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Switching Gears
10 years ago
Showing posts with label restaurant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label restaurant. Show all posts
Monday, January 18, 2010
Zing! Pizza Announces All You Can Eat II - Tuesday, January 19, 6-9pm
Mark Ostow, owner of Zing! Pizza, has declared a repeat of his very successful All You Can Eat night. For some small fee, you can go to Zing! Pizza and eat as much as you like, trying all their amazing, delicious, locally-sourced pizzas. My personal favor is the Blue October with butternut squash and blue cheese - mmm! For more information, see http://zingpizza.blogspot.com/.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
The Ultimate Locavore Meal: Beacon Hill Bistro
As a wonderful side benefit of donating money to the New Entry Sustainable Farming Project for a new Mobile Poultry Processing Unit, my husband Alex and I were invited to a locavore meal on Thursday, July 16th, prepared by Executive Chef Jason Bond at the Beacon Hill Bistro, located in the Beacon Hill Hotel on Charles St. in Boston.
And it was spectacular! Aside from getting to sit next to Jennifer Hashley (of Pete and Jen's Backyard Birds) herself, the food was phenomenally good. Of course, all of the ingredients came from Pete & Jen's own livestock and Verrill Farm's vegetables, so they were fresh and wonderful. The meal also came with an impressive selection of (regrettably not local) wines.
The Beacon Hill Bistro is a smallish restaurant with lovely arches and wood beams. It suffers a bit from poor acoustics - we had to shout to be heard throughout the meal, and I noticed that felt had been tacked to the undersides of the tables to help absorb some of that noise - but it's also cozy and comfortable. Be warned that the restrooms are not handicapped accessible (down two flights of stairs in the basement). The wait staff was wonderful and attentive with a well-informed somalier describing exactly where and how each of the wines was produced.
As we stood or sat down to chat, we nibbled on appetizers from three platters of pates and terrines (I had never even heard of terrine before - it's essentially upscale meatloaf made of finely chopped meat, cooked in an earthenware dish called a terrine, and served at room temperature, and it's as different from meatloaf as pate is from devilled ham). The pates were made from chicken or rabbit liver, and the terrines were made of pork, including one stuffed into the hoof of a pig. All were utterly delicious with amazingly smooth texture. There was an aspic that made the rounds of the tables but somehow never got back to me - o, woe! This was served with a selection of fresh breads and mustards. (Mustard was a recurring theme throughout the meal.)
The first course was an arugula salad with seared rabbit livers, grained mustard, and creme fraiche. This is according to the menu, and I have to say that I don't recall the creme fraiche at all, but the liver was tender and delicious in the mustard, and it was accompanied by a rabbit heart and kidney, both of which were astonishingly good. This was accompanied by the best wine I have ever tasted. Seriously. It was Jim Barr "The Lodge Hill" Dry Riesling, Clare Valley, 2008. Smooth, dry, and utterly without aftertaste, I could have happily drunk nothing but that wine the entire evening. Alex and I are planning to lay in a case of it.
The second course was the best chicken noodle soup I've ever had - no offense, Mom! Incredibly tender dark chicken meat with homemade egg (of course) noodles, carrots and peas and other vegetables in a strong, subtle broth. Marvelous. This was accompanied by a chardonnay that was probably pretty decent but suffered by comparison with the riesling (Domaine Talmard Macon Chardonnay, Bourgogne, 2007). I should also say that I've never really liked chardonnay, and this was no exception.
The entree knocked Alex's socks off; smoked Tamworth ham with glazed new carrots, kohlrabi, and cabernet radishes. Alex is a serious ham fan - his favorite breakfast these days is breakfast burrito with scrambled eggs, chunks of ham steak from Chestnut Farm, shredded cheddar cheese, and green chile. This ham blew away every other ham we'd ever tasted. It was almost sweet, it was so tender and flavorful, so the inevitable mustard balanced it very well. To our astonishment, the radish was roasted and utterly delicious. Alex was convinced it had to be a sweet onion and not a radish. I am dying to try this trick myself with the last few radishes in my garden. The ham was accompanied by a fairly nice syrah (Clos la Chance "Black Chinned" Syrah, Central Coast, 2005).
For dessert, we had "Just Dug Carrot Cake," and it totally lived up to its name. Carrot cake is my favorite kind of cake, and this one had carrots so fresh and wonderful, I almost didn't notice the cake. I was also distracted by the accompanying creme fraiche and cream cheese ice cream (this must be tasted to be believed - it's as creamy as you might imagine something with "cream" twice in its name, but not very sweet) as well as several candied herbs. We all had a great time trying to guess which herbs. The tarragon was easy, but we were stumped on the other two, which turned out to be shiso and angelica leaves. Wow! This was accompanied by a tiny glass of slightly effervescent strawberry wine every bit as good as the Riesling. This was not on the official menu, and I couldn't here the somalier's explanation of it, but I will be keeping my eye out for strawberry wine in the future.
It turned out to be Jen's birthday, with Pete's coming on the following week, so Chef Bond also brought out a chocolate cake for them, which the rest of us refused to touch on the grounds that a) it was theirs and they deserved to have all of it, and b) we were utterly stuffed. I did, however, get to taste some candied angelica stem (had to be removed in order to put the cake in a box), which was lovely. I've never had candied herbs before, and I'm deeply intrigued. The candied shiso really surprised me, and now I find myself wondering: candied sage? Candied cilantro? Hmm...
Chef Bond came out with the cake and spoke to us about his commitment to local food sources and the MPPU project. Apparently, he has gone out and helped Pete and Jen slaughter their chickens in the past. He described how wonderful it is to have this deep connection to the food he works with, and about the superior quality of locally-sourced meats and produce. Pete and Jen presented him with a framed set of photos of their livestock in appreciation of the meal.
Of course, this was a special dinner with special ingredients, but knowing the chef's commitment to local, sustainable food, I'd return to the Beacon Hill Bistro in a heartbeat. While the dinner menu is pricey ($20-30/entree), the lunch menu is nicely affordable, offering dishes like Tea-Cured Gravlax, Herbed Potato Salad, Green Beans, Baby Greens for $13.00 (intriguing) and Local Grass-Fed Beef Steak, Frites, Watercress and Madeira Butter Sauce for $15.00.
I highly recommend the Beacon Hill Bistro for its excellent food and commitment to local, sustainable food.
And it was spectacular! Aside from getting to sit next to Jennifer Hashley (of Pete and Jen's Backyard Birds) herself, the food was phenomenally good. Of course, all of the ingredients came from Pete & Jen's own livestock and Verrill Farm's vegetables, so they were fresh and wonderful. The meal also came with an impressive selection of (regrettably not local) wines.
The Beacon Hill Bistro is a smallish restaurant with lovely arches and wood beams. It suffers a bit from poor acoustics - we had to shout to be heard throughout the meal, and I noticed that felt had been tacked to the undersides of the tables to help absorb some of that noise - but it's also cozy and comfortable. Be warned that the restrooms are not handicapped accessible (down two flights of stairs in the basement). The wait staff was wonderful and attentive with a well-informed somalier describing exactly where and how each of the wines was produced.
As we stood or sat down to chat, we nibbled on appetizers from three platters of pates and terrines (I had never even heard of terrine before - it's essentially upscale meatloaf made of finely chopped meat, cooked in an earthenware dish called a terrine, and served at room temperature, and it's as different from meatloaf as pate is from devilled ham). The pates were made from chicken or rabbit liver, and the terrines were made of pork, including one stuffed into the hoof of a pig. All were utterly delicious with amazingly smooth texture. There was an aspic that made the rounds of the tables but somehow never got back to me - o, woe! This was served with a selection of fresh breads and mustards. (Mustard was a recurring theme throughout the meal.)
The first course was an arugula salad with seared rabbit livers, grained mustard, and creme fraiche. This is according to the menu, and I have to say that I don't recall the creme fraiche at all, but the liver was tender and delicious in the mustard, and it was accompanied by a rabbit heart and kidney, both of which were astonishingly good. This was accompanied by the best wine I have ever tasted. Seriously. It was Jim Barr "The Lodge Hill" Dry Riesling, Clare Valley, 2008. Smooth, dry, and utterly without aftertaste, I could have happily drunk nothing but that wine the entire evening. Alex and I are planning to lay in a case of it.
The second course was the best chicken noodle soup I've ever had - no offense, Mom! Incredibly tender dark chicken meat with homemade egg (of course) noodles, carrots and peas and other vegetables in a strong, subtle broth. Marvelous. This was accompanied by a chardonnay that was probably pretty decent but suffered by comparison with the riesling (Domaine Talmard Macon Chardonnay, Bourgogne, 2007). I should also say that I've never really liked chardonnay, and this was no exception.
The entree knocked Alex's socks off; smoked Tamworth ham with glazed new carrots, kohlrabi, and cabernet radishes. Alex is a serious ham fan - his favorite breakfast these days is breakfast burrito with scrambled eggs, chunks of ham steak from Chestnut Farm, shredded cheddar cheese, and green chile. This ham blew away every other ham we'd ever tasted. It was almost sweet, it was so tender and flavorful, so the inevitable mustard balanced it very well. To our astonishment, the radish was roasted and utterly delicious. Alex was convinced it had to be a sweet onion and not a radish. I am dying to try this trick myself with the last few radishes in my garden. The ham was accompanied by a fairly nice syrah (Clos la Chance "Black Chinned" Syrah, Central Coast, 2005).
For dessert, we had "Just Dug Carrot Cake," and it totally lived up to its name. Carrot cake is my favorite kind of cake, and this one had carrots so fresh and wonderful, I almost didn't notice the cake. I was also distracted by the accompanying creme fraiche and cream cheese ice cream (this must be tasted to be believed - it's as creamy as you might imagine something with "cream" twice in its name, but not very sweet) as well as several candied herbs. We all had a great time trying to guess which herbs. The tarragon was easy, but we were stumped on the other two, which turned out to be shiso and angelica leaves. Wow! This was accompanied by a tiny glass of slightly effervescent strawberry wine every bit as good as the Riesling. This was not on the official menu, and I couldn't here the somalier's explanation of it, but I will be keeping my eye out for strawberry wine in the future.
It turned out to be Jen's birthday, with Pete's coming on the following week, so Chef Bond also brought out a chocolate cake for them, which the rest of us refused to touch on the grounds that a) it was theirs and they deserved to have all of it, and b) we were utterly stuffed. I did, however, get to taste some candied angelica stem (had to be removed in order to put the cake in a box), which was lovely. I've never had candied herbs before, and I'm deeply intrigued. The candied shiso really surprised me, and now I find myself wondering: candied sage? Candied cilantro? Hmm...
Chef Bond came out with the cake and spoke to us about his commitment to local food sources and the MPPU project. Apparently, he has gone out and helped Pete and Jen slaughter their chickens in the past. He described how wonderful it is to have this deep connection to the food he works with, and about the superior quality of locally-sourced meats and produce. Pete and Jen presented him with a framed set of photos of their livestock in appreciation of the meal.
Of course, this was a special dinner with special ingredients, but knowing the chef's commitment to local, sustainable food, I'd return to the Beacon Hill Bistro in a heartbeat. While the dinner menu is pricey ($20-30/entree), the lunch menu is nicely affordable, offering dishes like Tea-Cured Gravlax, Herbed Potato Salad, Green Beans, Baby Greens for $13.00 (intriguing) and Local Grass-Fed Beef Steak, Frites, Watercress and Madeira Butter Sauce for $15.00.
I highly recommend the Beacon Hill Bistro for its excellent food and commitment to local, sustainable food.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Restaurant: Kitchen on Common
Last night, we decided to celebrate the vernal equinox by finding a new locavore restaurant and trying it out. My husband selected Kitchen on Common in Belmont's Cushing Square. I drove there directly from work and was hit with a deep sense of deja vu: Kitchen on Common happens to be located just two doors up Common St. from my former workplace, Firespout, a dotcom company long since gone bust.
Kitchen on Common's web site touts it as a restaurant that specializes in excellent food made from local ingredients. They list the following companies as their partners:
Kitchen on Common turned out to be a small, homey restaurant with about eight tables and two servers, one of whom looked like he may have been related to the owner who was working in the kitchen. My husband had called ahead, and the restaurant had arranged to have a table for us - a kind couple actually moved from a table for four to a table for two for us. They started us with a basket of Iggy's bread, fresh and tasty, but we would have enjoyed it more if we'd had knives with which to spread butter on our bread.
We ordered macaroni gratin and maple-roasted carrots for the kids. My husband and I started with split pea soup. I ordered the Grilled Lamb Steak with Sauteed Cabbage & Israeli
Cous-Cous Risotto, and my husband ordered the Farfalle with Roasted Mushrooms Pecorino and Roasted Garlic Cream, both of which are right up our alleys: my favorite meat is lamb, and my husband loves creamy sauces over pasta.
The food was amazing, consistently excellent. By far the best dish, surprisingly enough, was the carrots. The maple glaze roasted into them was not excessively sweet and served instead to accentuate the natural sweetness of the carrots. My husband and I gleefully finished what the girls could not.
Similarly, the macaroni gratin was some of the best mac'n'cheese I've ever had, with a nice sharp pecorino romano. My one complaint there is that the romano may have been too strong for the girls, because they inexplicably failed to eat it all.
The spilt pea soup, by contrast, was a little disappointing. I think that if it hadn't followed such excellent dishes, it would have been fine, but by comparison it seemed bland. I had expected the bacon to give it a good salty base, but I ended up adding salt, which I almost never do.
Our main dishes, when they finally came, were also wonderful. I never knew that cabbage could taste that good, but it was utterly marvelous, and I actually liked it more than I liked the lamb. The lamb, while tender and cooked perfectly medium as requested, was somehow boring in comparison with the other offerings, like the lovely Israeli couscous, about the size of tapioca with a firmer consistency and in a nice, savory sauce.
The farfalle pasta was surprisingly wonderful due to the excellent quality of the mushrooms. I'm pretty sure they had been dried, but they were moist and tender in the dish with a wonderful wood flavor that was not overpowered by the sauce. I completely fell in love with the dish, and fortunately my husband similarly fell in love with the lamb, so we ended up trading dishes.
For dessert, we got one chocolate chip cookie and one raspberry oatmeal bar. They were served heated, gooey and delicious. It's a testament to how good the main dishes were that we had to take some of the dessert home.
This might have been one of the best meals I had ever had if only the fabulous food had been matched by the service. But the service was frankly terrible. We had no silverware and no water even well after we had ordered our food. Our waitress failed to take our drink order, so we had to wait until she had brought the water to order chocolate milk for the girls and San Pellegrino for my husband.
The food came out very, very slowly. We had them bring out the girls' food first, which turned out to be a horrible mistake because it was another half hour before our main dishes came. Meanwhile, the girls got more and more restive, loud, and cranky. My almost-two-year-old, who is cutting her two-year molars, became increasingly inconsolable. When our food finally came, we had to fight to get the waitress's attention to order dessert so that the girls would have something to munch on while we tried to finish our meal in peace. But then, of course, they heated the desserts, which meant that we were largely done eating by the time they came.
We did not even check the bill, just paid the tab and a straight 15% tip and fled. Now, I know our children were loud and disruptive, but that's exactly when a server should pay more, not less, attention to the table. Keeping the food moving and the kids happy makes dinner a more pleasant experience for everyone in the restaurant. And even if we hadn't had the kids along, I would have considered the service slow. There was actually one couple who had arrived before us and were still there as we left, likely because we rushed to get out as quickly as possible.
This actually seems to be a common theme: we've had a similar experience at Stone Hearth Pizza. It seems like a restaurant can be either local or family friendly but not both, unless you want to pay exhorbitant amounts of money and go to Henrietta's Table. And even then, that's cheating - there's a nearby hotel lobby where high-energy children can run around and burn off the calories they've just consumed. At one point in our meal, my husband turned to me and said, "I miss Boloco," referring to the failed restaurant in Davis Square with a nice kids' corner, now taken over by Green Tomato II, which still has the kid's corner but offers miserable cafeteria-style food.
Ultimately, while we loved the food at Kitchen on Common, we were seriously disappointed by the service. It would be fine for a leisurely meal for two adults, but it's a terrible venue for kids. If you want to your kids to dine on their fare, I recommend takeout.
Readers' Challenge: Where is your favorite place to eat with your children that offers local fare?
Kitchen on Common's web site touts it as a restaurant that specializes in excellent food made from local ingredients. They list the following companies as their partners:
- Gretta Anderson/Belmont Farm CSA – Belmont, MA
- Iggy’s Bread of the World - Cambridge, MA
- Baer’s Best Beans - Hamilton, MA
- Vermont Butter & Cheese Company - Websterville, VT
- Coming Soon - Tea from The Thymely Gardener - Belmont, MA
Kitchen on Common turned out to be a small, homey restaurant with about eight tables and two servers, one of whom looked like he may have been related to the owner who was working in the kitchen. My husband had called ahead, and the restaurant had arranged to have a table for us - a kind couple actually moved from a table for four to a table for two for us. They started us with a basket of Iggy's bread, fresh and tasty, but we would have enjoyed it more if we'd had knives with which to spread butter on our bread.
We ordered macaroni gratin and maple-roasted carrots for the kids. My husband and I started with split pea soup. I ordered the Grilled Lamb Steak with Sauteed Cabbage & Israeli
Cous-Cous Risotto, and my husband ordered the Farfalle with Roasted Mushrooms Pecorino and Roasted Garlic Cream, both of which are right up our alleys: my favorite meat is lamb, and my husband loves creamy sauces over pasta.
The food was amazing, consistently excellent. By far the best dish, surprisingly enough, was the carrots. The maple glaze roasted into them was not excessively sweet and served instead to accentuate the natural sweetness of the carrots. My husband and I gleefully finished what the girls could not.
Similarly, the macaroni gratin was some of the best mac'n'cheese I've ever had, with a nice sharp pecorino romano. My one complaint there is that the romano may have been too strong for the girls, because they inexplicably failed to eat it all.
The spilt pea soup, by contrast, was a little disappointing. I think that if it hadn't followed such excellent dishes, it would have been fine, but by comparison it seemed bland. I had expected the bacon to give it a good salty base, but I ended up adding salt, which I almost never do.
Our main dishes, when they finally came, were also wonderful. I never knew that cabbage could taste that good, but it was utterly marvelous, and I actually liked it more than I liked the lamb. The lamb, while tender and cooked perfectly medium as requested, was somehow boring in comparison with the other offerings, like the lovely Israeli couscous, about the size of tapioca with a firmer consistency and in a nice, savory sauce.
The farfalle pasta was surprisingly wonderful due to the excellent quality of the mushrooms. I'm pretty sure they had been dried, but they were moist and tender in the dish with a wonderful wood flavor that was not overpowered by the sauce. I completely fell in love with the dish, and fortunately my husband similarly fell in love with the lamb, so we ended up trading dishes.
For dessert, we got one chocolate chip cookie and one raspberry oatmeal bar. They were served heated, gooey and delicious. It's a testament to how good the main dishes were that we had to take some of the dessert home.
This might have been one of the best meals I had ever had if only the fabulous food had been matched by the service. But the service was frankly terrible. We had no silverware and no water even well after we had ordered our food. Our waitress failed to take our drink order, so we had to wait until she had brought the water to order chocolate milk for the girls and San Pellegrino for my husband.
The food came out very, very slowly. We had them bring out the girls' food first, which turned out to be a horrible mistake because it was another half hour before our main dishes came. Meanwhile, the girls got more and more restive, loud, and cranky. My almost-two-year-old, who is cutting her two-year molars, became increasingly inconsolable. When our food finally came, we had to fight to get the waitress's attention to order dessert so that the girls would have something to munch on while we tried to finish our meal in peace. But then, of course, they heated the desserts, which meant that we were largely done eating by the time they came.
We did not even check the bill, just paid the tab and a straight 15% tip and fled. Now, I know our children were loud and disruptive, but that's exactly when a server should pay more, not less, attention to the table. Keeping the food moving and the kids happy makes dinner a more pleasant experience for everyone in the restaurant. And even if we hadn't had the kids along, I would have considered the service slow. There was actually one couple who had arrived before us and were still there as we left, likely because we rushed to get out as quickly as possible.
This actually seems to be a common theme: we've had a similar experience at Stone Hearth Pizza. It seems like a restaurant can be either local or family friendly but not both, unless you want to pay exhorbitant amounts of money and go to Henrietta's Table. And even then, that's cheating - there's a nearby hotel lobby where high-energy children can run around and burn off the calories they've just consumed. At one point in our meal, my husband turned to me and said, "I miss Boloco," referring to the failed restaurant in Davis Square with a nice kids' corner, now taken over by Green Tomato II, which still has the kid's corner but offers miserable cafeteria-style food.
Ultimately, while we loved the food at Kitchen on Common, we were seriously disappointed by the service. It would be fine for a leisurely meal for two adults, but it's a terrible venue for kids. If you want to your kids to dine on their fare, I recommend takeout.
Readers' Challenge: Where is your favorite place to eat with your children that offers local fare?
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