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

 

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.

 

Kingston Station (Kingston Street, Boston)

I had a “business” lunch at Kingston Station the other day, and though it was brief, I thought I’d write up a few impressions.  Overall, it’s a good place for a mid-week lunch with colleagues.  The atmosphere is casual and comfortable.  We sat at a long wooden table that my more familiar co-worker said only comes out for lunch.  I liked the table, though I might have liked it less if we had been forced to share it with others.  The service is extremely friendly though a little spacey.  And the food is pretty good to good.  I had a Nicoise Salad with seared tuna.  Though a little mushy, the tuna was good, neither the watery canned tuna nor the cooked til it’s gray tuna that one often finds on pub salads.    I wish the salad had more mixed greens; it was mostly frisee.  Other than that, I give it solid marks.  I would have preferred to order a burger and fries or fish and chips like my co-workers, but I had already spent my weekly quota of red meat and fried food.   The fried fish looked beautiful and I tried some fries, which were tasty, particularly when compared to my frisee.  The only significant disappointment was that I did not get a chance to order dessert.  It’s not that often that I am lucky enough to be offered both bread pudding and a banana split, but alas, we were not there to linger.  I will happily go back to Kingston Station to get a banana split, and next time I’ll order a burger.

 

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.

 

Wagamama (Faneuil Hall, Boston)

Unless you’re craving clam chowder in a bread bowl, Faneuil Hall is one of the worst places in Boston to have a fulfilling dining experience. It is full of faux Irish pubs and tourists, and generally most locals steer clear of the place unless they have family in town or are cutting through to get to the North End. That is why it is to my great surprise that I have eaten lunch at Faneuil Hall 5 times in the last 4 months, including my birthday lunch with co-workers. I have even waited in line to eat there. I suffered all of these embarrassments for Wagamama, a pan-Asian, now international, chain restaurant where you have to sit at cafeteria tables elbow-to-elbow with people you don’t know, and where the servers bring your food at any time and in any order they feel like. And to be fair, it’s not even that good.

I initially went to the Faneuil Hall Wagamama out of curiosity. Some co-workers were going, and I wondered if it would be the same as the dozen Wagamamas I regularly patronized while studying in London. It was. It’s the same room, the same menu, the same tatooed and pierced servers (I’m convinced the Wagamama establishment requires them to wear 15 pieces of flare, which include these piercings and tattoos, as well as black skinny jeans and asymmetrical haircuts). During this inaugural visit, I tried to remember what I ordered at the Wagamamas in London, because there was definitely something I ordered. That’s another strange thing about Wagamama–everyone I know has a thing they order there, including myself. That was true in London and it’s true of my colleagues in Boston. And I don’t like anything else there except for the one thing I order. In any event, I couldn’t remember what I ordered in London so I got ramen, which I didn’t like. It’s supposedly their signature dish, or at least features in their signature picture of a child with his head in a bowl, but it’s bland and the noodles are mushy, and there isn’t enough meat.

I thought this disappointment would be the end of my Boston Wagamama experiment, but a month or so later, a friend from out of town called for a spontaneous lunch and she wanted to go to Wagamama (she also had fond memories of studying in London). And it was on this second trip that I found my new go-to meal: raw salad and duck gyoza, which actually are both dubbed “side dishes,” a territory I mistakenly never delved into in London. They would be called appetizers in other restaurants but Wagamama doesn’t believe in “order” so they are just side dishes that may come before, during, or after the rest of your meal. The duck gyoza are deep-fried and served with a cherry-hoisin sauce, and their aroma and flavor seem to get better every time I visit. The raw salad is basically just dressed greens with a few red onions and carrots and crispy fried shallots on top, but the house dressing is very tasty and the leaves are perfectly dressed, and I’m actually willing to wait in line for what is a lettuce salad. And to add insult to injury, some of the lettuce on yesterday’s salad was sort of slimy and mushy, but I doubt that’ll stop me from feeding my addiction. I am toying with the idea that Wagamama is actually adding addictive chemicals to the food (or maybe it’s fat and sugar), because I just can’t figure out what keeps bringing me back to this place that isn’t that cheap, isn’t that comfortable, and where the food is generally mediocre and inauthentic. Except for the duck gyoza, which is a triumph.

 

Lobby (Broad Street, Boston)

(Liz is interrupting my string of vacation posts. How incredibly rude.)

I was prepared to hate Lobby. The name “Lobby” suggested to me a desperate need to be trendy and hip. The food just sounded boring and mediocre. But after having lunch there on Friday, I am loathe to admit that I sort of liked it.

I was almost right about the food. It was just okay. Some things were good: the clam chowder my colleague ordered was tasty and not as viscous as most clam chowders. The salads my other colleagues ordered looked pretty fresh. My burger and fries were decent: nothing mind-blowing, but the fries were hot and well-seasoned and my burger actually came medium rare as I had ordered. Nonetheless, my other colleague said that his Seared Sea Scallop Pasta with pesto was bland and from what I could tell, the scallops were overcooked. My other colleague thought his fish and chips were extremely greasy, even for fish and chips, which are naturally greasy. The desserts sounded good (a trio of ice cream sandwiches, yum) but we had an ice cream party at work to look forward to (lawyers have fun too…) so we forewent them.

I don’t want to dwell on the food because I had such a limited experience with it and because the food isn’t really the best reason to go to Lobby. The atmosphere was actually really great. It has a modern decor, with dark wood tables and walls, a backlit bar, and a mix of banquettes and low tables with loungey chairs around them. This could have been weird for a business lunch, but it is subtle enough to look fresh and not too nightclubish. The room is tiny, maybe big enough to hold 20-30 patrons, and someone commented that it felt like a boutique hotel’s bar.

Since it was a warm day, Lobby opened up the front wall of the restaurant to face the new post-Big-Dig Greenway, which let in nice light and a gentle breeze. The service, though a little slow, was welcoming and friendly. A mix of modern jazz (eg Soulive) and electronica (eg St. Germain) played while we ate, which again, could have been weird for a business lunch, but it was soft enough to be nice background music without overwhelming the conversation.

Overall, Lobby is an unexpectedly comfortable place with good enough food. Though we had to rush back for the ice cream party, it felt like the kind of place where one might linger over lunch on a nice day.