics - i can't quite remember what they had in them, but they are wonderful, simple yet complex concoctions. it's the sort of non-alcoholic tonic that makes you feel like you're just as appreciated as someone who's drinking an alcoholic cocktail (plus, it was lunch on a weekday).

the service here is also pretty good - inobstrusive, but attentive. it's the type of place that's the dressy, hostess-pulls-out-your-chair-for-you type place - the high-end type of place that is welcome but atypical for the casualness of life in boston. i'm pretty sure that the last place where my chair was pulled out for me was per se in new york. the dining room has well-lit high ceilings, and the high-end finishes of the decor and silverware really make you feel like you're in a luxurious setting. then again, the sumptuousness of a weekday three-course, two-hour lunch certainly contributed to its air of luxury, too... (for those of you who are always conscious of food portions, the portions here are generally spot on - not too much, not too little, erring on the side of slightly generous (especially for lunch).)

i remain somewhat amazed by the discovery of a new place that's so good - simple, adventurous, delicious. i'm pretty hard to impress, food-wise, but i was impressed; it's rare that a new place is so good. i often feel belittled at nice restaurants because i appear to be young or inexperienced in the realm of good food, but the service here is fairly unpretentious. it was pretty empty at lunch on a friday afternoon - about a third of the dining room was occupied - so the scene when it's busy might be off-putting, as it seems like it's an upscale/hip enough place to attract the correspondingly pretentious crowd. however, on this day - a beautiful sunny day - it was quiet and relaxing.

a paucity of vegetables

it's completely unremarakable that upon returning from taipei and also from palermo, i had dinner with my family.  what is rather odd is the dinner itself - chinese takeout after taipei, and as it happens, italian after palermo.  sadly for palermo, i rather think that the italian i had last weekend in somerville beats out anything i had in sicily.  the sole notable exception would be that breakfast buffet in trapani, specifically the prosciutto and the cornmeal poundcake; even the best dinner in palermo didn't really hold a candle to what you can get stateside.  i was out at pescatore, and we had a salad (arugula and sundry other greens, grapes, caramelized pine nuts, fennel), seared sea bass (sauteed asparagus, saffron risotto), and chicken marsala (mushrooms, butternut squash agnolotti).  there are not many fresh vegetables in either taipei and palermo, so i am fairly certain that i've been craving fresh vegetables and that this is why i so enjoyed pescatore's vegetables.  i will say that objectively, i was surprised by just how fine the vegetables were, especially for winter in boston, land of cranberry bogs.  the sea bass was especially delicious, with good contrast in textures (the asparagus was perfectly tender-crisp), and the saffron risotto was notably not too heavy.  pescatore has certainly upped its game since i was last there, maybe a year ago - before it used to focus more on quantities of seafood, but now the non-seafood entrees have been upgraded.  

if you do go to palermo, check out santandrea for dinner.  i did find the pasta to be a little thick for my tastes, but that could easily be chalked up to a cultural difference.  i don't know, readers; i'm pretty sure that every time i've made pasta or that my roommates have made it, it was better - the pasta was more supple, less coarse in texture, and more pleasurable to eat.  

review: banq, thank you for trying

banq / 1375 washington street, boston / 617-451-0077 / m-sat 5:30pm-1am, sun 5:30pm-11pm / appetizers $8-12, entrees $19-26

did that title sound a little snide? too snide? yeah, it's a little snide. this is a review of banq, the new-ish restaurant on washington street, next to union bar & grille. it's located in a newly renovated building, with an interior by nader tehrani.

a few words about the interior: it's pretty cool, but here's me not really understanding the relationship of the booths, which are walled in an exotic-looking wood veneer, to the interior ceiling/landscape, which is created by cnc-routed sections of plywood that are spaced evenly to create a 3d reverse landscape. my beef with the booths: they detract from the plywood dealio, rather than enhancing your experience of it. i have to wonder if nader did just the plywood, or also the booths. i have to say that i prefer ltl's tides restaurant to banq, which seems a little too hip to me. also, these restaurant interiors always bring up the issue of how they're supposed to age. in the case of stuff like this, which is very showy and trendy, and sometimes very cool, i can't imagine that it will still be as showy and cool in ten years.

so, the food. let me start with a note about the bread. um....mini naan with a remoulade (specifically, one with sundried tomatoes that was more like an aioli) is kind of a strange bread choice, but i was willing to buy it if it was good. it wasn't. who wants to start a meal with such a doughy, heavy bread product? i assume that indian people eat naan with other things (ie rice and a main course) for a reason: thousands of years of civilization prove this point to be true. and i have had odd bread choices that have been rather unusual, most memorably at restaurant pava in newton (search this blog, you'll find my rapturous bread review), which served a very wonderful french baguette, a crispy potato thing, and a chewy roll. even sel de la terre's overrated breadbasket is better than the one at banq. and the mini naan weren't even good naan - i've had good naan, and it certainly isn't as doughy and...solid...as this was. it was served in an asian bamboo steamer basket, to boot. time to shape up, banq, or ship out: the bread makes a huge difference in how people perceive their dinner. at least address the problem of the bread and its accompaniment: the warmth of the naan melts the remoulade, making it seem even more like a buttery mayonnaise than something you'd actually want to eat. now, i know this may seem nitpicky, but first impressions go for a lot in a restaurant. while we're on the matter of first impressions: banq, please drop the stupid notes on your menu: "main course/"cosmopolitan palate"," "appetizers/"yin and yang for the soul"," etc. they're stupid and even the drunk hipsters aren't buying it.

on to the main event: we started with the coffee tossed baby back ribs (puffed rice and bamboo salad) and the lemongrass scented steamed mussels (with white wine and holy basil). both were pretty good, more so the baby back ribs, i think. the baby back ribs had just enough sauce and just enough coffee, but not too much, and while i thought the puffed rice was kind of negligible (this is one of those textural things that grant achatz must be able to do much better than banq), the bamboo salad was quite nice. not the best baby back ribs i've ever had, but quite pleasant. the mussels were ok; i thought they were lacking in lemongrass flavor/"scent." i also dislike the practice of extracting the meat from the shell, chopping it up, and stuffing it back in, having mixed it with other stuff. this practice is just a way to make us think we've gotten more than we're actually getting, and i'm telling you right now, banq, to stop it. the mussels were slightly overcooked, and while the accompanying tomato/onion relish-y thing was nice, it wasn't doing the mussels that great a favor.

the main courses fared much better: i had the fire-charred sirloin (with smoked cha choy, cilantro, and taro pave, caramelized lotus seed, creamy chanterelle sauce). to my server: do not assume that because i am a girl, i like my steak medium-rare. asshole. i like my steak rare, just like any sane person would. so, to summarize: don't assume, just ask, and avoid offending your clients. back to the steak: it was pretty good. the cha choy/cilantro/taro pave: too starchy. the caramelized lotus seed: well, kind of nice...but i'm still wondering why. the creamy chanterelle sauce: i guess i have a different conception of creamy; this was more jus-like than creamy, and was a touch too salty, but overall it was quite nice. the sirloin, however, was great with respect to flavor. i think my server only pretended to have it done rare, as it was somewhere between rare and medium rare, but i'll forgive the lapse because the flavor was so good. and there you have it, people: the bright point of the night - a steak with good flavor is always a pleasure, and harder to find than you might think.

but let's wait for banq to get a little less pretentious and scene-y before recommending it to other people. banq gets brownie points for trying interesting flavor combinations, but loses some of them (ok, most of them) for not actually pulling it off. and for obnoxious service, although the non-server (ie busboy) service was excellent. it's too bad that the restaurant doesn't do a better job on the food, given the non-traditional interior.

review: o ya, and further education of my palate

o ya / 9 east street, boston / 617-654-9900 / tu-th 5-10pm, f-sat 5-11pm / $100-150 tasting menu, a la carte small plates range from $8-$45

i can identify significant points in the development of my palate: the fresh ricotta from chez panisse, the moment at which i began to like cilantro, the year in which i began to like lobster permanently, the one when i started to like mussels (ok, that hasn't quite happened yet but i'm getting there). there is the moment when you realize that as a child, you were this petulant being with picky eating habits. the greatest error of my childhood may have been the ketchup i used to douse things with: rice, pancakes, dumplings, you name it - my motto was "everything is better with ketchup." yeah, folks, that's right: pancakes. it's actually still kind of good, although now i realize that there are many better things to do with rice than mix it with ketchup. ok, now i'm kind of grossed out. yeah.

i look back upon significant meals that i've had, and my knowledge of different flavors has changed so much between them that i often wonder what it would be like to have a long-past meal in the present. would it taste different? better, worse? would i be able to recognize more flavors, more complexity?

for me, gourmet japanese food is about subtlety, which requires a somewhat discerning palate that i may or may not have. accordingly i worry that i may not be able to detect this subtlety, that i'm missing the point of a certain dish. especially in contrast to american food, even like the french laundry, the flavors are much more "out there" than they are with japanese food. i think that this is probably the case for some of what i had this past friday evening at o ya, but for the most part i do think my palate is educated enough to recognize wonder when it comes along.

so first, a rundown of what i had at o ya! i ordered a la carte, while the other four in my party ordered the tasting menu (14 courses). i will say that the menu is somewhat overwhelming: there are so many different things that you're looking at it and you're not sure where to look for a good solid five minutes. ok, more than five minutes. i think i was unable to comprehend the entirety of the menu for the whole dinner. what i ended up ordering was a combination of things i had read about in frank bruni's review and the boston globe review, and things i thought looked interesting.

i had:
scarlet sea scallop (white soy yuzu sauce, yuzu tobiko)
fried kumamoto oyster (yuzu kosho aioli, squid ink bubbles)
house smoked moullard duck tataki (foie gras kabayaki, arima sansho)
onsen egg (dashi sauce, truffle salt, homemade pickled garlic)
okinawan style braised pork (boston baked heirloom rice beans, homemade kimchee, soy maple sauce, kinome)
yuzu brined ballotine of chicken wing (napa cabbage & shiitake stuffing, homemade kimchee)
seared petit strip loin (2 oz, bone marrow chiwan mushi, toasted garlic sake soy sauce)
grilled sashimi of chanterelle & shiitake mushrooms (rosemary garlic oil, sesame froth, homemade soy)
foie gras (balsamic chocolate kabayaki, raisin cocoa pulp, sip of aged sake)

notes on service
we had a pretty good waiter, and service was generally impeccable. there were a few moments when our waiter was occupied with another table and a different waiter brought out our dishes, and they didn't get explained or they were brought to the wrong people; this oversight did actually diminish the experience a little bit. but overall, service was great and our waiter gave just the right amount of detail when describing the dishes. brownie points for being able to coordinate my a la carte menu with those who got the tasting menu - it's almost always the case that if one person gets the tasting, everyone has to get it because it just gets so complicated. this kitchen is pretty awesome for putting up with us.

i will say this, though: as a young diner, i have had the experience so many times where the waitstaff underestimates how much i know about food, and i end up feeling like i'm being condescended to. this happened most notably at hammersley's bistro, and is the reason why i would never go back to hammersley's. i would just like to put this out there for waitstaff at fine restaurants everywhere: please assume that know a lot about food, food science, current cutting edge food preparation techniques, etc, and i will ask you when i want to know more. this will make me feel better about myself and more likely to have a good dining experience, and thus provide a better tip. just because i'm only 25 doesn't mean that i don't know about food. i do, and in many cases, dear waitstaff, i know more than you. so stop condescending to me and everyone will be the happier for it.

ok, rant aside, let's get back to the food and a course-by-course roundup. while i'm at it, i'll do a rating (out of 10) for each course. and a note about eating: i attempted to deconstruct each course when there was more than one piece, so that i could taste each thing individually, then taste it all together. for dishes so complex, it seemed only right that this would be the modus operandi of the dining experience. when you eat at an experimental place like this, there is so much curiosity about how the food is made that this is the way to eat.

scarlet sea scallop (7)
this was the first dish and i thought it was pretty good. the scallop is scarlet because it's dipped in beet juice. i don't think it really did that much for me, but the scallop itself was sweet, and tender unlike any scallop i'd ever had before. i love scallops, which are so finicky in cooking because they get tough so fast; so it was a joy to have a raw scallop with such a fine texture. oh, and tobiko is always welcome in my house, ever since i tasted it for the first time at my freshman advising seminar professor's house at dinner. it's so fun to crunch these between your teeth and get the ensuing rush of flavor. yuzu: too sophisticated for my palate, still.

fried kumamoto oyster (9.5)
god, this was good. the oyster was perfectly fried, just the right amount of breading, perfectly golden, crunchy, anything you could possibly want in a fried food. i wish i had gotten the raw kumamoto oyster for comparison - everyone else did, and i was lucky enough to get tastes of everything i didn't order myself, except for the raw oyster. raw oysters, as you can imagine, are hard to share because you're concentrating on slurping the whole thing in your mouth at once. ok, back to the oyster: it's surprising how well fried tempura-like stuff goes with rice. and the aioli was fantastic: mayo-based sauces go so well with fried food that it's almost a crime. i tasted the squid ink before eating the thing and couldn't really detect that much in the flavor, another testament, i think, to the shortcomings in my palate. but this was just a wonder of textures: soft, slightly toothsome rice, crispy oyster, melt-away squid ink foam, creamy/oily/unctuous aioli. i would happily eat this every day.

house smoked moullard duck tataki (6)
this was so-so, and only moderately memorable. the smoked-ness was entirely present and much appreciated; but it did seem a little out of place in this restaurant. it's interesting because most flavors are so delicate that having duck - a very strongly flavored, earthy type of meat - was a definite counterpoint to all the fish. i found the duck to be just slightly stringy, but overall this was good.

onsen egg (10)
jesus this was good. the egg is poached sous vide at 66 degrees fahrenheit for a while, until somehow the yolk is creamy and just slightly past runny (runny being the consistency of sunny side up eggs), with a texture that could only be described as gorgeously unctuous. while the yolk is busy being unctuous, the white is like this ephemeral substance that has physical form when you put it in your mouth, but then immediately melts away into delicious nothingness. the egg comes in a broth of scallion-soy sauce, which is a delightful foil to the egg, and provides just the note to cut through the richness of the yolk. to top it all off, you eat it with a spoon - and you all know how much i love eating things with a spoon. possibly the only drawback was the fact that the bowl was made with a matte glaze so that your spoon made an uncomfortable sensation in your bones when you scraped the bowl with the spoon. you know, o ya seems to be on truffle overload - there was truffle oil on so many things (note to restaurant: STOP before it's too late!) - but the truffle salt was great in this dish, just piquant enough yet rich at the same time. and the pickled garlic - i am not usually a fan of chunks of garlic, cooked, raw, or pickled, but this was gorgeous. it must have been young garlic - it had that kind of texture and flavor, like the young, fresh garlic we had at eva's garden.

okinawan style braised pork (8)
this was the nod to the restaurant's location, and it was pretty good. it was also served with a spoon, in case i wanted to scoop up the juices, according to our waiter. the pork was nice and tender, but i think it was the overall flavor combination that made this dish, and again, the texture combination of soft (the pork) and crunchy (the kimchee). the juices were quite good, and i ate a good amount of it after finishing the pork, although it did become overly sweet after a while - due, i think, to the maple syrup in the sauce. but this was a dish where the delicacy of flavors was all too apparent, and i can only hope that i fully appreciated this complexity. i didn't think the beans did much for me, though.

yuzu brined ballotine of chicken wing (9)
ok, just the conception of this dish was amazing: it's a deboned chicken wing (a chicken wing!!) that's stuffed with more chicken. seems like a greek epicurean feast item, doesn't it? well, this was just fantastic: it came to the table piping hot and perfectly crispy on the outside, and the inside stuffing was chicken-y and had great texture. let me just add some more brownie points for the concept of this dish: a ballotine is hard enough in the first place, and then a ballotine of a freaking chicken wing?! genius. pure genius. again, a disconnect in my palate because i don't think i was able to detect so much of the yuzu brining, but it was amazing all the same. this dish was so good that after a tiny taste, my dining companions thought about ordering their own, a la carte.

seared petit strip loin (9)
i saw the photograph on the website of a wagyu beef dish, and the photograph made the beef look just so amazing, with this otherworldly sheen that you just couldn't imagine beef having. i've heard so much about wagyu - which has become rather trendy - that i felt that i had to try it, despite a price tag that was really hard to swallow. i could have gotten short ribs ($24) but was convinced by one of my dining companions to get the real deal (2 ounces, $45) to get a better sense of texture and flavor. and that photo on the website: just go look at it. you'll see what i mean. so the dish: it was four slices of wagyu, glistening, and a marrow bone full of marrow cooked in some mystery way. the wagyu? great. it came with some herbs and thin slices of garlic. i would say that it was fantastic, but i don't know that wagyu is really as amazing as it's purported to be. then again, it could be another shortcoming of my palate: i don't know. and god, the marrow, well...i've had marrow once before, at craigie street, where it came in the form of little blobs of fat rolling around slices of roasted flank steak. at o ya, it came almost in the form of a custard, providing even more richness to the wagyu. it all tasted so beefy that you can't imagine that a mcdonald's patty was ever beef.

grilled sashimi of chanterelle & shiitake mushrooms (7)
you know, frank bruni named this dish as his favorite, but i'm not so convinced. not to say that it isn't good, it just didn't knock my socks off. perhaps my expectations were too high? it's true that the mushrooms were fabulous, sliced, sauteed, with a legitimate sesame foam, and some texture contrast in the form of tiny bits of sesame brittle. it just wasn't the edifying experience i wanted it to be. the most impressive aspect of the dish was the study in textures - the mushrooms being perfectly cooked, they provided just enough bite but not too much, and the sesame brittle was a great foil to the softness of the mushrooms.

foie gras (10)
this is the dish that frank bruni describes as being so good, he ordered a second round after finishing the first. and it lives up to the hype. i haven't had that much foie gras, and the previous time i had it (at the french laundry) it was more like pate in texture than at o ya. at o ya, it's seared on the outside for a bit of crunch, but on the inside it's totally like a burst of amazingly flavored fat. yeah, fat, i went ahead and said it: i really enjoyed eating fat. the slight crunch of the exterior, the bit of wasabi hidden between rice and foie, the balsamic glaze: all of these things made this course work so well. also, the aged sake was quite nice with the heavy/high-flavored foie, since it was on the dry side and worked well with our food flavors.

one more gripe: eating at o ya is a little bit of work! i had to keep on referring back to the menu (which our waiter had kindly left us copies of) to check and see all of the things i was eating! this is not an ideal situation, but was very educational as i was able to really think about what i was eating. then again, for the purists out there, having to refer to a menu constantly would be a huge bother and detraction from the dining experience. oh, and full disclosure: i wanted to take photos but the lighting was too low for it! also, the presentation was pretty good, but not nearly as beautiful as alinea's plating, which was always a tour de force of presentation.

overall commentary: i love experimental food, and i loved o ya. i don't think i'll be returning for a while, but this more a circumstance of my bank account and less of an issue with the restaurant itself. it's a pleasant place to eat, with the courses spaced for you so that you don't get everything at once, and everything is perfectly paced for you. it's a completely relaxing space, due to the lighting and off-the-beaten-path existence.

review: cha fahn

cha fahn / 763 centre street, jamaica plain / 617-983-3575 / summer hours tues-sun 5pm- / $25 prix fixe on wednesdays / entrees 12-20

small plates
shrimp summer rolls with peanut dipping sauce
pan-fried spicy pork and kimchi dumplings
jasmine tea wilted kale with pine nuts and lemon soy dressing
asparagus, shrimp, and cilantro pesto on seaweed papers

main
szechuan noodles: chilled noodles in a spicy szechuan peanut sauce with fried tofu and crispy lotus roots
beef noodle soup: taiwanese style noodle soup with tender beef slices and spinach
tea-bathed chicken: sauteed chicken breast with a citrus and smoky tea-infused sauce, braised carrots, baby spinach, and pilaf
satay tofu: tofu cutlets with a bracing blend of peanuts, coriander, ginger, and soy sauce, braised carrots, baby bok choy, and pilaf
miso salmon: roasted sake-miso marinated salmon, asparagus, scarlot tea pickled ginger, and pilaf
skirt steak: seared skirt steak with a spicy korean sauce, crispy lotus roots, asian pear, daikon radish, wilted watercress salad and potatoes
garlic-lime shrimp: sauteed shrimp with garlic, ginger, and a soy-lime sauce, sauteed spinahc with golden raisins and pine nuts, and pilaf

for after
orange rooibos creme brulee with candied orange peels, and shredded chocolate
green tea mochi ice cream
seared banana with lychee sorbet
ginger spice tea cake, candied ginger, and wine-reduction berry sauce

-
above is the menu for when we went to cha fahn (yesterday). while a bit of the food is slightly overwrought, there is a huge upside to this place: a lot of great food, a lot of fantastic teas, a quiet atmosphere, and excellent interior design. we went to take advantage of the $25 prix fixe menu, which is above; there are also extensive sake and tea menus. between the four of us, we had most of the food dishes; three of us had tea, mine being a lapsang souchong.

part of the allure of this place is the focus on tea - for tea enthusiasts, who know that tea has as much nuance as wine, this is the only place that acknowledges and exploits the relationship between tea and food. chinese restaurants serve tea with every meal, but little thought goes into how the tea might affect the food, and vice versa. if this idea piques your interest, as it did mine, you will be happy at cha fahn.

i am not a tea expert, and thus can't tell you about the nuances of the tea that we had. however, i did love my tea very much - it smelled like a wood-burning fire, and tasted like a plant's impression of smoke. the food itself was excellent; i had the dumplings, the chicken, and the creme brulee. the dumplings were just barely spicy, at a level that could have been a little higher, but was entirely sufficient to capture the taste of kimchi (another nuanced food product that i cannot expound upon). what wasn't fabulous about the dumplings was that they were a little too salty, and i think a bit more ginger would have balanced them better; what was utterly fabulous about them was the way in which they were cooked - the combination of the cooking method and the texture of the dumpling skin rendered the dumpling bottoms delectably crispy, but not chewy. in this case, the fact that the dumpling skins were on the thin side (not as thin as wonton skins, thinner than dumpling skins) was essential.

i tasted miriam's summer rolls, which were quite good for summer rolls, and better than the ones you get at the typical thai restaurant. these summer rolls were a bit crispier, a bit crunchier, and it was apparent that the chefs were paying more attention to how cooked the shrimp were than at xinh xinh last week.

the entrees were excellent across the board. i think i would have preferred chicken with the bone in, rather than the breast, but the sauce was really citrus-y in a restrained way - i sometimes think of chinese food as a punch in the face, flavor-wise, but this sauce was definitely more carefully planned, along the lines of a japanese tea ceremony. the carrots were perfectly cooked (as someone who doesn't like raw carrots, this matters a lot to me and i always notice how well or poorly the carrots are cooked). the pilaf was also excellent - it had citrus and some unidentifiable spice in it.

in fact, my entree was probably the weakest. miriam's ginger-lime shrimp were fantastic - the ginger and garlic hit you first, then you got a little bit of cilantro, all complementing the flavor of the shrimp. on its own, the ginger-garlic-lime-soy sauce was overly salty, but paired with the shrimp it was everything you could ever ask of shrimp. the shrimp were also deftly cooked - still sweet and juicy. carrie's miso salmon rated a bit higher in my opinion - the miso paired perfectly with the salmon so that it balanced the salmon and brought out the flavor of the salmon, with hints of miso here and there. i would say, though, that josh's skirt steak was the best - absolutely perfectly cooked to order (rare, because there isn't any other way you should be eating your steak), tender, not stringy, flavorful....i don't know where cha fahn is getting their meat, but somebody should ask.

as i said before, the upside of this place is pretty great. and as the meal went on, it got better - average appetizers, excellent entrees, and really fantastic desserts. i love dessert, and i will always eat dessert because i like the idea of dessert. thus i am less affected by how much i like the dessert, despite my high standards. we had the ginger cake and the creme brulee, and while i felt that the ginger cake was probably just above average as a dessert, the creme brulee really hit it out of the park. i'm pretty sure it would be on my top ten list, along with desserts from chez panisse, alinea, aujourd'hui, and various other hoity-toity places. this is, without a doubt, the best creme brulee i have ever had. the texture was nothing short of amazing - silky, creamy, thick. the flavor was well balanced - not too much citrus, not too much tea, and not too sweet - and the bruleed top gave your tastebuds the occasional crunchy burst of orange-y, burnt sugary flavor. if i had a faster metabolism, i'd be eating this every day for breakfast. and it went perfectly with my smoky tea, although i'm not sure if the strong smokiness of the tea destroyed any of my tastebuds' ability to taste the entire range of flavors.

a note on the atmosphere and decor - the tables are carved chinese tables, with really comfortable red cushioned chairs in the middle of the restaurant, and super-high-backed chinese chairs at the tables along the walls. the lighting is ideal - that sort of glowy, softly warm, somehow bright light. and the bathroom is pretty awesome: black tile up to your shoulder, then a wide swathe of black-painted wall, then a wide swathe of white-painted wall to make the space seem taller. this is a place that is aptly called a tea room - it gives you the sense that you can linger over your food and your tea at a slower pace than the rest of your day.

odds and ends

i am currently drinking a cup of hot, honeyed, milky (assam) tea, my break from the editing work i'm doing on a professor's manuscript. mostly, with respect to food, i have an assortment of odds and ends:

xinh xinh / 7 beach street, chinatown / 617-422-0501 / 10am-10pm daily / cheap-entrees $6-10
i just went to a vietnamese restaurant, xinh xinh, at washington and beach that was really excellent. the people are really nice there, and the food is really well spiced for asian fusion food. better than almost all vietnamese or thai restaurants i've been to, in fact - it has average fresh spring rolls, but you can get your green tea hot or cold, and my chicken with ginger, onions, and scallions was truly spectacular. rarely have i had a dish with enough ginger to render it spicy, and this not only used a lot of ginger (not too much), but also fresh ginger. mmm. it's the sort of thing you could eat every day.

salty and sweet
parmesan muffins. parmesan muffins, you ask? yes. decidedly so. because if there were no parmesan in these muffins, they would have no opportunity to develop the delectably golden, crispy exterior that makes these so good. these muffins are salty-sweet, moist yet crusty on the outside. their main ingredients are zucchini, parmesan, and basil. zucchini muffins are one thing. the addition of parmesan is nice, but expected. but the introduction of the basil is spectacular, as is the abnormally high amount of sugar for savory muffins. in fact, i would say that the basil is secondary to the sugar, though ever since i visited shanghai last summer, i get the feeling that my capacity for salty-sweet is much higher than that of the average person. your average person cares a lot about the balance of salt and pepper; i care about the balance of salt, pepper, and sugar.

calzosas
last week carrie and i made calzosas, which we named in honor of the entirely american practice of combining real words into nonsense words. we wanted to make something kind of like a calzone and kind of like a samosa - the filling would be more vegetal like a calzone filling and less potato-y than a samosa filling, but would be the size of a samosa rather than a calzone. this definitely goes back to the pleasure of eating something with your hands. what makes a calzosa a calzosa, however, is that the wrapping is neither calzone nor samosa. instead, it's a phyllo dough. so i suppose these are closer to small bisteeya, huh? well, calzosa is more fun to say. ours had a filling of bacon, onions, apples, a bit of potato, peas, and ricotta cheese. the original idea was bacon, onions, and apples, with the ricotta to act as a binder. then the peas are to balance the heavier flavors, especially the bacon, and the potato was to add a bit of body and texture. we used both storebought and organic farm-raised whole foods bacon, and found that there is a definite and significant upside to the whole foods bacon. i would maybe try slicing it a bit thinner, but the whole foods bacon had a much better, more bacon-y flavor, and did not have any preservatives in it. there was simply more meat, and it was much better than the supermarket thick-cut bacon as well, which tends to be too thickly cut. it does take much longer to cook, though, but i'm willing to wait. luckily for us, the $6.99/lb price will keep us from eating too much of it.

portable barbecue
barbecue is a very summery sort of thing, and we were planning to spend a summer evening out in chelsea to see a free play in the park. i had bought some pork ribs earlier in the week because i had leftover marinade from the last time i made barbecued pork ribs, so i thought i'd do something with them for the play. the last time around, the marinade was too thick, so i thinned it with cider vinegar, and strained it to get rid of the pineapple pulp. i roasted the ribs without steaming them first, brushing them repeatedly until the sugar started burning, for about an hour. then i let them cool, and shredded the meat off the bone. my original idea was to combine the shredded meat with peas and pasta, with some sort of vinaigrette type of dressing, all towards the goal of making the ribs portable and not messy. i made the vinaigrette, but as i pictured it with the other ingredients, i will say that it was not an appetizing picture. what i wanted was something a little piquant and tangy to tie everything together, but i was just getting images of "oily" instead. so what i did was i started by mixing in some yogurt to make it creamy without using mayonnaise. that seemed still a little off, so i added the pan juices that i'd gotten from the ribs - i'd had to suck them off the roasting pan with a turkey baster so the ribs would roast and not steam. and that was it, and it was fantastic - a meaty, somewhat tangy dressing that bound everything together. the mistake that i made, i discovered later, was that i had burned some of the coriander seeds i put into the dressing, and while not wholly unpleasant, it tasted a bit like popcorn. if you make something along these lines, i would recommend using country-style ribs, bone-in. when you shred the meat you'll have to pay close attention so you don't leave bone shards in the meat, but the quality of the meat is much better. we used the curly macaroni with ridges, which worked well.

parmesan-basil-zucchini muffins
2 eggs
3/4c milk (we used buttermilk that was leftover from butter we made last week)
2/3c cooking oil
2 1/2c flour
1/4c sugar
1T baking powder
2t salt
2 cups shredded zucchini
6T minced fresh basil (this means 6T after it has been minced)
1/2c grated Parmesan cheese, plus more for garnish*

1. butter a 12-cup muffin tin (also makes 6 extra-large muffins). preheat the oven to 425F.

2. in a medium bowl, beat eggs, then add milk and oil. in another bowl, mix dry ingredients.

3. add dry ingredients to egg mixture, 1 cup at a time, and stir until it becomes a thick, moist batter.

4. stir in zucchini basil, and parmesan until just combined - do not overbeat.

5. spoon into tins and sprinkle extra cheese on top. bake 20 to 22 minutes, until golden brown.

*It's ok to microplane the parmesan for the batter, but for the garnish, use the finer-grating side of your box grater.

[makes 12 muffins]

review: disappointed at hamersley's bistro

i've heard great things about hamersley's bistro, and i've always wanted to have dinner there. i got my wish when i suggested it as our january cutcat dinner destination. i had high hopes when we entered and i saw that it was a restaurant fitted into an old house - the dining room is irregularly shaped, which is always fun because it subdivides the restaurant into smaller "rooms." the decor is really nice - high ceilings, colorful but not too busy curtains, bright but mellow colors, an orange banquette along one wall. if i had to give the style a name, i might call it "new colonial." to go with hamersley's bistro's "new american" food.

i would say that the food was pretty good - i thought the first two courses were really good, though the dessert was slightly hit or miss. i started with a grilled pizza appetizer with "creamy salt cod" and a black olive tapenade. i was trying to be adventurous - i don't always like salt cod, but was intrigued by "creamy salt cod" - how, exactly, was it going to be creamy? and salt cod and tapenade? technically that should work together - those two salty ingredients combined would theoretically create an even saltier whole. i guess the bread part of the pizza tamed the tapenade, though, as did the creaminess of the salt cod. it was a little salty, but not excessively so. and the crust was perfect for an appetizer-type pizza - slightly chewy, but also very crispy, so it didn't get soggy with the cod on top. and really, the cod was slightly salty, but the creaminess of it balanced the saltiness of the olive tapenade - i felt that the cod was there for a texture contrast, not just for flavor. not only that, but the pizza came with a small salad of field greens with some sort of very acidic but buttery (probably from the olive oil) vinaigrette. normally i don't like my salad dressing to be so piquant, but in combination with the pizza it was really great - it's like having wine that complements cheese. rarely does one have a perfectly dressed salad, but i would say this is it. and it was an interesting use of a salad. all in all, a really fantastic first course.

as a main course both eric and i had the cassoulet. it crops up so infrequently on restaurant menus that i've only ever had canned cassoulet. this isn't as disgusting as you might think - after all, i bought it from cardullo's so it was not only canned cassoulet, but gourmet canned cassoulet. as gourmet as one can get from a can, that is. it was really hot when it arrived from the kitchen - perhaps a bit too hot. it was a large, shallow bowl of beans with large pieces of meat in the middle: a chunk of pork shoulder, a pork and garlic sausage, and duck confit (what seemed to be a leg and a large chunk of breast). on top - and this is a pet peeve - there were a few sprigs of parsley. i hate it when garnishes are just garnishes - when they're not a part of the dish you're meant to eat. sprigs of parsley on a dish to me indicates that i'm not supposed to eat it, since it wasn't minced and sprinkled over my dinner. so boo to parsley!

the cassoulet itself, though, was terrific. i'm realizing i'm not a huge fan of sausage where the forcemeat is really coherent and homogenous, but the flavor was great. i was surprised by how pink it was (not because it was uncooked, but for some other reason i don't know). the pork shoulder was very flavorful and tender, though, and the confit was crusted with some fantastically crispy breadcrumbs, which provided a welcome texture contrast from the overall soft stewiness of the dish.

i actually didn't finish the cassoulet, because before the first course i had three pieces of bread. sorry, i was really hungry! i'd just walked from cutcat to the restaurant (about 2.6 miles), too. and the first piece was this soft cheesebread - a soft bread with medium-sized air pockets, crusted with grated cheese on top. beyond the shock that it was cold - the cheesebread i had at pomodoro last sunday was warm - it was really good. the other bread was light brown with tiny dark brown flecks - like vanilla flecks, but smaller and brown. perhaps it was the type of flour? whatever it was, it was addictive. it had a sweet, slightly sour, nutty flavor to it that made it irresistible. but i have to say that i wish restaurants would stop serving cold bread, at least in the winter. i come in from the cold, and all you have to offer me is some cold bread? you've got to be kidding me.

we decided to have dessert, and i got the caramel bread pudding with a rum raisin sauce. i don't know where hamersley's gets its raisins, but they were huge! twice as big as normal raisins that we peons eat. sadly, it wasn't really that great. i should have asked if the bread pudding had raisins in it - i'm not a fan of raisins in bread pudding. this one was also too eggy, though the rum raisin sauce was excellent - so i felt like i was eating a fragmented egg custard, rather than a rich and slightly creamy bread pudding. carrie fared better with her savarin with apple compote and cider sabayon. apparently the pastry chef is a master with dessert sauces, because the sabayon was thick, airy, and perfectly (ie, not too ostentatiously) packed with apple, cider, and calvados flavor. it was a perfectly tailored and classic couture gown (oxymoron, but bear with me) rather than the melodramatic showy pageant dress.

so where, you ask, is the disappointment? well, beyond the fact that as i think about it more, i dislike that bread pudding more, the service was awful. i admit it: i'm two years out of college. i still look pretty young. but the waitstaff is still supposed to treat me like i'm an adult, because i am an adult! just because i'm young doesn't mean i know nothing about food, or that i don't know the ins and outs of a nice restaurant. i forgive the erratic and careless refilling of water glasses (ice cube on the table, refilled glasses left two-thirds full). i even forgive the haste and clatter with which the busboy cleared and reset tables, even though i consider it to be jarring and distracting for the waitstaff to hurry around like chickens with their heads cut off. i understand - it was a busy time on a friday night, and both kitchen and waitstaff had gotten slammed. however, i expect to be treated well when i go out, and a little friendliness would have gone a long way to erase the technical difficulties of the waitstaff. our waiter started out fairly friendly, if a little patronizing, but it got worse as the night went on. when we were ordering dessert, keith asked what the cheeses were on the cheese plate, and our waiter said he'd ask what the exact cheeses were, beyond the general types. he came back five minutes later, without cheese names. his response to keith asking what the cheese were: "do you really want to know?" i mean...people don't ask frivolous questions at restaurants because they're usually afraid they'll look gauche or like an idiot. so yes, when i ask a question, i really do want to know. i don't care if you've got too many tables! it wasn't an unreasonable request.

i guess i just thought that i was done with being patronized by waitstaff because i look young; as a result i've probably overreacted a little bit. but just that one flaw was enough to seal the deal for me: i don't think i'll be going back to hamersley's bistro. did i need to present a list of all of the restaurants i've been to or something to prove my restaurant worthiness, my pedigree? i needed to mention that i've been to alinea, l'espalier, aujourd'hui, craigie street, chez panisse, french laundry? i'm not dressed well enough, and i don't have the hauteur and pretention of a wealthy snob? great. i'll go somewhere more deserving without another thought.

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.

review: restaurant pava

restaurant pava / 1229 centre street / newton ma / 617-965-0905 / m-sat 11:30-2:30 + 5:30-10pm, sun 11-2:30 + 5:30-10pm / reservations accepted (and recommended, by me) / entrees moderately expensive ($18-25)

yes yes, i know i've been remiss in updating foodlust. but in repentance, i will now add several posts (or, as many as my almost-completely-shot memory will offer up). i've been meaning to write a review of restaurant pava for several weeks now, especially given that i was there on nov 18 - more than a month ago.

i found restaurant pava through the boston globe restaurant reviews. i was initially attracted to the restaurant by the globe's review of its bread, which consists of three different types: a small chewy roll studded (cliched word nowadays, huh?) with caraway seeds and golden raisins; a french bread with a supersoft inside and a supercrispy crust; and a crispy flat "bread" that was somewhere between potato chip and bread, whose main ingredients i tried in vain to guess. all this comes with a dish of extremely green, extremely excellent olive oil. back to my initial thoughts: it is almost always true that any restaurant that does its bread so well is probably not going to disappoint. cold butter can sometimes be forgiven in the case of very good food, but mediocre bread is not a good way to start any meal.

restaurant pava is actually a companion restaurant to the Tess clothing store - by which i mean that it's located next to the clothing store in newton and it shares the same general decor. the decor is minimalist with overtones of boston - ie new york, but friendly. the interior is white, with black wooden tables and green accents. we were seated next to the front plate glass window, which i thought was going to be cold, but turned out to be just fine. this place is pretty small - seats maybe 20-30 - and the waitstaff is accordingly small, and thus friendlier. the menus are sheets of paper tucked under a band of green elastic that is attached to a heavy matte plastic board. the menus are kind of heavy because of this aforementioned plastic board, but i suppose i can forgive and forget.

because the food is pretty amazing. the chef is lydia shire, formerly of biba, and is known for being pretty adventurous. the food here is billed as "mediterranean" but is really the all-encompassing "new american," which is better described as "upscale cuisine (not "food") from any culture." we started with scallops and a small pizza; i've now forgotten exactly what the scallops came with, but i believe it might have been lobster sweetbreads (richer than normal sweetbreads) with some sort of crackery bread. mostly i just remember the scallops being very good. i liked the pizza better, though, which had smoked tomatoes and housemade pepperoni on it. 99% of the time, i despise pepperoni because it tastes like spiced plastic, but this pepperoni could do no evil - it was smoky, meaty rather than plasticky, and all together quite amazing.

when it came to entrees, i had a truly difficult time picking what i wanted, so let me give you a list of all of the things that sounded good: beet chitarra (short rib, candied ginger & blossoms); tagliatelle alla bolognese (which always looks really good to me, and which i need to make before my craving for it overtakes my life); pasta pyramids (fresh ricotta, pea shoots & pancetta); sole bianco (riso nero); chestnut crusted lamb (chestnut polenta and red russian kale); heritage berkshire pork (honeycrisp apple ravioli); wood oven chicken (black truffle, lovage, celery). so you can see that i had a serious dilemma here; usually i don't have this much trouble picking something.

i picked the chicken. and let me tell you: forget about hammersley's bistro. nothing could possibly be better than this chicken. the chicken is roasted and is superbly cooked. ok, it's on the verge of being too tender, but luckily it doesn't quite go there. i didn't think the black truffle was necessarily needed, but the addition of celery is amazing. celery, in the world of marissa, is having quite a comeback these days. the celery was in a cream sauce that came with the chicken, and it was divine. i don't think i can properly express how good chicken is with celery. it has a delicately vegetal flavor that makes the chicken taste like spring. one could argue that, it being fall, this is the wrong message for a chicken to give, but that's just sour grapes on the part of anyone who has not had this chicken. yes, it seemed more french to me than mediterranean, but in a good way. this is a chicken worthy of your daydreams.

to top it all off, we decided not to have dessert because my mother had made a cake - but tess, the owner (who dresses not like an owner but like a server), told us we should have brought it, because they would have served it for us. and there you have it: it looks like a new york restaurant, but it's definitely boston.

p.s. so now my top restaurants (for nice restaurants) in the boston/cambridge area are: 1. craigie street bistrot; 2. restaurant pava; 3. pigalle. yes, it's that good. i wish it was located in boston, but what can you do.

some belated reviews: om, caffe umbra, pomodoro

i've been remiss in updating my beloved blog (which is two years old!!!), and have a few restaurant reviews to offer you: caffe umbra and om for restaurant week, plus pomodoro.

om: 8/18, 1p.m.
92 winthrop street / cambridge ma / 617-576-2800 / m-sat 5pm-1am, sun 10:30-2:30 + 5pm-1am / reservations accepted / entrees expensive ($25-35)

appetizer: borscht with smoked potatoes and sour cream
main: duck breast with mustard greens and duck confit bisteeya
dessert: lime cheesecake with mango and saffron

there is something luxurious about having a 3-course lunch that is absolutely more decadent than a nice dinner, even a 24-course dinner - because who has that much time in the middle of the day? it's just so...sinful. and in fact, we were a little rushed because i had to go back to work. thus i do not recommend 3-course lunches unless you are retired, have flexible hours and a boss who doesn't care if you leave for 3 hours, or are a student. ah, the ever-flexible life of the student.

we were given the choice of the lounge of the dining room for our lunch, and i chose for us, having arrived a little early: i saw how much trouble the lounge diners were having, since the tables were too low for the chairs to dine comfortably. what can i say? it's a well-designed lounge, not a well-designed lounge-that-doubles-as-dining-room. so upstairs we went, and you get a very pleasant view of the park adjacent to upstairs on the square from the wall of glass that you're seated against. we started with drinks, and i had this wonderful non-alcoholic drink that consisted of espresso, vanilla syrup, and chocolate in some form. it was like a mocha frappuccino, but several orders of magnitude better. the drinks are seriously good here, though a bit overpriced.

lunch was pretty good. i wasn't blown away by anything, but the flavors were interesting. this is one of those places that's very high concept, where you go if you want to try new flavor combinations, rather than well-done traditional dishes. the flavor combinations don't always work - actually i didn't think any of them were spectacular - but i was happy the chef was trying them, i guess. i felt that the restaurant was a little too new york, which is to say, a little pretentious, especially for boston/cambridge. i just want to eat good food! i don't want to be beaten over the head with the flavor combinations by a waiter who thinks he knows more about food than i do. the only time i want to be reminded what's in my dish and how to eat it is at a place like alinea or the french laundry, when the flavor combination or the sequence of ingredients actually matters.

the borscht was quite good; not having had it before, i have no comparisons to make. but it was smooth, the sour cream was wonderful, and the smoked potato was a particularly inspired touch. the duck was cooked perfectly, but the mustard greens were a little too bitter for my taste. the bitterness was supposed to be cut by the date-based sauce that came with it, but it was spread over the plate and you had to drag the mustard greens over the plate to get it. if there's one thing i really hate about high-concept food, it's when it's hard to eat. it can be a production, but i don't want it to be a production to eat it. the duck came with a cute little bisteeya in a tiny cast iron pan, which was good, but the phyllo dough totally shattered upon contact with my fork, showering me with the slivers. another big raspberry in the face of the diner who cares about ease of eating.

dessert was pretty good - the cheesecake was a bit sweet, but nice and creamy, and not too dense. it again suffered from the eating-as-a-production problem, but the lime-saffron combination is pretty good. all in all, i might come here again if i thought it was sufficiently affordable. the upstairs dining room is also quite nice and comfortable, and not too noisy, despite the uninspired waterfall you see when you enter the restaurant (it's supposed to soothe and relax you upon entry).

caffe umbra: 8/23, 8p.m. (closed as of this past spring)
appetizer: arancini
side: eggplant fries with date ketchup
main: pork two ways - tenderloin and sausage, with mustard cream sauce and fingerling potatoes
dessert: sticky toffee pudding

i didn't think it was possible, but caffe umbra did itself one better this year, over last year's restaurant week. last year, i had an ok main course, but the appetizer and dessert were phenomenal. this year, everything was really great.

ok, so my arancini were a little disappointing - good, but nothing special there. i could have done the same thing at home, happily. but other people's appetizers - especially josh's mushroom tart - were excellent, so i apparently just chose the wrong thing. i split an order of eggplant fries with v, curious to see what they'd be like. they were breaded well and fried perfectly - crusty on the outside and all mushily eggplanty on the inside, just the way i like eggplant. they came with a date-based ketchup that i didn't like, but the fries were good on their own. i could tell that the fries were slightly oversalted to counterbalance the sweetness of the dates, which is nice to see, but it didn't work in the end.

i really liked the main course. miriam had a fish (a firm white one...i forget which one) that was done lightly in butter and a broth of some kind, which was much more delicate than my pork, and quite nice (for really good seafood, or at least fish, i prefer sel de la terre). anyway, the pork. the tenderloin was done perfectly - i do love hunks of meat. the sausage was also good, if slightly unremarkable. the lardons were a little too meaty for me - i like my lardons fried to they're crisp and chewy, not left all canadian bacon-y. the sauce was this really fantastic mustard cream sauce, which was very mild and a perfect accompaniment to the meat. the most wonderful thing, though, was the potatoes - rarely have i had potatoes this good. i can't quite describe why their flavor was so good - suffice it to say that they tasted more potato-y than any other potatoes i've had for a while.

and dessert. well, friends, i basically chose this restaurant despite the fact that it didn't post its menu, because i knew the sticky toffee pudding would be on its dessert menu. i had it last year and it was absolutely transcendent: the best thing i'd had in a long, long time. a very long, long time. and it still is. it's basically a coarse pound cake steamed in caramel, so the whole thing is saturated with caramel, and the edges are slightly chewy with accumulated caramel. that thing is still transcendent. i can still taste it when i think about it, and think about it i do. i also tried miriam's dessert - a chocolate espresso torte - and i tell you that this is the place to go for dessert if that's what you're wanting. my god. i have never tasted such a silky chocolate torte (read: no flour) in my life. that thing is amazing. it's the best chocolate cake i've had in a restaurant (minus that chocolate confection at alinea), ever. and a bonus: i emailed the chef to see what kind of chocolate they use in the kitchen, since the server didn't know, and it's callebaut bittersweet - the kind i use. i felt somewhat justified in my love for callebaut for baking...

a note about going to caffe umbra: this restaurant, despite the great food, is EXTREMELY loud. so loud i wouldn't go there except later in the evening when people start to leave, or early when people haven't yet arrived. i've never set foot in a more poorly acoustically designed space; you literally have to yell to hear people who are two feet away from you. that said, i'd totally go back. just when it's not crowded.

pomodoro: 8/25, 7p.m.
24 harvard street / brookline ma / 617-566-4455 / 11am-11pm / reservations accepted (and recommended, by me) / cash only / entrees moderately expensive ($18-25)

appetizers: calamari, antipasto
main: pappardelle with fresh peas, foraged mushrooms, and rabbit in a cream sauce
dessert: creme brulee
cocktail: pear brandy alexander

we were originally supposed to go to la morra, but charles' parents got stuck in traffic, so we went to pomodoro instead. when my parents said "pomodoro" i got a vision of some hokey, plump times-based font with tomatoes in the place of the o's. when we arrived, i saw that it was actually a very nice-looking, hip-looking place. true to that impression, the clientele is a mix of older, cosmopolitan types (this place is in brookline; there's another location in the north end) and hip, young things.

this reservation was fortuitous, because this is the best italian restaurant i have ever been to. it has also vaulted to number 2 on my list of favorite restaurants in boston/cambridge, after craigie street and before pigalle, because of its affordability (dinner for 7 was $260 with a generous tip).

when you enter, you see a small bar that's in the middle of the restaurant. huh, unusual. if you're waiting they'll have you stand at the bar in this tiny restaurant, where people brush by you in order to get past. you know you're in a real restaurant when the people at the bar are eating, and not just drinking. true to this sentiment, when you wait at the bar, they bring you menus, napkins, water, and bread. let me talk about the water and the bread. the water is kept in tall glass carafes with lemons and mint - a lovely combination and fairly unusual for water. the bread is quite good - foccaccia and then some sort of cheese-covered lighter bread - and comes with a very excellent olive oil, and a pile of olives that have a slice of preserved lemon on them.

the main thing i like about this place - besides the decor, which is all dark browns and golds and is absolutely luxurious without being overly so - is that it's like you're welcomed by a family. not just any family - not the stereotypical tv-commercial italian family - but some cosmopolitan italian family that lives in milan or some other fabulous urban place. they brought us twice as much food, appetizer-wise, than we asked for, without charging us for more, which in retrospect was slightly too much, but made us feel very much loved. though having very little space is usually annoying, here it was only mildly so - everyone is shifting around for each other, but it's one of those things happening in the backgrounds - everyone is still focused on their conversations.

the appetizers were great - the calamari done just right, with the most flavorful (and red) tomato sauce i've had in quite a while. the antipasto were also great - traditional, with the almonds and such - and the bread is an appetizer in of itself.

the main courses were the star of the night, though. my pasta made "foraged mushrooms" an acceptable term on a restaurant menu. usually, when restaurants say this, they're just being trendy, but here they mean it. those mushrooms were simply the best i've had in this city. some chewy, some earthier than others...i felt like i was actually eating products of a forest. the peas were good, though i don't have a good enough palate to tell if they were truly wonderful, and the rabbit was done with care to ease of eating - it was shredded. not shredded too fine, nor left in chunks too large: it was perfect. though i have to admit that my palate also doesn't see much of a difference between rabbit and pork, except that rabbit is milder than a very porky tasting pork.

dessert, sadly, was a bit of a bomb. we had creme brulee (a trio) and again they brought us more - 7 instead of 3, one for each of us. but the creme brulee didn't have the silky quality it's supposed to have; instead it had the texture of a third-rate hotel school student's creme brulee, which is to say that silky it was not. it seemed to have curdled. however, eggs, cream and sugar are still a wonderful combination, and we ate away. oh, a quick note: pomodoro is cash only, so go to the atm before you get there.

review: the worst service of my life (silks)

alright, so i'm actually backdating this post, but this happened on the 13th, so the 13th the post will be dated. this is just a quick review of restaurant week at silks, which is the restaurant at the stonehedge inn in tyngsboro (tyngsboro?!). i have mixed feelings about silks.

the restaurant is basically a hunting lodge. a very nice one, but a hunting lodge nonetheless. it's what you expect the oak room to look like - i've never actually been to the oak room, but this is what i imagine: dark wood paneling, high ceilings, paintings of men with dogs and guns in the realist style.

so we were greeted by some guy with a really overdone french accent - he had a real french accent and was playing it up for the guests, i guess. well, buddy, i took french all throughout college and i don't appreciate your fakeness! ugh. so pretentious. i also hate it when the waitstaff assumes you're some peon who walked in off the street and doesn't know anything about food. they may not actually think this, but if that's how they make you feel, they're dirt in my book.

now in regards to the digs, they were really nice despite all the hunting lodge references. the chairs were nice and plushy, the napkins were this nice shade of gray, and were softer than any napkins i've ever had at a restaurant.

and in terms of food i had a duck confit with a frisee salad, citrus vinaigrette, and a few raspberries. really good - very simply done, and very well done. the confit was shredded and formed into little upside-down-muffin shapes. it was a bit hard to eat, but in the end it was fine, and the addition of the raspberry added a really nice acidic balance to the heavy duck fat-ness of the confit.

for the main course i had steak with um...i think it had some vegetables with it. the vegetables were unmemorable, but this was the first hunk of meat i'd had since china, where everything's bite size, and as such it was really fantastic. they messed up and gave my mother my steak - i ordered mine rare, she ordered hers medium, but i got the medium. it was fine in the end. the meat has great flavor, and a good amount of chew, and was really beautiful - seared on the outside, all red on the inside.

dessert was so-so. we all had the chocolate mousse, which was encased in puff pastry, with a pile of poached peaches on the side. the peaches tasted like canned peaches (and looked like them too), and weren't integrated into the dessert, so i don't know what that was about. anyone who has eaten cold puff pastry knows how gross it is - the desserts had been thawed too fast, so the layer of chocolate on top of the puff pastry was cracked, and the puff pastry was still pretty cold. the mousse inside was pretty good, though - nice consistency, but i don't really like milk chocolate mousse.

so now we get to my real gripe about this place. the service was the most awful service i have ever had in my life. we suffered from having too many different waitstaff - not too many waitstaff, but too many different waitstaff. they incorrectly gave us silverware for our appetizers, didn't notice when we switched, gave us the wrong appetizers. oops. they apologized. then it happened again for the main course. they even got the wineglasses wrong. now, this is just unacceptable. at such a nice (and expensive) restaurant this is a cardinal sin in my book. good thing we all got the same dessert, because they couldn't mess that up.

my general verdict is that the waitstaff is so inept and pretentious that the prevalence of french accents can't possibly make up for the poor service. unless you have millions of dollars and come draped in fur stoles, i would stay away from this place.

review: winter restaurant week (33 rest. + lounge)

carrien and i love food, but we're also poor students. accordingly, we wanted to partake in the newly christened winter restaurant week (i guess business is slow), without breaking the bank. we settled upon lunch ($20.06 as opposed to $30.06) - which, when you consider that it's a three-course lunch, seems pretty luxurious anyway.

we spent a long time not making a reservation - i think most people do dinner, anyway. personally, i feel better spending my dollars (earned from hours of scanning slides and modeling with foam core) on dinner, which is the stereotypically large meal of the day. i mean, who has meat and potatoes for breakfast or lunch (ignore those crazy brits)?

when we finally picked a day, we thought we should go ahead and make a reservation. carrien had looked at the menus and the first restaurant on the list - 33 restaurant and lounge - had three of her favorite foods on it : lobster, salmon, and pork loin. they had ample space, so we made a reservation for three. at first, i had thought that since i was skipping out on celina's and my new weekly lunch date, i'd see if she was free, but i thought it would overlap with her class (it did). so we tried keith, who had class. the third try yielded george.

it's a good thing that boston has tourist maps scattered around the city, because i neglected to print out a map while i was on campus. oops. we were definitely going in the wrong direction when we found the map.

33 is off the beaten path (for those of us who live in cambridge, at least). the interior of the restaurant is pretty typical of places that are trying really hard to be hip. the pulsing/color-changing lighted panels on the bar are a poor imitation of the color-changing, light-changing dealio at alinea in chicago (the sound component of which eventually had to be panned because of the way the sound echoed off the lacquered wood tables). we probably looked like the scum of the restaurant week crowd with our backpacks. ah, students. anyway, all of us started with the chestnut lobster bisque, which was quite good. it had croutons in it, as i remember...for a second course, george and i had the pork loin, which came with thinly sliced (panfried?) potatoes, and carrien got the salmon with couscous. it's a little odd, i admit, to have a three-course lunch. admittedly weird. but do it we did. the pork loin was rather tougher than i would have preferred, and if it weren't restaurant week i likely would have attempted to send it back (for the first time ever). however, its sauce and accompaniment were great, so that definitely made up for the toughness. despite the toughness, the pork developed a great crust.

and then dessert - warm chocolate cake with tonka bean ice cream. i first had tonka bean in a dessert at alinea, and it tastes a little bit like vanilla, but also has hints of...how would i describe it...malt? it's kind of interesting - in fact, i am so tired of vanilla that i have resorted to omitting it in any cooking that i do. i would recommend it, even though it may fall under the category of "trendy-because-it's-weird" food ingredients. the warm chocolate cake was great, too - all fudgy in the middle. it was really a glorified brownie. you could tell it was based on a recipe for homemade brownies - it had a lighter brown color than regular brownies at the supermarket. the chocolate, i was happy to discover, was not scharffenberger - at least i think it wasn't - because i hate scharffenberger chocolate. i like my chocolate to taste like chocolate, not flowers.

all in all, it was a great way to spend an afternoon. chocolate is always an appropriate way to end a meal.

review: marco

marco / 253 hanover street / boston ma / 617-742-1276 / tue-thu 5-10:30pm, fri-sat 5pm-11pm, sun 4pm-9:30pm / reservations accepted / entrees moderately expensive ($15-25)

i heard about marco from being on pigalle's mailing list. after it got a bunch of good reviews, i thought it would be nice to try it out. we went on a sunday night, when they serve dinner family-style (which really means that the menu is designed so that everyone at a given table shares everything - the portions are in individual and family portions - not that everyone in the restaurant eats together). it was raining, but the place still filled up as we ate.

the restaurant is right on hanover street in the middle of the most visible part of the north end, but you could almost miss it. the sign is just the coat of arms with an M on it, and the outer glass door is blank - it's the inner glass door that says "marco" on it in small white lowercase letters. you enter, and then the restaurant is on the second floor. all of this contributes to the feeling that you're eating in somebody's house (the building inside has the dimensions of a row house). the restaurant is tiny - it seats maybe around 20ish people - and you can see out onto the street from the tables along the windows. the interior is decorated with things like ceramic plates that say "marco" on them with the coat of arms, and there's a fireplace with no fire, but lots of large flickering candles.

this is my new favorite restaurant for bread. there is this fantastic focaccia with a slightly salty, crisp exterior, and a chewy interior. the olive oil is very green, and is absolutely fantastic. it tastes as if somebody made it yesterday. they also give you a little bowl of marinated vegetables (red peppers, onions, olives, etc) that are fantastic.

so for dinner, we started with grilled vegetable antipasti - eggplant, red cabbage, mushrooms, zucchini, and a dollop of very fresh, mild goat cheese. these were fantastic - just the right amount of good balsamic vinegar. for wine we had a cannonau from sardinia - costera's cannonau di sardegna argiolas (2003) - to satisfy charles' curiosity about sardinian wines. this one, for your information, was excellent, and went well with the food.

for main courses, we shared orecchiette with homemade sausage and broccoli rabe, rigatoni with gravy and meatballs, and veal piccata. all three were excellent as well, and very filling, yet not heavy - that's a difficult balance to achieve. i am always somewhat disappointed by italian restaurants, in that it always seems that you could make whatever you have yourself at home with less effort and cost, despite any increase in quality. i wonder if it's because there are so many bad italian restaurants out there, especially the chain restaurants, or if it's just that haute couture french country food, for example, is trendier, and thus has more of an aura than italian food. what i mean is that i feel that my disappointment is a failing upon my part, rather than any failing of the restaurant, if the food is indeed good. which it is at marco. and in fact, the combination of the food and the physical restaurant itself make for a fantastic neighborhood place that i wish was in central square (although it couldn't be nearly as romantic as it is allowed to be in the north end).