Lucca – North End

Yue had her birthday over the weekend, and in the interest of politeness, I won’t divulge just how old she turned. That said, I can elaborate on was the birthday dinner I arranged, and that will be the focus of this post. A birthday seemed like a good opportunity to break out of our usual Back Bay-Allston Village orbit, and Yue is always ready for Italian food, so I looked into a couple restaurants in the North End and settled on Lucca, one of the very first eateries on the North End’s main drag of Hanover Street.

The main dining room of Lucca is loud and bustling, so it’s a little difficult to carry on a conversation, and that’s of course where we wound up, but there was a smaller cellar area that had fewer tables and seemed much quieter. If we return, I may request to sit there, if only to be spared the press of constant noise.

Yue and I are both wont to opt for Italian food when we’re in the mood for more formal (or at least Western-style) dining, if only because you never leave hungry. In our experience, too many elevated dining experiences or gourmet options leave a body wanting something a little more filling. Fortunately, you don’t really run into that situation with pasta. Lucca’s portions are in keeping with that philosophy, and we found that they were just enough to fill us up without leaving us feeling uncomfortably bloated.

I ordered a hearty beef rigatoni, while Yue went for a slightly spicy shrimp linguine. The pictures sort of make the portions look smaller than they are, but the dish size was definitely enough for the two of us. The spicy notes of the linguine took us a bit by surprise, if only because we weren’t expecting it.

Because no birthday dinner is complete without a dessert course, I ordered a chocolate torte. Once we got the flour-less chocolate cake, we managed to forget that we were completely full, or at least we found enough room for the cake. It was served with a side garnish of pistachios and pistachio ice cream, which has never been my favorite, but the flavor and texture of the nuts complimented the rich chocolate well.

We had thought to plan the rest of the night as we went along, but all that meant was that when dinner was over, we were all dressed up with no idea where to go. After a little deliberation, we decided to take a quick Uber ride across town to Sonsie in Back Bay, which we’ve written up for brunch before on the blog, way back in January. We haven’t been back to Sonsie since the winter, despite it being right by where we work, but we thought that Sonsie’s cafe-style seating would be a nice way to kick back and enjoy a cocktail. We finished off the night with a warm spiked cider for Yue and a smoky maple-infused bourbon for me.

Pagu – Central Square

If you’ve been following our Instagram, you’ll have noticed that we went dark for a little while last month, and then started posting a bunch of dishes geotagged to locations in China. Yue and I had a pretty tumultuous September, between our trip to China and settling in after our move, so we haven’t really been out to eat much, and so we let our activity here lapse a bit. I made the decision not to write up any posts about the food we ate in China, not in the least because I couldn’t keep the names of the dishes in my head. But now we’re back and in the swing of things, so hopefully this space will be back to the usual level of activity shortly!

But now that we’re back in Boston, Yue and I are looking into restaurants we haven’t been to yet, because before we left we fell into a bit of a rut. We’ve both heard about Pagu through the grapevine, and we’ve walked past it a few times on our forays to the Central Square bars, and since we were feeling small plates over the weekend, we decided to finally give it a try.

Pagu is an interesting sort of Asian fusion, combining Japanese-style dishes with Spanish spices in tapas-style dining. The menu is fairly eclectic, and divided up by category, so you can easily skim through the more traditional meat, vegetable, and cheese dishes, but also the Japanese-inspired dumplings, rice, and noodles. We tried a few of the dishes, but there were a few more we were interested in sampling, so we’ll have to make a return trip at some point.

We started off with an order of wafflettas, which you can see in the bottom right picture. They’re made from a combination of melted mozzarella cheese and caramelized shallots, which give it a crispy exterior shell and a creamy and savory interior. We followed it up with an order of delicious curried crab cakes.

We also ordered a fried chicken cutlet made with a special house sauce, and that proved to be the highlight of the meal, with a great balance of flavors and a spicy note to add a bit of nuance. We finished off with an order of mushroom mazemen, a kind of ramen in a thick sauce rather than broth. The earthy flavor of the noodles was a fitting end to the medley of different tastes we tried out, and Yue is bound to be favorably inclined to any restaurant where she can get both fried chicken and noodles.

Pagu is worth a visit if you happen to be in the neighborhood, especially since Yue and I find restaurants in Cambridge to be more lackluster than otherwise, so we’re always happy to find a diamond in the rough. It’s probably best to make a reservation, as tables tend to fill up fast, though we managed to grab seats at the bar.

Green Street – Central Square, Cambridge

Lately, Yue and I have been going to the same handful of bars every weekend. That’s probably something that most Bostonians can relate to; once you’ve found a bar or two that you like, you just keep gravitating back to it. Sometimes it’s the atmosphere, sometimes it’s the cocktail list, sometimes it’s the prices, but there’s always something that makes it just better to you. We try to branch out every so often, but we usually wind up disappointed. Lately we’ve been playing it safe, but I was in the mood to try something new, and I recently heard about Green Street, so I thought we would check it out.

Set one street over from the Central Square Red Line stop, Green Street doesn’t have to deal with the hustle and bustle of Mass Ave, nor does it need the impressive storefront that most Mass Ave bars use to lure in customers. It’s in a small, unassuming brick building sandwiched between parking garages. But inside is a dusky little pub with a robust cocktail menu and tap list. Green Street carries plenty of gin cocktails (which aren’t really our cup of tea), but they also have plenty of vodka and whiskey drinks too, which are more our speed. They’re lacking in rum drinks, and that’s a little surprising considering most bars we frequent have at least a few rum options.

We also saw that Green Street had an interesting food menu, so we thought we’d check them out for dinner and drinks. I had wanted to try a whiskey and apple cider cocktail, but apparently they were out of the cider, so I settled for a whiskey and ginger beer concoction, while Yue went with a vodka and grapefruit number. The drinks came quick, and they were pretty good, especially considering that Green Street’s cocktail prices are a few bucks cheaper than everywhere else in the neighborhood (the beer prices, on the other hand, look to be a few dollars more expensive). We also ordered an assortment of appetizers to do a tapas style meal.

The food service was fairly slow, and judging from the Google and Yelp reviews, this is a pretty common problem. We were sitting around for probably about half and hour. There were only two servers, and it looked like they were also handling drink orders. The apps themselves were… average, I suppose. The short rib was good enough, but most of it was fat rather than meat, which was a bit disappointing. The fish tacos and calamari were also just okay; good enough to keep eating but nothing special. The only real highlight were the curry fries, and they were a treat.

I think we’ll probably go back to Green Street for drinks, but I don’t think we’ll return for the food. It was a bit lackluster, and ultimately there are better places to go in Central. But as far as a place to grab a few drinks, it’s worth a second look.

Russell House Tavern – Harvard Square

The best time to go to Harvard Square is in the summer, where the warm weather makes for great al fresco dining, and the school term isn’t in session, so the wait times for tables aren’t as inflated. Yue had mentioned Russell House Tavern a few times, but I’d never been before, so we thought this past weekend was a good time to try it out. We sat out on their patio, and managed to get in just before the dinner rush. The menu is pretty varied, has a few interesting entrees, a raw bar section, small plates, and flatbreads. The cocktail menu is likewise diverse, with a good selection of vodka, rum, whiskey and gin drinks, for whatever your fancy might be. They also have a robust beer and wine menu, but it skews towards the hipster-y crowd, meaning it’s heavy on IPAs and light on anything actually palatable. They do have some interesting local craft brews and at least one good stout, but if you’re a dark beer fan like me, you’re better off looking elsewhere (and probably not in Cambridge at all, if we’re being honest).

Yue and I decided we’d do some shareable plates, so we ordered calamari, because Yue can never resist it when she sees it on the menu, a flatbread pizza with steak, blue cheese, arugula and fresh cherry tomatoes, and tuna tartar. The tuna was served mixed with a chipotle spice, giving it a sharp twist on the tongue. Yue thought it was a bit much, but I found it pretty enjoyable. If spicy isn’t your thing, it’s probably not to your taste, but if you’re looking for something a little more exciting for your palate than the standard elevated American pub grub Russell House trucks in, it’s a solid option.

The pizza was good too, and very summery. I don’t know if Russell House changes their menu seasonally, and if this is a more seasonal addition, but it definitely fit this past weekend, and the ingredients were very fresh. The calamari was also quite good, even if it was buried under a large pile of arugula.

For dessert, we hearkened back to our NOLA trip about two months ago and ordered a pecan bred pudding. This was probably the highlight of the meal, and a great cap to a filling dinner.

Parish Cafe – Boylston Street

Just a stone’s throw away from the public garden, not far from stairs to Arlington station is the Parish Cafe, serving up interesting and inventive sandwiches that show off some of the best of what the Boston culinary scene has to offer. That’s not hyperbole or an idle boast, Parish’s sandwich menu is made up of creations designed by local chefs of national renown. Some of the talent featured are the head chefs at some other places Yue and I frequent, like Hojoko, Sweet Cheeks, and Flour Bakery, and others that have been on our radar for a little while, like Deuxave, Bondir, and Blue Dragon. Their menu is actually pretty handy for planning your next epicurean excursion, now that I think about it.

I ordered the Kenneth, concocted by Parish’s own chef, a simple but summery sandwich made with grilled chicken and a bleu cheese pesto mayo, topped by an assortment of summer vegetables and plenty of onions. It was a bit messy, and the open face of the sandwich meant that it started to fall apart in my hands, but it was just the right kind of fare for the turn of the season. Yue had the Mexican Meatball, designed by the chef of the Tip Tap Room, a slightly spicier take on a meatball melt featuring cilantro infused meatballs, a chipotle and jalapeno mayo and pepperjack cheese. She definitely got the better dish this time, and I highly recommend the sandwich.

Parish is ideally located for a quick bite after a day of lounging and dog watching in the public garden, or a stopover on the way to a Sox game at Fenway. They also have a fairly robust beer list (though for some inexplicable reason, no Sam Adams) and some inventive cocktails and mocktails. Yue and I have found ourselves saying that we need to go back to several places lately, but after the trouble we went through narrowing down what we wanted off of Parish’s menu (so many good options to choose from!) it’s a safe bet that we’ll be back here sooner rather than later.

75 Chestnut – Beacon Hill

When I think of Beacon Hill, I’m more inclined to think of it as a place with fashionable boutiques and good Instagram pictures, and not exactly a dining hot spot. I know there are a few restaurants and pubs in the neighborhood, but I’ve never really been there at a time that would have been convenient to have something to eat. Still, 75 Chestnut has been on my radar for a little while now, and this weekend seemed like a good time to go and check it out.

Tucked one a side street just off Beacon Hill’s main thoroughfare and featuring well-manicured window boxes, 75 Chestnut’s dimly lit interior has comfortable booth-style seating along wood-paneled walls. It’s a tasteful fusion of all the aspects one could expect from a comfortable Boston Brahmin haunt. The food reflects this, being an upscale take on American comfort foods. 75 Chestnut has a solid array salads, sandwiches, and entrees that, while nicer than the standard pub grub fare you could expect at a local bar, are still quintessentially American favorites. They also have a sizable cocktail menu made up of just the sort of drinks you would expect a place like this to have, with a focus on gin and whiskeys, along with seasonal drinks (currently strawberry-based summery cocktails and sangria).

The whole menu looks really good, but eventually we each settled on a single dish. Yue had a New England-style seafood soup, with a full-bodied red broth full of shrimp, scallops, chopped potato and haddock, while I chose the honey Dijon pork chop, served atop a bed of fingerling potatoes, mushrooms, carrots and asparagus. Yue and I have been eating a lot of eastern food lately, so I was happy to have a change of pace to such solid, hearty, American fare. The portions are a good size, enough to fill you up without overfilling you. We’ll have to go back, if only to try a few other things on the menu that caught my eye, and next time we’ll hopefully get to sit near the large picture window that takes up much of the front of the restaurant.

75 Chestnut makes for a good lunch or dinner stop if you have been wandering Boston all day, or are looking for a quiet place to grab a bite after work, away from the hustle and bustle of the happy hour crowd. It’s just a stone’s throw away from the Charles River, which makes for a nice after-dinner stroll.

Citrus & Salt – Bay Village

Summer is here, more or less, and to celebrate the arrival of the disgustingly hot and muggy weather, Yue and I went out in search of some summery food to fit the season. We had heard about Citrus & Salt for a while, and despite being close to where we work, we had never made the quick trek over, due to a mixture of bad weather the last few weeks, or just a craving for other foods. But this weekend we finally made it, getting in just before the Friday happy hour crowd.

Citrus and Salt specializes in coastal Baja-style Mexican small plates, and we found that three plates (plus a dessert) was just the right amount for two people. We started off with their house-made chips and guacamole. The chips were dusted with jalapeno powder, giving them a bit of texture and added flavor. Usually when ordering a dish like this, Yue and I look for something unique about the guacamole, while the chips tend to be whatever; this time around, the guac, while good, was nothing special, but the chips really made it stand out.

Our next dish was a pair of fish tacos, with beer-battered cod topped with radish flakes and a green tomato salsa. While the tortilla was probably a little too small, and made eating them a little messier than they ought to have been, the tacos were quite well-prepared, and served as a good palate cleanser between the guac and the next course, a plate of pasilla-braised beef served over mashed butternut squash, wild mushrooms, and a prickly pear reduction. The beef was soft and pulled apart easily to melt in our mouths, and the sweetness of the mashed squash paired well with the earthier taste of the wild mushrooms.

After all that, we felt we still had a bit of room left over, so we ordered a plate of churro bites, which came with a vanilla dulce and a warm chocolate mezcal. After the saltiness of the rest of the meal, it was a welcome taste shift, but it was enough to tip the scales for us to need a walk through the South End afterwards.

Citrus & Salt makes for a great place to grab a bite with friends at the end of the week for Back Bay professionals, or for a fun date night. The decor is interesting, even if it does look like it was pulled from an Anthropologie catalogue. We sat at the bar, which was fine with us, and while we beat the rush, there seemed to be a lot of empty tables as the crowd came in, and the restaurant was directing people to bar seats instead. I don’t know if they had a lot of reservations, or if they were saving them for a slightly later dinner rush, but it struck me as a bit odd to have so many people vying for space at the bar when half the tables in the restaurant were empty.

That all being said, if you’re looking for some lighter fare and a glass of sangria, Citrus & Salt is definitely worth checking out.

Muriel’s – French Quarter, New Orleans

If you’ve been keeping up with our Instagram, you know that Yue and I recently spent several days in New Orleans for my birthday. While we were there, we satisfied our epicurean urges with all sorts of spicy Creole dishes and deep-fried southern comfort food. We’ll have more write ups coming for a few other places later this week, but we thought we’d begin at the end here, with the pièce de résistance: the birthday dinner.

For most of our trip, we ate when we were hungry, finding the closest place with the most agreeable menu. However, for this meal, we thought it would be best to do a little research beforehand. I’m not one to put on airs (okay, that’s a lie. I definitely am) but I also don’t like making a big fuss for my birthday. Still, I wanted something a little less casual than the average French Quarter po’boy, but something a little less black-tie than the upscale (and overpriced…) spots we saw just off Royal Street. Eventually I found the menu for Muriel’s, situated at the top of Jackson Square near the imposing St. Louis Cathedral. They offered a table d’hote menu (basically a prix fixe) that had a lot of interesting options, and they seemed to strike the balance between fine dining and French Quarter casual rather well. We sat in an indoor courtyard, with hanging plants and electric lamps dangling from the rafters over the white tablecloths, surrounded by white curtains and two hundred year old brickwork.

The menu offered three courses, an appetizer, a main dish, and a dessert, so we diversified our options to sample what we saw as the most interesting. For our appetizers, Yue had a plate of crawfish and goat cheese crepes, while I had a slice of sharp gorgonzola cheesecake. I’m used to standard-issue sweet cheesecake, so the gorgonzola variety came as a surprise. It was very sharp, but had an interesting taste and texture, pairing well with the pile of pecans and blackberries it was served with. It really was a unique dish, and definitely something I’d order again if I saw it on another menu. Yue’s crepes were savory, with the salty flavor of crawfish we were at that point used to. I get that crawfish are pretty big in NOLA, but I’ll admit that I don’t see the big deal; they just taste like salty shrimp.

Whatever, maybe I’m just too much of a Yank to fully appreciate it.

Anyway, for our main course, I had a wood grilled pork chop served over mashed sweet potatoes with a sugar cane and apple glaze, and Yue had the house bayoubaisse, a concoction of shrimp, mussels, crab meat, and seafood meatballs tossed with sausage and orzo, served in a tomato-based broth. It was pretty salty, but a little bread to soak up the broth really brought out the other flavors. In short, it was very NOLA. The pork I ordered was divine, balancing the wood-smoked flavor of the meat with the sweetness of the glaze to create an impressive medley of flavors.

Normally we don’t order drinks with dinner, because like all good budget-conscious Millennials, we like to get the most for our money, which means getting stiff cocktails at a dive bar after dinner when we’ve walked some of the ballast off. But this time around we thought, why not, birthday dinners only come once a year, so we indulged in a little bit of wine. Both Yue’s red blend and my Cabernet paired well with our respective dishes, their solid, fruity bodies helped to accentuate the stronger flavors of our main course, and let us pretend we were adulting a little more comprehensively than usual.

For our dessert course, we selected the creme brulee and bread pudding, respectively. Creme brulee is a bit too sweet for me, but Yue likes it and orders it whenever we can (and aren’t too full from our main course; a frequent occurrence). Bread pudding is a NOLA staple, and this one was served with candied pecans and a rum-reduction glaze. No candle for me, because I don’t like to make a fuss, but as far as birthday desserts go, it definitely ranks up there.

This was our final dinner in NOLA, and we capped it off by wandering down Bourbon Street to the Old Absinthe House, which had become our favorite NOLA bar, for a sazerac or two to cap off the night, but that’s another story for another time (that you probably already saw on Instagram anyway).

Assagio – North End

With the warm weather we had this weekend, Yue and I decided to venture out from our comfortable neighborhood Allston haunts into the great unknown… or at least the North End, which is basically the same thing. We hadn’t eaten in the North End since late last summer, and the best way to enjoy it seemed to be to make a trek all the way to the other side of the city. We didn’t really have a specific place in mind, and since we hadn’t bothered making reservations, we figured we would try our luck with whatever didn’t have too long a wait.

We wound up at Assagio, tucked behind a church just off Hanover Street, a cozy trattoria with whitewashed walls that balances the old, simple architecture of the North End with whitewashed walls that give it a modern and chic ambiance. We started with a mushroom and herb bruschetta, served on thick slices of Italian bread, and followed that up with a pasta course.

I ordered an Amatriciana, made with tomatoes, onions and bacon, while Yue went with the vongole positano, made from specialty Italian pasta and served with imported clams in a red sauce. The pasta courses are served in pans, and lived up to my high expectations for Italian food. (After growing up in a place where it seemed like every other block had an Italian place, Boston’s lack of trattorias outside of the North End is a bit of a disappointment, but I digress)

Towards the end of our meal, we were told that the restaurant was expecting a large party, and they would need our table to accommodate. We told them it was no issue and moved to another table nearby. In recompense, the management gave us each a limoncello, a plate of tiramisu, and the rather large fruit platter you see above. Both Yue and I thought that the fruit was for the 20-seat party that we moved for, so we were a little surprised when it wound up on our table.

Assagio certainly went above and beyond to earn our loyalty and gratitude, so it’s been enshrined as one of our favorite Boston spots, and one that we will certainly return to.

The Abbey – Washington Square

Yue and I are apartment hunting, which means we have less time to linger over breakfast in the mornings when we go out to look at a place. We’ve been getting lunch at pubs lately, and trying out different kinds of sandwiches as part and parcel of that. Today we were looking at a place near Washington Square and stopped for lunch in the Abbey just a little ways up the road. The Abbey is a quintessential neighborhood pub with a solid sandwich menu and draft list, and doesn’t have any pretensions at being something it’s not.

Something that irks me a little about the Boston bar and pub culture is that so many places try really hard to be a quaint local bar, but wind up seeming like they’re trying too hard. They Abbey feels like a good pub should feel, the kind of place you like to go to for lunch or a late-night stop to carbo-load to stave off a hangover. It just feels good.

For lunch, Yue ordered a fish taco while I went with one of the daily specials, turkey and Swiss on a toasted flatbread with spicy mayo, paired with an English oatmeal stout. Neither of us were in the mood for anything too heavy, and the portions were the perfect size. The menu also caters to several different vegetarian options, and there should be something to everyone’s taste. I found the food to be less greasy and heavy than other similar pubs in Brookline, and each of the different menu options was familiar but had a bit of a twist to make it just unique enough.

If you go for lunch, try to sit at a high-top near the windows for quality people (and dog) watching with all the foot traffic in Washington Square.