Bresca, 111 Middle St. Portland ME

While browsing through Rabelais books on Middle St during my trip to Portland last week, I overheard the shop’s proprietress speaking with a young man in his early twenties:

“Chad! Great to see you! How’s life at Jean-Georges?”

Chad is having a great time, apparently. As are the slew of other young Portland chefs who began their careers at the likes of Hugo’s, Fore Street,Evangeline’s, 555, etc… and have since moved on to continue their training at some of the best restaurants in the country (Daniel and Bernardin were also mentioned). It was a fitting beginning to a three day stay in what is certainly the culinary capital of New England. The food quality per capita absolutely dwarfs Boston, and  is on par with the other great food cities in the country. My food tour began at Bresca, a cozy 20 seat Italian-ish place with a charming interior close to the corner of Middle St and Franklin Ave.

Welcome to Bresca

The menu is small but interesting. A few small plates, including the gorgonzola and chorizo stuffed dates pictured below, 5 or so apps and entrees and a couple of pastas.

gorgonzola and chorizo stuffed dates

Toc - smoked ricotta, creamy polenta, royal trumpet mushrooms, radicchio, lardo

The texture of polenta was different – a bit pasty and sticky, not so much creamy.  But all the flavors worked together. The thin slide of lardo over the top really made the dish. As would a thin slice of lardo over virtually anything.

Braised Tuscan black kale - 6 minute egg, crispy pancetta, hombu butter, charred multigrain bread

Pan fried sweetbreads, bacon lardons, caramelized shallots, frisee, arugula, sherry vinaigrette

This is how I want all my greens from now on – served over a bed of sweetbreads.

sea urchin linguini, uni, evoo, basil, mint, lemon zest

Great dish. Interesting and unique flavors. The refreshing mint, basil and lemon perfectly complemented the rich and fishy sea urchin. Bresca could benefit from making their own pasta, though. Not much difference between these linguini and what I get out of a box of Barilla.

market fish, cod

For the quality, Bresca is very reasonably priced. Though that most likely reflects the cost of operating in Portland. If it were in Boston I would be happy paying $15 app $30 entree. Though it isn’t really an Italian place, the few dishes that are Italian inspired puts the vast majority of the North End’s offerings to shame (though they do a fine job of that on their own these days) and are right up there with the best Italian Boston has to offer.

 

Rocca, 500 Harrison Ave. Boston

After a last minute change of plans forced us to cancel our Saturday night reservation at Il Casale in Belmont we  scrambled to find a table somewhere in Boston and came up with Rocca. We had been once before shortly after it opened and were largely ambivalent about it’s offerings but figured we’d give it another chance, particularly since they were advertising an overhauled menu. Unfortunately, while there were several things on the menu that sounded interesting and tasty, my ambivalence towards Rocca continues.

soppresatta pizzetta, ricotta, roasted tomato, broccoli rabe

In what seemed like a safe play Liz went with the pizzetta as an appetizer. She wasn’t expecting a masterpiece of the brick oven, but it’s pretty hard to make an offensive pizza. This one was particularly doughy and the bitter broccoli rabe dominated the flavor.

baccala mantecato

There were two appetizers that I was legitimately excited about ordering since they are not often on menus. Baccala and farinata. The baccala came pureed and baked and was served with toast and roasted peppers. I enjoyed this quite a bit and ate it up happily. The farinata, on the other hand…

farinata

Farinata is essentially a chick pea pancake. It’s easy to make and is a great alternative to polenta as a comforting winter starchy dish. This is the first time I’ve seen it on a menu in Boston so I give credit to the kitchen for serving it, but this one was exceedingly dry. I imagine this is because of its girth. The thinner the farinata the better as far as I’m concerned – the thicker it is the longer you have to cook it to heat through, the harder it is to control the internal temperature, the lower the heat you apply has to be so you don’t burn the outside… it’s just a recipe for mediocre farinata. I do hope that this becomes a food trend though because it is one of my favorite Italian small plates.

spaghetti poveri

The pasta was well-cooked and had a nice texture but the sauces were just ordinary. Not too much flavor going on in the tomato sauce and the panzotti sat in a pool of butter and oil that had me wiping them off on the side of the plate before eating.

sugar pumpkin panzotti

On the whole, you could do a lot worse than Rocca in terms of Italian food in Boston. It aspires to be more than another North End red sauce dump and it succeeds. It’s just not a place I’d be excited to go back to. But given the perhaps unreasonably high bar I set for Italian food, that might just be a ringing endorsement.

 

Dear Chef Draghi of Erbaluce: Why Italians are never satisfied

Dear Chef, thanks for your comments.  Your observations about the arrabbiata  nicely captures an important point about my perspective on Italian food that I think many other Italians share: if it’s not what I know, it can’t be good. The arrabbiata I’m familiar with must indeed be the Calabrian version – my mom was born there. Given that, any deviation from the norm will be met with skepticism and dismay. Heck, anything short of flying my Calabrian grandmother from Friuli to Boston to cook me the pasta I was raised on will be a let down. I’m sure this is true of most food cultures but perhaps particularly so for Italy given the regional specificity of various dishes in combination with our natural inclination to poo-poo anything not from our own little village. It’s interesting that you mention my dad’s return since he is on a committee of Italians which exemplifies this tendency. They go around to various Italian restaurants in the area critiquing the authenticity of their food. They will not hesitate to besmirch the offerings if they do not meet their extremely high (and, some might say, extremely arbitrary) criteria.

It’s also interesting that the more traditional dishes are the more complex. I have some vague notion that “traditional” correlates with simplicity, as if using multiple ingredients is some kind of culinary innovation. I wonder if that correlation depends on what exactly is being cooked. Perhaps there is a negative correlation for sauces and stocks  – you could always throw in whatever happened to be around, leading to greater complexity. For meat and fish on the other hand I expect that traditional preparations are simpler cooking procedures with fewer ingredients. From this perspective, then, I think I’ll amend what I described as Erbaluce’s MO from “simple, simple, simple” to  “authentic, authentic, authentic”. Complexity is orthogonal to authenticity. Whether one prefers the traditionally simple or the traditionally complex is just a matter of taste.

Not sure why anyone would frown on big herbs in principal.  I thought that’s what made the razor clam dish so great. That’s not to say that I have anything against a piece of meat in a butter and cream bath, there’s a place for that too. But it’s a welcome change and seafood in particular lends itself to the fresh and bright approach.

We’ll be back soon – we already have plans for a couple weeks from now. Looking forward to it!

 

Bina Osteria (Avery and Washington Sts., Downtown)

Bina Osteria is ripe for stereotyping and prejudgment.  Between its trendy white interior and close proximity to the Sports Club LA, one is bound to think this place is going to be high on price and low on quality.  Add that to its claim to be an Italian restaurant, and Carlo and I, though curious, were planning on avoiding it, at least for a while.  But much to our surprise, my mother-in-law said she wanted to try it for her Mother’s Day dinner, and that’s how we ended up there on Saturday night.  Even more to our surprise, we were really impressed by the food.

The meal started with a frizzante red wine and a brief scuffle over whether we should get the 14-course tasting menu or order a la carte.  My father-in-law was adamantly against the tasting menu, which meant my mother-in-law insisted that we order it.  Being Mother’s Day, my mother-in-law prevailed and we embarked on what turned out to be a long, delicious meal.

More on the wine before I start on the food.  The wine I just mentioned was a 2006 Castello di Luzzano Oltrepo Pavese Bonarda from Lombardia, which was the perfect apperitivo.  It was mildly fruity, mildly frizzante, but unlike Brachetto (the other sparkling red that has been popping up in restaurants all over the place), it was dry, and not too expensive at $42/bottle even in a restaurant. 

For the meal we drank a 2006 Statti Gaglioppo, a calabrese wine in honor of my calabrese mother-in-law, which was also inexpensive at $46/bottle.  Initially it tasted and smelled a lot like banana candy, but it mellowed out and became a drinkable floral wine.  It’s nice to see wines from far-flung parts of Italy making it onto menus and it’s also nice to see that even the less expensive wines at Bina have been selected carefully.

Now onto the tasting menu.  Most, though not all, of the dishes were smaller versions of existing menu items.  We started with rustic country bread accompanied by lard and sea salt followed by two amuses bouches: an oyster with cherry gelee served in the shell (see below) and a spoonful of ricotta, salt and oil and a little shot of fizzy grappa cream.  A nice start to the meal.  The oyster tasted like real cherries and oysters, a combination I have never experienced.  I thought the ricotta was a perfect combination of creamy and salty, though I was told by my Italian compatriots that they’ve had better.  The grappa fizz was reminiscent of cream soda with a kick.

Our appetizer was called Seriola Marinata, which consisted of CleanFish yellowtail, pinenut confit, avocado, and peppercress.  The nice piece of fish on top of fresh avocado on top of a sheen of spicy/oily, almost arrabiata-like, sauce was delicious and different.

The Seriola was followed by THREE, yes THREE, pasta courses, and unbelievably, the table liked all of them, hardly complaining at all.  The first was perfectly prepared fresh gnocchi with calamari, clams, chorizo, and Meyer lemon confit.  The gnocchi were light and chewy, and the seafood balanced well with the spicy chorizo.  We voted on our favorites at the end of the meal and this one got the most mentions, a shocking revelation coming from my never-pleased-by-restaurant-pasta Italian family-in-law.  The gnocchi was followed by two “Spaghetti alla Carbonara” with house-made pancetta, slow cooked hen egg, and pecorino foam and two braised rabbit  tortellinis.   And for the final pasta course, we had Risotto with crispy sweetbreads, morel mushrooms, and aspargus. The house-made fresh pastas were excellent in both pasta dishes, as were the accoutrements, and the risotto was perfectly cooked al dente with lovely fresh morels and asparagus.  Though I think three good-sized pasta courses in a tasting menu might be a mistake, we loved every bite of them.

Onto the fish/seafood courses.  The first one was Atlantic Halibut coated with smoked potato ragu, beet pearls, and watercress (see below).  Carlo said this was his favorite.  I was losing steam at this point.  The potato cream was delicious and balanced nicely with the sweet beets.  Our other sea-faring course was Lobster with Lardo, garden salad gazpacho, picked ramps, and Clear Flour croutons.  This was my least-favorite dish of the evening.  The lobster was a little rubbery/stringy and I just wasn’t hungry anymore, meaning that I was only interested in eating really superlative food.  Carlo ate mine for me, so it wasn’t bad, just least favorite in a great meal.

Two more savory courses:  Foie Gras with English pea puree and morel mushrooms and Vermont Lamb with baby artichoke, taggiasca olives and Piquillo peppers.  I thought both of these dishes were excellent, which is impressive, because I was so full and tired at this point and I didn’t want to eat anything else.  The foie gras was silky and the peas were bright green and flavorful.  The lamb was perfectly cooked, moist and tender, and the accompaniments were very nice.  I just couldn’t eat them.

But that didn’t mean I was not up for our THREE, yes THREE, desserts.  The first was Moscato d’Asti Mousse with orange sorbet, honey cream, and sumac meringue served in a champagne flute.  Wow, I am going to replace root beer and vanilla ice cream with Moscato and orange sherbert from now on (see below).  This was really good and refreshing.  Next we had “Composition of Rhubarb” with a lemony butter cookie, rhubarb sorbet, lemon meringue, and candied elderflower.  Another beautiful, refreshing delicious dessert.  And finally we had the obligatory tiramisu, which was basically mascarpone cream and chocolate gelato on top of some coffee cookies.  I ignored the cookies, which were a little too crunchy to eat easily and stuck to the creamy stuff, which were both rich and delicious.  My in-laws tittered about how it wasn’t really tiramisu while they licked their plates clean.

And then we rolled ourselves home, full and looking forward to going back to Bina, but perhaps for the four-course prix-fixe menu next time.

The only real drawback to the meal was its four-hour duration.  Yes, we did order 14 courses of food and should expect to sit there for a good chunk of time.  But there were long lulls between all of the courses, which was nice in the beginning when we were getting warmed up, but as we got fuller, drunker and more tired, we grew a little impatient and disinterested in the food.  We attribute this to the restaurant being fairly new and unaccustomed to customers who take them up on the tasting menu.  This will undoubtedly improve as more and more Bostonians take notice of this great new addition to the city’s fine-dining repertoire.

 

Gnocchi Recipe a la no9 Gruppo

This is another recipe from Stir. First, boil/ bake 2 to 2 1/4 lb potatoes, peel them, and rice them. The ricer is important here as it is one of the few tools I know of that can remove any lumps from the potatoes. Liz likes lumps in her gnocchi, but she’s an unreasonable person.

Ricing the Potatoes

Let the potatoes cool and in the meantime you can set up your little gnocchi station:

Gnocchi Station

Sprinkle about 1 1/2 cups of flour about the potatoes and the cutting board and gently knead the flour into the potatoes with your fingers. Make a well in the middle of the potatoes into which you should crack two eggs and sprinkle a couple teaspoons of salt. Knead all the ingredients together with your hands, sprinkling more flour as needed, until it just forms a ball and the dough feels delicate and a little bit sticky. This is the difficult part as too much flour will make your gnocchi tough and stick to the roof of your mouth, while too little flour will make your gnocchi fall apart into mush in the water.

Dough it up

After you have your dough scrape your work surface clean, lightly flour it, and then cut the dough into 6 even pieces. Roll the piece into a rope and cut each rope into the desired size of your gnocchi. You can roll them at this point if you like round little gnoccho balls, or jut leave them in the rectangle type shapes below.

Chop, roll, cut

Transfer gnocchi to a well-floured parchment covered tray.

Gnoccho's unite

Throw the tray in the freezer and then when its time to cook, bring salted water to a boil and slip them in. If not using all at once, transfer the frozen gnocchi into Ziploc bags and put back in the freezer where they’ll keep for a couple of weeks. A couple minutes in the water should do it, they’ll float to the top when ready. Remove the gnocchi with a slotted spoon and transfer directly into a sautee pan with a thin layer of whatever sauce you have prepared.

And if you happen to have a white truffle lying around (i.e. a person to remain unnamed  smuggled it back in his suitcase from Piemonte) as I did back in October, then you will be hard-pressed to find a tastier combination than quickly sauteing the gnocchi in butter, grating some Parmesan, and shaving that sucker all over them.

Gnocchi w/ White Truffle

 

Erbaluce: 69 Church St, Bay Village, Boston

Liz, my parents and I went to Erbaluce last weekend. It was quite a memorable night for several reasons. Not the least of which was my dad getting a little bit soused and telling the same story about the hazards of flying Ryanair at least three times. He also kept asking Liz if she was poor. Not quite sure what that was about. But hey, it was the night before Easter and the wine was a-flowin’. This was thanks in large part to the incredible generosity of Chuck Draghi, the head chef and co-owner of Erbaluce, who selected several delicious  bottles from his collection of Northern Italian wines for us. We had met the chef before both as a server at no. 9 Park as well as in a class on Friulan wine at Stir. It takes a lot to impress my dad when it comes to knowledge about Italian wine and food and Chef Draghi is one of the few in the Boston area who has managed to accomplish that.

This is the second time Liz and I have been to Erbaluce and both times the chef has greeted each table in the restaurant with a small complimentary plate. This time, he brought some grilled octopus that came with a fresh salsa of different tomatoes and herbs. Very nice.

Then came the appetizers: razor clams, scallops, anchovies, and polenta. The razor clams were the winners here, but every dish was quite tasty, and I think an impressive demonstration of Erbaluce’s cooking M.O: simple, simple, simple. The dishes came with just a few subtle accompanying flavors, but above all you taste the fish. Fresh, whole herbs are another calling card of the food here. There will be no little sprigs of rosemary, but entire trees adorning your plate.

Native razor clams steamed with green peppercorns, leeks, and white wine. Delicious, I sopped up all the broth.

Scallops. My dad inhaled these before anyone else could try them so I assume they were good.

Fresh anchovies with lemon, black olive and green beans. Special of the night. The scales were so delicate, I just chomped these suckers down whole.

Polenta with tomatoes. My mom found the polenta a bit coarse and grainy, but Liz thought it was just right.

Next, the pastas:  I really want to say good things about them, but the pasta dishes are where Erbaluce strays from it’s own philosophy of simplicity and totally misses the mark. This is tragic since the housemade pasta is actually very good – it’s just lost in the sea of flavors. Of the four pastas ordered, three suffered from this: the pansoti, the gnocchi, and the fusili. My spaghi were a bit better in this respect, but still nothing that special.

Pansoti with sauteed greens, ricotta and a walnut lemon thyme pesto.

Gnocchi in a far-too-soupy ragu of wild boar . The gnocchi broke down into mush sitting in the liquid.

Fusili arrabbiata. The sauce was an odd combination of sweet and spicy.

Spaghi with clams and a tomato bronze fennel broth.

The meal got back on track with the meat courses. The signature rack of boar, the branzino, the veal, and the rabbit all stood out for the emphasis on the taste and quality of the meat itself.

Branzino. They offer to fillet it for you if desired, but how would you suck the eyeballs out if they did that?

Roasted rack of wild boar with a wild Concord grape and lavender mosto. Once again, my dad sucked it down before anyone could get their forks in there.

Lemon roasted veal loin. The sauce was on the sweet side (something that, oddly, was true of several dishes over the course of the night), but that didn’t offset the melting texture of the meat.

The Easter Bunny. Liz barely got through a bite of this, but that’s because she filled up on her polenta and the tasty bean puree that came out with the bread. My dad was flabbergasted at her lack of will and called her   “a total disappointment”.

The desserts were just okay. This is the Giandjua truffle.We also tried the orange and chocolate tart. Both were a little too rich for the end of a big meal.

Overall we were very happy with our meal. If the kitchen could get rid of the heavy hand with the pasta sauces then Erbaluce would be my favorite Italian restaurant in Boston.

 

Sportello. For lunch.

After very much enjoying our visit to Sportello for dinner, Liz and I decided to go back to try their lunch – the menu is significantly different from the dinner menu so as to warrant a separate trip. Not that we wouldn’t have gone back either way. We were again pleased with our meal and given Sportello’s proximity to downtown Boston (10 min walk from Post Office Sq.) I anticipate taking Liz out for a lot more lunches as the weather starts to warm up.

Isn’t it great to get something more than just bread and oil at the beginning of a meal? A dip, a cheese, a spread – it seems so simple to create and the psychological payoff for the diner is huge. The two times we have been to Sportello they have served some variant of fresh ricotta. This time it came with some yummy oil, sea salt and raisins.

We started off with creamy polenta with bolognese sauce. The polenta won’t be winning any health awards but it tastes so damn good, especially with the bolognese sauce which I’m fairly confident is this recipe. I’m interested in what Sportello will do for  a summer menu, though. This is the kind of dish you look forward to after a long cold day spent hiking or skiing. Not exactly warm-weather material. I’m sure they’ll come up with something equally delicious but not quite so hearty.

I had the strozzapreti with slow-braised rabbit and green olives. Mixed feelings about this one. The rabbit was tender and delicious but it came in a substantial broth of braising liquid. This would be fine with me except for the fact that the pasta was overcooked. It almost had the consistency of the noodles at the bottom of the chicken noodle soup vat in a high school cafeteria – like it had been sitting in the broth for quite some time. It could have used a little more variety of flavor as well. The salt of the meat, with the salt of the olive and the salt of the cheese could be overpowering for those who don’t spend their down time snorting Morton’s. I hesitate to advise against ordering it because it was quite tasty, but I prefer the other pasta dishes  I’ve had here.

Liz had the taleggio cheese panini with oven roasted tomato and tarragon. She loved the bread and the flavor combo but wanted more filling. Typical Liz. Always  more, more, more.

We had to get the budino with olive oil and sea salt again for dessert. Not too sweet. Not too salty. Perfect.

The prices for lunch are reasonable considering what you get. Soups under $10, sandwiches and polenta $12ish, and pasta’s for $15. Portions are big enough to get any one of these and be satisfied.

 

Bolognese Recipe a la No. 9 Gruppo (Stir, Butcher Shop, Sportello)

Got this recipe from Stir, Barbara Lynch’s demonstration kitchen in the South End. It’s the recipe used at Sportello and The Butcher Shop and it is damn delicious. The unique contribution is the addition of chicken livers to the standard array of ground meats. A pox on you if you omit the chicken livers.

Basically you make a battuto, soften it up in some oil, then add the chopped liver, some chopped sage, salt and pepper and cook it up until the livers just turn brown.

Start adding the ground meat browning a bit at a time as you add. The recipe calls for veal, pork, and lamb which is a great combo, though I’ve used a number of varieties of meat and different combinations that work just as well (beef, buffalo, boar, all pork, all lamb, etc…). At this point I like to add nutmeg and cinnamon as well. I guess you’re supposed to “pour off the fat”  now too, though why I would do that is beyond me. All that delicious flavor that will thicken and incorporate into the sauce with enough time is exactly what I don’t want to remove. Next comes the red wine, crank heat up to high and boil until it’s almost gone. I’ve been told that you should cook with the same wine you’re drinking, but I’d like to meet the person who could tell the difference. I use whatever is cheap or been opened for a while.

Next come the chopped tomatoes, chicken broth, and chopped basil…

Simmer on low until it reaches your desired consistency. I like it extra thick. Like sloppy joethick. If you aren’t going to pout off the fat then you’ll want to give it a good long while (1:30-2 hours) to make sure you’re not ending up with an oily sauce. Don’t worry if it gets a bit dry, the wetness will come by either adding some cream (as I did below) or just a little pasta water.

For a thick meat sauce like this fresh pasta is strongly recommended since the sauce will stick to fresh pasta far better than dried pasta. You will be surprised how little sauce you will need per serving. Once you cook the pasta just drop it straight into the sauce, mix around, and serve.Yum.

 

Drink and Sportello (348 Congress St.)

The one-two combo of Drink and Sportello rocked my world. I was all smiles. And all regrets that we didn’t get an apartment in Fort Point when we moved into the city several years ago. Curse someone‘s shortsightedness…. then again, Fort Point was mostly newly designed but empty warehouse conversions back then. Who could have foreseen its renaissance as a neighborhood teeming with newly designed but empty warehouse conversions along with a Barbara Lynch franchise. Not us.

Drink and Sportello, as well as a fine dining restaurant scheduled to open in late spring, are housed in the FP3 development that you’ve undoubtedly seen advertised across the Fort Point neighborhood with obnoxiously large banners giving cryptic invitations to explore their website. Drink occupies the basement floor of the complex. Though we only stopped in for a quick drink before dinner, we were impressed by the service, decor, and the tasty Cava we tried for a reasonable $9 a glass. Given our brief stay I’ll let this article do the talking for me. Though I will say that Barbara missed the mark a teensy bit if she was aiming to have a spot where construction workers would come in for a shot and a beer. I suppose they could, in theory. But by “in theory” I mean wearing the latest style from the clothing designer as that will be the minimum standard of hip that they’d have to achieve in order to fit in with the late twenties, early thirties after work crowd that the bar attracts. It’s very similar in feel to the Butcher Shop and B&G Oysters, and the day I see a fisherman duck in to B&G for a lobster roll will be the day construction workers make Drink their local haunt. That’s not a value judgment, it just is what it is.

We made our way up the interior staircase to Sportello and settled in to the casual, though not all that comfortable, stools at the large wrap around counter that comprises the restaurant’s seating chart. We decided to skip the wine (though the list is interesting and reasonably priced) and concentrate our energy on the food. Here’s what we got:

Spicy tomato soup w/ caraway grilled cheese

Chestnut bisque

Ricotta gnudi w/nutmeg brown butter, parmigiano

Bigoli w/clams, sea urchin, bottarga

Pork belly w/roasted apples

Braised short ribs w/ butter beans and sunchokes

Pistachio torte

Chocolate budino w/olive oil and salt

The four course meal does not seem to be the norm for Sportello. It’s more of a quick-bite place. But when the food is this good, get as many courses as you can squeeze in. The only dishes that didn’t impress were the tomato soup, fairly ordinary stuff, and the pistachio torte, which was disappointingly dry. Everything else was delicious, with the standouts being the gnudi, pork belly, and budino. Ricotta gnudi are gnocchi in shape and size, but with a much lighter texture (given the replacement of the potato with ricotta)- perfect for the dumpling lover that likes to save room for more food. The pork belly was your standard braised belly, crisped to finish, but went incredibly well with the apples and whatever else was on the plate. The budino was essentially a creamy chocolate torte, but the large chunks of salt and olive oil were perfect compliments.

The genius of Sportello, and the Italian lunch counter model in general, is that 95% of the cooking is complete before the doors even open for customers. Nearly everything on the menu (soups, sauces, fresh pasta, braised meats) can be made ahead of time and then re-heated or finished, leaving very little actual cooking to do when the orders come in (assemble a salad, sear a scallop, boil the pasta). Though the kitchen is directly behind the counter in full view of the customers, you won’t see chefs going crazy. More likely, they’re opening Tupperware and boiling water. The genius of Barbara Lynch is knowing which foods won’t suffer in the process, and which will actually benefit from the rest. This also make service very easy. We took a good long while finishing our soups, and at other establishments this might have caused problems (e.g. our next dish being prepared and having to sit in the kitchen while we finished) but once we were done, the gnocchi and fresh bigoli hit the water and 5 minutes later we’re eating a hot plate of perfectly cooked pasta.

The price tag on the meal was $114 ish with tip which, considering the amount we ordered and the healthy portion sizes across the board, is very reasonable. You could easily fill up with a soup and a pasta (or half a portion of pasta and an entree) and that would cost you $35ish each. If you are in Fort Point visting the ICA or have business to attend to at the convention center, then lunch at Sportello is a no-brainer. But it’s also worth making a special trip. The walk over the channel is pretty during the day or at night and the walk back will give you plenty of time to digest the quantity of food that you ought to eat while you’re there.

 

Scampo II

What better to way to celebrate the re-birth of our blog then by returning to its roots – the restaurant that started it all: Scampo. Enough time had passed since our first trip to Scampo that I was legitimately excited to go back. I had fond memories of the homemade mozzarella and my nightmares of the elephant ear bread – that absolutely absurd bread tepee that seemed more like the unfortunate product of a kindergarten art project than an actual piece of food- had finally begun to fade. This time we opted for the more sensible bread options of focaccia with robiola and the naan with prosciutto, both were damn tasty. Things got better when the mozzarella tasting arrived. Four different kinds of housemade mozzarella were served with some prosciutto, sliced pears, and some sort of honey/jam. Simple, delicious, even impressive. It is one of the best appetizers I’ve had in Boston.

Unfortunately, it was downhill from there. The pumpkin soup tasted and looked like butter soup, the duck and quince pizza was particularly oily and the entrees just didn’t make sense. Of the swordfish, the tagliatta (thinly sliced sirloin), and the beet ravioli stuffed with oxtail, the swordfish was the winner for no other reason than that it had the fewest components on the plate. The beet ravioli were smothered in horseradish “crema” and then drowned in broth, turning what might have been great, into a soup with some squirts of cream and red pasta leaking meat.  Even the tagliata came smothered in some kind of cream. The meat was cooked well, but the kitchen was doing its best to hide it.

So Scampo hasn’t changed much. What would be good food is getting bogged down by bad ideas and it’s still not worth the price. But if you go, get a glass of wine and a plate of fresh mozzarella. Heck, get two or three and call it a night.