Tupelo (Inman Square) vs. Hungry Mother (Kendall Square)

Tupelo and Hungry Mother are two of the most celebrated additions to the Cambridge eating scene over the past year. That they are both southern inspired suggests a niche in the Boston area that was screaming to be filled at least since the closing of Bob the Chef’s over on Tremont. By most accounts, Tupelo and Hungry Mother are doing a fine job, and our experiences at both restaurants largely confirm this. So a traditional like/dislike review seems less appropriate in this case than a comparison of these largely similar establishments. If you’re in the mood for some catfish, fried oysters, roasted chicken or grits where should you go? Here’s recommending Tupelo.

With appetizers at $5-8 and entrees for $12-15 Tupelo beats Hungry Mother’s prices ($8-11 apps and $18-25 entrees) by a sizable margin, without sacrificing anything when it comes to the food or atmosphere (though Hungry Mother does trump Tupelo in terms of drink selection and quality). Tupelo’s fried oysters with green tomatoes ($8) stacked up against Hungry Mother’s fried oysters ($11) and I preferred their catfish ($14.50) to Mother’s ($18).

Most of Hungry Mother’s offerings stray a bit too far from the comfort food and too close to the French for my taste. The dishes tend to be a bit more “refined” than at Tupelo, but in a totally vanilla way. There is nothing comforting or interesting about the rainbow trout dish below. Other entrees on the menu are similarly uninspired e.g.  french style gnocchi (I’m not sure what makes these gnocchi French, but anything that would make them less Italian can’t be good) and veal strip loin. These items do not jump off the menu. Tupelo’s entrees, on the other hand, sound unhealthy and delicious: beer battter crepes, daube of beef with hominy mashed potatoes, bourbon maple bbq chicken, new orleans gumbo. The one disappointing part of Tupelo was the biscuit. There are few breads I like more than a good biscuit, but this version was dry and bland. Other than that, Tupelo satisfied on all counts.

Hungry Mother's fried Chesapeake Bay Oysters

Tupelo's Crispy Catfish with fresh green tomatoes, parsley potatoes, and pickled jalapeno aioli

Hungry Mother's cornmeal catfish w/low country red rice middlins, andouille sausage, green tomato relish

Fish was good, but the middlins were quite bland, which was an issue the last time I had this dish.

Hungry Mother’s grilled rainbow trout, fingerlings, red vidalias, bacon, almond-brown butter

Tupelo's Half Roasted Chicken, Bourbon-Maple BBQ chicken with cheddar grits, sweet onions and quick dressed greens

The half-chicken was moist and sticky and salty and sweet and went great with the dense cornbread and the cheesy grits. This is what I want if I’m in the mood for southern flavors.

Tupelo's Brown Butter Pecan Pie with Toscanini's Tupelo honey ice cream and blackberry sauce

The pecan pie was delicious though i read somewhere that it might be off the menu now. The rest of the desserts looked equally good, so there should be no shortage of delicious ways to finish your meal.

 

Chez Panisse (Shattuck St, Berkeley, California)

Alice Waters has long been well-known amongst epicureans, locavores, and Nothern Californians.  But lately she has garnered more widespread attention by calling for the Obamas to plant an organic White House garden and through her increasing appearances on national news and talk shows.  I have to admit that I find Waters’ views on food sort of impractical.  Her breathy, fanciful speeches about organic produce as a fundamental human right and her unwillingness to admit that it might be more important for school districts to spend limited resources on books rather than on fresh, locally-grown, organic white peaches are just annoying.  And not only that, her flagship restaurant, Chez Panisse, has dropped in our favorite international restaurant rankings.  Nonetheless, there are worse things she could advocate for and she still has one of the best restaurants in the world, so Carlo and I paid it a visit during our trip out west.

Chez Panisse includes a fine dining restaurant and a cafe.  The cafe is more casual and offers an a la carte menu and the restaurant offers a daily-changing fixed-price menu.  On the evening of our visit, the menu was as follows:

Warm asparagus with capers, pancetta, and Parmesan

Pan-seared sea scallops with wild fennel, hot pepper, and oregano

Spit-roasted Becker Lane pork with fava beans, cannellini beans, and rapini

Twin Girls Farm cherry crostata with bitter almond ice cream

Supposedly, there is also an optional cheese supplement, but we were never offered it, the only flaw in service for the evening.  We would have ordered it had it been offered, but we were plenty full so we weren’t that upset to miss it.  This was a very nice meal.  Everything was cooked perfectly, the flavors were great, and the produce was in perfect form as promised.  If we lived in Berkeley, I am sure we would happily become regulars.  But it wasn’t a very exciting meal despite the great ingredients.  The kitchen is very competent but not very creative.  Given the same quality ingredients, competent home cooks could easily replicate and improve on these dishes.  Except for the last one.  The dessert was out of this world, fresh juicy perfect cherries on an almost marzipan-y crust with fresh ice cream. I wish I could go back and get that dessert, though there is no guarantee that it would be on the menu, since it changes everyday.  So, all in all, Chez Panisse was a pleasant experience and a good dinner, only marginally over-priced, and worth a visit for anyone in the Berkeley area.

 

Speed’s Hot Dogs, Newmarket Square, Roxbury

Immediately after eating Speed’s loaded hot dog, a whitehead appeared on my nose. Now I understand that correlation doesn’t equal causation, but  the smell of grilled pork that emanated from my pores for the rest of the afternoon provided converging evidence.  Why is this relevant? Well, you certainly won’t want to go for a run after downing this beauty, in fact you will probably want to take a nap or stare blankly into space for a bit. Your self-esteem could take a hit, you might need to buy new pants, strangers might stand a bit farther away from you in elevators,  but this hot dog is so good it is worth all the bodily malfunctions and social repercussions that might ensue.  The Wall Street Journal called Speed’s hot dogs the best in the country. They are as good as advertised. While $7 might seem a bit steep for a cart hot dog, the loaded dog (special sauce, mustard blend, onions) is a steal considering the massive size and how damn delicious it is. Service moves a little slow, I was 8th in line and waited around 10 minutes for mine. Cash only.

Speed’s is tucked away in Newmarket Square, but easy enough to find. Coming from Boston just take a left off Mass Ave onto Newmarket Square road and you will see it on your right shortly. For those in Boston for July 4th they are setting up shop on the corner of Beacon and Clarendon from 9am until all the dogs are gone.

Loaded

 

Sensing, Fairmont Hotel @ Battery Wharf, Boston

I highly recommend Sensing to anyone who likes a healthy dose of the absurd. From the seating by the hostess to the dessert menus, the extremely friendly (but extremely poorly trained) waitstaff and the long-on-promise, short-on-delivery kitchen at Sensing never miss an opportunity to violate every expectation you might have for dining in an establishment that is a recent recipient of AAA’s Four-Diamond rating. Our experience single-handedly rendered that distinction meaningless to me. Or, at the least, demonstrated the extent to which Guy Martin’s name rings out amongst the circles of people who dole out these awards. Speaking of Guy Martin’s name, I am confident he’d roll over in his bed at the Ritz if he were to eat at the current incarnation of his Boston namesake.

We arrived at 6pm for dinner expecting to find an empty dining room. We did. But that’s no big deal – the somewhat removed location,  the not so great reviews, and what I imagine to be the difficulty of selling the $825,000 – $5 million units at the Battery Wharf have all contributed to the low foot-traffic. We were greeted and seated promptly by the friendly hostess, but given two different dinner menus. A problem which our equally friendly but equally confused waiter had to consult the kitchen to resolve. We immediately ordered the snacking platter which is either one each of 6 different amuse bouches, or 6 of one. To go with our snacks we decided to order a glass each of sparkling wine. Sensing’s wine list is unimpressive – neither varied nor interesting.  With so few offerings, you would think the waitstaff would be able to say something coherent about each wine. Liz and I ordered 2 of the 3 possible glasses of sparkling wine – a prosecco and a scharffenberger – and were met with a blank stare and a request to point to what we wanted.  This is not the waiter’s fault. To me, failures of knowledge like that demonstrate a restaurant’s rotting infrastructure and total managerial indifference. Whoever is steering the ship at Sensing has seriously failed in their responsibilities to train the waitstaff, and has their sights set on a Fall ‘09 closing.

Things did not get any better when the food arrived:

snacking platter

From the  bottom right going clockwise we have an oyster with shallots and vinegar (this was quite tasty), some kind of fried cheese with a tomato, a clam, a ball of cantaloupe with prosciutto and a wine jelly, a lobster roll, and in the middle a glass of tomato water. Apart from the oyster, all these were disappointing. The cheese was cold, the “sixty-second clam” earned its name for the amount of time it took to chew through it, the jelly with the cantaloupe and melon had an off-putting mealy texture, the lobster roll was fine, and the tomato water was overwhelmingly infused with vanilla foreshadowing a meal with flavor combinations that  I think Devra Frist at the Globe accurately described as “strange, but not delightful”.

seared tuna salad

I enjoyed my salad, it was certainly the highlight of the night. The tuna was nicely cooked, the lemon dressing was subtle but tasty, and the flavor combination with the anchovy, quail eggs, and cucumber worked well. There’s nothing new about this dish, but it was still a solid version.

heirloom tomato salad

Liz’s tomato salad with basil ginger dressing and candied pine nuts didn’t impress. The tomatoes weren’t very good, and when you’re serving a dish this simple, they had better be.

At this point in the evening Liz and I decided to order a half bottle of red to go with our meat courses. As I perused the short list I came across an oddity: under the red wines they had listed a wine called Innocent Bystander, Moscato, 2008.  A red moscato? Not listed under dessert or aperitif? I was curious. Maybe this wine list wasn’t so bad after all. I’d only seen a non-desserty moscato once, and certainly never a moscato that had qualities akin to a wine you might reasonably categorize as “red”. But I assumed it was there for good reason and decided to order it. Big mistake. What arrived was a very ordinary incarnation of sweet sparkling rose. Just the thing you want to go with steak and lamb. The waiter commented he had never seen a wine like this before. What I had never seen is a frickin’ sweet sparkling rose listed under red wines, at least not in a restaurant that gave a damn about the quality of its service.

olive encrusted lamb loin

Ordered it rare. It came medium well with pink ends.

beef strip loin, chick pea fries, mizuna, thai curry and anchovy sauce

Ordered it rare, 1/3 of it actually was (presumably, the 1/3 that was not sitting directly under a heat lamp for 10 minutes), the rest was medium well. And the chick pea fries were soggy, inedible cubes of warm flour. If you want a real chick pea fry go to Garden at the Cellar.

mystery asparagus

Along with our meat came this plate of mystery asparagus. We didn’t order it, and the waiters didn’t mention it when they brought it over.It was actually pretty good. Wish we knew what the heck it was.

Wanting to get the full Sensing experience, we decided to order a dessert. The waiter, again, brought two different menus, one brunch and one dessert.  Upon joking to Liz that the Coast Guard Omelet looked really good, the moment got the best of us and we could not stop laughing at the absurdity of this dinner. The chuckles would have quickly turned into sobs if we thought about the money we were about to spend on it. We waited about 20 minutes for the waiter to return to take our order, ate a mediocre piece of cheesecake, and split.

I am viscerally repulsed that we spent $220 on this experience. This is not a matter of disliking the food. Any kitchen can have a bad night, or a bad table on a good night. But I get the feeling that the people in charge at Sensing know its not going to last and they just don’t care.  Such horrible attention to detail shows a lack of pride that surely starts at the top and only then trickles down to the kitchen and waitstaff.  If you find yourself  near Battery Wharf you’d be better off buying a burger at the nearby Sail Loft and spending your remaining $210 on something other than lining an absentee chef’s  pockets.

 

Incanto, Noe Valley San Francisco

I had high expectations for Incanto. They had me at brains and peas:

fried brains and peas

This was the best dish of our trip to San Francisco and probably one of my all-time favorite restaurant dishes. I’m surprised I got a picture before I inhaled them. It was an end-of-Ratatouille moment for me. Everything about it reminded me of the fried brains my mom used to make when I was a kid, before stupid  mad-cow made it very difficult to come by. There is something about the crispy saltiness of the batter combined with the creaminess of the brains that drives me wild. And the flavor combination…. I want it in my mouth at all times. I would chew brains and peas gum. I would gargle with brains and peas Scope. Like a baby bird, I would peck this out of someone else’s mouth should they not chew fast enough.  I loved it.

strawberries, fava beans, arugula and pecorino

The flavor combinations at Incanto were unique and in almost all cases worked well. The above dish was as refreshing as it sounds. Indeed, all the dishes I sampled varied from good to excellent with the highlights being the beef heart and the spaghettini. Clearly Incanto was at its best when dealing with the peculiar cuts (brains, beef and tuna heart, sweetbreads). I was also pleased to see the addition of Nduja to the lingcod dish. Nduja is a spreadable salami from Calabria (my mom’s hometown) that is starting to become more popular in the states. I urge you to go buy it, then travel to Calabria and spend lots of money in its cities and towns.

I regret that I won’t be able to go back to Incanto for quite some time. I imagine that the menu changes frequently and there are already new and interesting piggy parts on the menu that I am missing out on. I also regret that I wasn’t able to scrounge up a group of 12 – the minimum to order a suckling pig. So many missed opportunities. In the end I think the quality of my life will be determined by the quantity of suckling pig that I eat in the company of friends.

grilled beef heart with warm marinated mushroom

spaghettini, sardinian cured tuna heart, egg yolk, parsley

trofie with ramp pesto, morels, and potatoes

local lingcod, nduja, clams, and chickpeas

 

Forza Calabria! Movin’ on up in the world

Nduja and a burgeoning wine industry pioneered by Statti are putting Calabria on the map. Calabria is at the very tip of the boot – a region that hasn’t yet been talked about much even while it’s neighbors to the north (Campania) and the west (Sicily) are enjoying success in the wine market.   But ever since the Boston Wine Expo featured a symposium on Calabrian wine we have started to see it pop up on wine lists. Bina Osteria carries several bottles and it is all over the restaurants and wine stores in San Francisco and Napa.  The wine is not going to knock your socks off but they provide excellent quality for the price.

Nduja is a spicy spreadable salami with a melting texture. Creamy meat, basically.  A family friend recently brought back a piece of it for me from Italy:

You could do any number of things with this tasty mound, but I decided to put it in a basic tomato sauce, mash it all about, cook it down for a bit and it turned into a savory and spicy meat sauce.

Below you can see nduja on a sandwich with grilled onions that I got at the Boccalone store in the Ferry Building in San Francisco on the day that the NYTimes article appeared. They were very proud of the exposure. Delicious.

You can order nduja through their website. If anyone feels like buying me a present in the near future, then feel free to sign me up for their salumi society…

 

Zuni Cafe, San Francisco

After Carlo and I spent the day wandering around San Francisco we decided to give Zuni Cafe a try for lunch.  Carlo had been treating me to meals cooked from the excellent Zuni Cafe cookbook for weeks and we wanted to see if the original version of their famous Ceasar salad measured up to Carlo’s.  It didn’t but it was very good.  Zuni has a neat set up.  The bulding is shaped like a triangle, and the kitchen is in the middle of the base of the triangle with the bar along one side of the triangle, so Zuni has arranged little pockets of seats all over the place, including in the mezzanine.  We were seated in the only two seats that face right into the open kitchen so we had built in entertainment.  Our view was of the pizza guy, who mesmerized us with his methodical repetitive pizza making throughout our lunch.

pizza guy

I ordered the Ceasar salad, of course, and Carlo had a half-dozen oysters.

caesar salad

The Ceasar salad was very good, but I missed the grilled chicken and whole pieces of egg that Carlo put on his, and the oysters were tasty, though we’re not really oyster connoisseurs.  We shared a cheeseburger on rosemary foccacia with Roth Kase cheese from the great state of Wisconsin.  Our very friendly server had the kitchen cut it in half for us and put it on separate plates after he learned we were sharing, which was a nice touch. The cheeseburger was a little rich, but very fresh and flavorful.

cheeseburger, pickled red onions, pickled cukes

It came with a mountain of crispy salty shoestring potatoes that we made them take away after we ate half of them.  They were a little too good.  The highlight for me was the dessert: Gateau Victoire with whipped cream.  Essentially a perfectly moist, chocolately, but not too sweet, not too dense, chocolate cake with whipped cream on it.  Can’t beat that.   All in all, it was a very nice meal to compliment a beautiful day walking around San Francisco.

chocolate cake with a glass of nonino amaro

 

Cafe Polonia: 611 Dorchester Ave, South Boston

Polish food is not something I know much about, so when our friends Simon and Vicki asked Liz and I if we wanted to go to Cafe Polonia we were excited to get a taste of it. Cafe Polonia is easy to get to either by train (pretty much right off the Andrew Square stop on the red line) or by car (right off 93), but also easy to walk directly by. It’s a small place, probably 15 tables, but that’s part of what gives it that cozy inviting charm. We stepped in and were greeted by the very attractive and very Polish waitress who showed us to our table.

Herring in oil. The saltiness of the herring was offset by the sweetness of the raw onion. Usually I stay away from raw onion as it tends to linger on my breath longer than Liz would like. She claims I sweat onion for days. But this combination was tasty enough for me to sacrifice Liz’s affection for the short term.

Blood sausage with caramelized onions. The sausage had an overwhelming smokiness that the onions helped to temper, but there weren’t enough onions to go around and it became difficult to finish.

Borscht. I like beets a lot. This was my first borscht and it was like beet heaven. A little dollop of sour cream thickened the soup a bit and cut the sweetness just enough.

Polish plate.  The pierogi’s were…pierogi’s. Can’t really go wrong with a meat dumpling no matter what part of the world they are coming from. Same with the kielbasa. The stuffed cabbage on the right, on the other hand, wasn’t something I’d order again. Italian restaurants have a hard enough time making a tasty tomato sauce, something tells me the Polish aren’t going to solve that mystery. Prices are reasonable with appetizers around $10 and entrees around $15 and as you can see the portions are healthy. I regret not trying the potato pancakes as the waitress walked by with several orders which looked delicious, but that will certainly be on the agenda our next visit.

 

Ad hoc, Yountville CA

Ad hoc was originally intended to be a temporary space filler as Thomas Keller put the finishing touches on his burger and wine restaurant concept, but it became so popular that he decided to keep it around. The concept is simple: a fixed price ($50 a head)  family style four course meal, changing daily. The atmosphere is great – casual, comfortable and hip with music that Liz’s brother occasionally found “flaccid and mundane” but otherwise enjoyed. The service was friendly and the food was great all around.

Smoked trout salad with radishes, fava beans, red onions, boiled potatoes and a delightful dressing.

Duck three ways: confit legs, seared breast, and duck sausage in rice. Sugar snap peas on the side.

Cheese plate with apples and honey roasted hazelnuts.

Bread pudding with raisins, vanilla custard and marmalade.

The success of ad hoc should be a model for other restaurateurs. Specifically what they should take note of is that, contrary to what many people believe, people don’t like options. Really, they don’t. There’s strong evidence from psychological research on decision making showing that people are happier with their choices when they have fewer of them. This may seem counterintuitive, but think of the experience of looking at a huge menu. It can be overwhelming. Are you in the mood for pork? Veal? Beef? Fish? Pasta? If a lot of the choices look good to you (indeed, especially if a lot of choices look good to you) you will likely take a long time to pick, pick arbitrarily and then have a strong case of buyer’s remorse when you see the waiter serve the hanger steak with polenta fries that you passed on to the self-satisfied stooge at the next table. Something not quite perfect about the monkfish you settled on? It’s so easy to imagine how good that steak would have tasted.

This phenomenon doesn’t solely work on the psychological level. A smaller menu lets the kitchen concentrate on making those dishes better. The cod fritter appetizer you order from a selection of 3 options will definitely be prepared with more care than the same dish ordered from a selection of 10. It’s a win-win. The customer is happier, the food is better, the kitchen is calmer. Of course, it would be unfortunate for people who have very specific dietary needs, and for those who are particularly picky eaters. But a smart kitchen will always be able to accommodate dietary restrictions in a tasty way, and I’ve always had a particular disdain for the latter group who think that every restaurant should be capable of accommodating their whims. Don’t eat fish because it’s yucky? Then go to a steakhouse. Trade specialization worked for most societies, seems like it would do wonders for the food industry as well. I am all about promoting more vegan restaurants if it makes it easier for other restaurants to cook food the way they want to and in a manner more conducive to quality.

 

French Laundry, Yountville CA

Welcome to French Laundry. May we hang your soiled-from-anticipation pants up to dry in the garden?

Liz and I went out to Napa Valley with Liz’s brother and sister-in-law this past weekend to drink some wine and eat some food. We secured a reservation for 4 exactly 2 months ago from  Saturday, May 16th. If you google “french laundry reservation” you will be met with a slew of websites and blog posts devoted to the difficulties inherent in getting a reservation. First of all, you need to call at 10am pacific time (when the restaurant opens) exactly two months before the day that you would like to go. The websites will tell you that even doing this probably won’t be enough as the line will be busy. Some suggest you need to go there in person. There is even a service for which you can pay to have a particular individual get the reservation for you! Such is the desire and perceived difficulty of getting a seat at what is widely considered the best restaurant in the country. I say “perceived” because I am not so sure how much to buy into this.  Liz and I started calling with two phones the moment the clock struck 10am, got through after about a minute,  and had the option of several seatings. I feel like if you do that and you have a window of a couple of days that you are willing to go, you should have no problem. Especially now since it’s star is starting to fade a bit and other US restaurants are considered as good if not better.

To the meal. Everything was delicious, with the standouts being the Oysters and Pearls (Liz said it was her all time favorite bite of food), the Butter-Poached Lobster, the Black Bass, and the Yogurt Sherbet. The service was amazing – the courses were paced well, and our server was fun and informative. The environment in the restaurant was a little stuffy. No music playing so it was a little awkward at first with lots of tables whispering. But it loosened up after a while, presumably as a function of drunkenness. There were two menu options, the Chef’s Tasting or the vegetarian tasting. The waiter strongly urged us to go with the Chef’s Tasting absent any strict vegetarians, and I think that’s a wise move. For the same price ($240) you better have some strong philosophical aversion to meat to go with the vegetarian menu. The menu was 9 courses with four of those courses having two options to choose from. The Foie Gras and the Kuroge Beef courses carried supplemental charges.

Amuse bouche of salmon tartare with some kind of whipped cheese hiding in the nether-regions of a chive cornet.

“Oysters and Pearls”:  Sabayon of pearl tapioca with Island Creek Oysters and California Sturgeon Caviar

Salad of Hawaiian Hearts of Peach Palm: French Laundry Garden Radish, Cucumber, Perilla and Navel Orange

Moulard Duck Foie Gras in Terrine: Green Grapes, Cutting Celery, Compressed Endive and Black Truffle

Sauteed Fillet of Atlantic Black Bass: Garlic Scapes, Carrots, Artichokes and Barigoule Emulsion

Tartare of Japanese Bluefin Tuna: Beech Mushrooms, Gengko Nuts, Broccollini and Bonito

Sweet Butter-Poached Maine Lobster “Mitts”: Potato “Mille Feuille”, Golden Corn, Fava Beans, and Pickled Ramps

Fricassee of Salmon Creek Farms Pork Belly: “Garnitures de Petit Pois a la Francaise”

Sirloin of Kuroge Beef from Shiga: White Asparagus, Pine Nuts, Tulare Cherries, Mizuna and Ginger Sauce

Manchester: Cauliflower, Pumpkin Seeds, Zante Currants and Parsley Shoots

Andante Dairy Yogurt Sherbet: Oatmeal “Sable” and Royal Blenheim Apricot

“Gateau au Chocolat Avec Bavarois Praline”: Caramelized Gros Michel Bananas and Hazelnut Sorbet

“Parfait au Cintron”: Candied Lemon, Biscotti Tuile and Lemon Snow

So, what do I think? French Laundry is definitely one of the best restaurants we’ve been to, probably top 5. Was it worth the price? No, I don’t think so. Not considering what you could get elsewhere for the same price or less. Eating there reminded me of what Ezra Klein wrote about Per Se over at the IFA. “It wasn’t going far enough. It wasn’t inventing anything, or surprising you.” There were no duds at French Laundry. Every dish was delicious and beautiful. But there were no jaw-dropping moments either, except of course when the bill showed up. There was nothing playful about the experience. No whimsy. And dammit, if I’m going to plan a trip around a restaurant and pay that much to eat there, I want some f’ing whimsy. The difference between an incredibly fresh ingredient prepared perfectly and a really incredibly fresh ingredient prepared super-duper perfectly does not merit tacking hundreds of dollars onto the bill. There are other places I could go. Eating the Tour at Alinea in Chicago is like French Laundry meets Cirque du Soleil. And cheaper.

That said, it was a great experience. Yountville and the surrounding wine country is a beautiful setting and must be taken into account if you like to travel for restaurants. While Alinea is a better restuarant, I’d rather take a trip to Napa than Chicago.