Field Trip: Boston
One of the many reasons I love my readers: I ask a simple question about the food scene in Boston, and you all come back with a flood of advice.
International Puzzle Party's activities only left us time to sip at the wellspring of your suggestions, but twice we snuck out to the hot and humid city, and thanks to you we ate well wherever we emerged from the T. (See Melissa's whole photo set of the trip.)
Photo by Melissa Schneider.
The Boston Ice Cream War
"People in Boston take their ice cream seriously," said our friend Pavel. The city's residents supposedly eat more ice cream per capita than any other urban population. No wonder a fierce ice cream debate erupted in my comments. Toscanini's or Christina's? Christina's or Herrell's? Toscanini's or Herrell's? You couldn't agree.
Melissa and I took the middle ground and tried them all.
We started at the Harvard Yard site of Toscanini's, the pervasive chain that serves as the default answer to the "Best Ice Cream" question. Our eyes slid over the small, hip-café interior and onto the day's menu. Toscanini's favors ice creams packed with cookies or candy. We ordered Grasshopper—think Cookies 'n' Cream with Thin Mints—and Ginger Snap Molasses. The Grasshopper's dense cookie mix-in made it difficult to taste the ice cream that held it together, but the Ginger Snap Molasses reined in the ratio of ginger snaps to a smoky molasses-flavored ice cream. This flavor won our informal "best of tasting" award. (We tried it again at another Toscanini's that evening, but I didn't write down my notes on that outing.)
Herrell's has a classic ice-cream-shop feel, with kitschy tropical island murals on the walls and slow oldies on the radio. The menu hints at a more creative "mixmaster" than Toscanini's, with flavors such as Purple Cow, black raspberry ice cream with white chocolate. Maybe the simple route was a mistake: My vanilla had a dilute taste that reminded me of the frappes my grandparents make with blended milk and vanilla syrup. Melissa's chocolate tasted like a Fudgsicle. But both had an airy, smooth texture that none of the other ice creams approached.
Dinner (see below) was a few doors down from Christina's, a single-location ice creamery in a city of chains. The ice cream had a smooth texture and the Banana Cinnamon balanced delicate flavors against each other. My fellow tasters liked Gind's Mocha Explosion (I don't like coffee). Christina's gets the nod for overall quality, and my inner snob would champion their cause if I lived in Boston. But Toscanini's Ginger Snap Molasses was a hard act to follow.
Photo by Melissa Schneider.
Saturday's Dinner: East Coast Grill
The mediocre food at IPP's events left us hungry for a real meal at East Coast Grill, which our friend meriko recommended, as did OWF reader Larry. Cookbook author Chris Schlesinger owns the restaurant, which serves true barbecue alongside the fresh seafood you'll find everywhere in Boston. If we lived in the area, East Coast Grill would become a favorite casual dinner spot, especially with Games People Play's impressive inventory of mechanical puzzles just a few blocks away.
After a drink at the packed bar, the waiter led the four of us—our friends Pavel and Kathleen and Melissa and I—through the noisy restaurant to our back-area table and left us with menus and a small bowl of pickles, whose acidic bite clears the palate and whets the appetite. (I often find inspiration in Quick Pickles, a book by Schlesinger and his pickle chef.)
Melissa and I each ordered a stomach-stretching line-up of appetizer, half a raw bar platter, and a barbecue sampler. I preferred her ginger and tuna sausage dumplings to my fried soft shell crab on a succotash bed, but both appetizers had us licking our lips. The raw bar platter was a fruits de mer plate heaped with fresh shrimp, just-shucked oysters, and pre-cracked crab legs. The barbecue was delicious, especially the pulled pork, an almost pudding-like pile of piggy goodness. The brisket was the least interesting item on the platter, but run-of-the-mill barbecue is still one of humanity's greatest treats. I made a good-sized dent in the sides: slightly spicy beans and a large cube of lofty cornbread.
The wine list's two pages of interesting bottles suggest a thoughtful buyer, but the restaurant doesn't offer much in the way of on-floor wine assistance. The general manager was the only person there who could talk about the plusses and minuses of different wines. It's not her fault that we didn't like her recommendation—tastes vary—but I'd expect a wine-savvy person to warn us that the Tohu Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand is a 180° turn from that region's normal wines, not just "slightly sweeter." We trusted our own instincts to good effect with the Aillende Rioja from Spain. The restaurant makes a number of mixed drinks, and Melissa gave a thumbs-up to the margarita she drank before dinner (while I had a glass of rosé).
Photo by Melissa Schneider.
Monday Lunch: Locke-Ober
OWF reader Jo suggested Locke-Ober near Boston Commons, but as I stood outside and read the news clippings, I remembered a 2002 Saveur article about this bastion of old-school Boston food. The article used a couple thousand words to say the same thing Jo wrote in a few sentences. The restaurant used to be a men's club where the rich and influential dined and relaxed, cutting deals that kept power in their hands. In 1972, the restaurant admitted women to the main dining room, and in 2001 a famous local chef named Lydia Shire took control of the restaurant.
She won the bid against other regional chefs by promising to preserve Locke-Ober's nostalgic cuisine, with dishes such as Crab Louis, lobster stew, and Indian pudding.
The restaurant maintains its anachronistic looks and attitudes. My jeans kept us out of the dining room, whose dark wood, brass highlights, and ancient chafing dishes evoke the 1920's. The experienced waiters dress in black vests, bowties, and long-sleeved white shirts. They take your order from a brasserie-style menu framed with a salmon-colored border that meets in an decorated oval at the top of the page. The hefty wine list features French favorites from Bordeaux and Burgundy as well as American mainstays.
My raw oyster platter featured six local oysters, each swimming in the briny liquid called "liquor" and each sliding into my mouth with no effort and no shells—the work of a master shucker. Shire allows modern influences to seep into the stodgy dishes, such as a mignonette with raspberry vinegar in place of the traditional red wine vinegar. I had a glass of Sancerre with the oysters, and a Côtes-du-Rhône with my "potted" escargot (snails served in little cups instead of their shells) and rum-tobacco smoked salmon. The last included the garnishes you'd expect: finely diced red onion, capers, hard-boiled egg yolk, and pumpernickel. The escargot had a fleshy feel and a garlicky taste, and I used the croutons to soak up the aromatic oil in the bottom of each "pot." The tobacco in the salmon came through on the finish, adding an earthy smoky note to a flavorful fish. Melissa liked both her Crab Louis and the lobster club, which comes with a tall bird's nest of "root chips."
Other Food
As some of you predicted, the summer weather left us little taste for hot chocolate, but we did stop in at L.A. Burdick to examine their wares. Melissa enjoyed an iced latte while I gulped down a tart lemonade. We negotiated with each other for more than our share of the delicate and chewy macaroons—one pistachio and one ginger. Signs that explain the chocolate shop's philosophy suggest quality-conscious owners, so it's worth a visit on a less oppressive day.
We girded for our plane flight with lunch at Locke-Ober, but also with a rustic potato garlic loaf from Five Loaves Bakery, whose eye-catching inventory sells out quickly at the City Hall Plaza market in downtown Boston. For good reason.
Thanks again to everyone for the great advice. I'm sorry we couldn't sample all your suggestions, and that we couldn't arrange a meet-up. We'll plan better next time I head off to a puzzle collector's convention.
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