Umai – Back Bay

 

Umai is a quaint little sushi restaurant on Newbury Street that Yue and I go to fairly regularly, as it’s conveniently located near both of our offices. While it’s hardly a hole in the wall, we’ve never had to wait for a table, and the sushi is excellent. It makes for a great impromptu date night after a long day, and offers a great chance to unwind.

We’ve always ordered two maki and split them, but this time we decided to do something a little different. We ordered a maki as usual, but we also went with a bowl of gyu don, beef with onions over rice. I thought it tasted kind of like beef stroganoff, though obviously without the mushrooms. It also comes with a egg on top, a bit like eggs benedict. The sushi we went with was the Newbury maki, a signature roll made with salmon, avocado and tempura, severed beneath a layer of grilled crab and squid. The smokey flavor and taste of the crab helped to draw out the other flavors of the dish, blending together in a pleasant medley that takes a few seconds to process as it all goes down.

The restaurant itself has a very relaxed vibe with friendly and attentive servers. It’s a great place to pass a quiet meal, in view of the hustle and bustle of Boston’s main commercial avenue, but removed from the actual press of the crowd. Try and sit in one of the tables right in the window for great views up and down the street, making it perfect for a bit of people watching while you sip miso soup.

Ganko Ittetsu Ramen – Coolidge Corner

It’s finally time for a write-up of a place I’ve wanted to feature on the blog for a long time. Ganko Ittetsu Ramen is just down the street from my place in Coolidge Corner and it is, hands down, the best ramen spot in the city. Tucked into the Coolidge Corner arcade, it’s right near the Coolidge Corner theater, and a bowl of steaming, flavorful ramen is the perfect thing after a movie… if you can get a table, that is.

When I first moved in to Coolidge Corner a year and a half ago, Ganko had only recently opened, and it had a more underground appeal. The wait times weren’t as long, and you could usually get a seat at the bar counter in a pinch. But awesome ramen doesn’t stay a secret in Boston for long. Now wait times at Ganko average thirty to forty five minutes or longer. Their tiny space doesn’t help matters, and so the past few times Yue and I have tried to go, the prospect of a long agonizing wait for our food didn’t really outweigh the prospect of delicious ramen at the end. But recently the stars aligned, and we were able to get a table after only twenty five minutes (most of which were spent perusing the stacks of the nearby Brookline Booksmith).

Though Ganko offers several kinds of ramen, Yue and I both ordered the shio, meaning salt. The sea salt flavored broth is augmented with thin slices of pork, sweet corn, a five minute egg, scallions and nori. This is certainly not the sad ramen you made in the dorm kitchen when you were an undergrad. The flavors blend in the broth, and the noodles are just the right firmness to fill you up and leave you sated. Now, I may be a simple man of simple pleasures, but I think there are fewer things more satisfying than drinking down the last bit of delicious ramen broth from a deep bowl. (Okay, I lied, there are plenty of things more satisfying, but it’s definitely up there on the list)

There are plenty of things a ramen place can do to throw off the balance of their food. The noodles can be too firm, or too soft, or taste too much like the miserable discount ramen you ate in college. They can add too much water to the broth, or too much salt for “flavor”. I’m looking at a specific ramen place in Boston for each one of those things, in case you were wondering. Ganko does none of these things, and as such, it deserves its crown as Table For Two’s Favorite Ramen.

Now if only they would expand a bit so I don’t have to wait so long…

Osaka – Coolidge Corner

For today’s feature, Yue and I tried a place that we walk past all the time, but had never really noticed. We were looking for something close to home, and Osaka fit the bill. Located just off of Harvard Ave and a little ways up from the Coolidge Corner T stop, Osaka would have a great location if the particulars of that location didn’t make it so hard to spot from the main street. However, it seems popular enough with the local crowd; a steady stream of people were coming and going the entire time we ate.

Osaka is an Asian fusion sushi and hibachi restaurant, and while Asian fusion is a dime a dozen in our neighborhood, Osaka is a more refined setting than its Allston counterparts, and in my opinion, pulls it off a little more seamlessly than its Brookline neighbors. The restaurant is divided into two sections, with a traditional seating area where you order off an a la carte menu and a large hibachi floor with three grills. Yue and I opted for the more traditional seating, though next time I think we’ll try the other side. We wanted to sample a little bit of everything Osaka had to offer, so we settled on a plate of sushi and a plate of hibachi to share.

The pink dragon sushi caught our eye mostly by virtue of its color. Pink isn’t something we’ve seen often in sushi, and the rolls were packed with crab meat, avocado and mango. The mango gave it a sweeter taste than I normal expect from sushi, but it was an interesting change of pace, and I recommend it if you’re looking for something beyond the simple rice and salmon.

Our hibachi was a bit of surf and turf, with a combination of steak and scallops, served over a vegetable medley with fried rice. In hindsight, I regret not being able to see it prepared on the grill, but I’ll know better next time. The amount we ordered was just enough for two people, and if we weren’t sharing, a single plate of hibachi each would have been enough, and we could have eschewed the sushi. It may not look like much in the pictures, but the food is certainly filling (and fried rice tends to weigh me down anyway).

All in all, it’s a nice spot for date night, close to all that Coolidge Corner has to offer. Make sure to come early, especially if you want to sit at the hibachi grill, because that fills up fast.

-Connor

Kaze Shabu Shabu – Chinatown

It had been a while since the last time Yue and I had eaten in Chinatown. Last night, we were spending some time in a cafe near Boston Common to get out of the cold, so we decided it was a good night for some hot pot, and took a walk down Boylston Street to see what we could find. We ended up in Kaze Shabu Shabu, tucked a little ways down Essex Street, not far from the Orange Line Chinatown stop.

Kaze Shabu Shabu serves up Japanese-style hot pot, which offer more variety for broth than a traditional Chinese or Mongolian hot pot would. I went with a savory Japanese curry-style broth, while Yue stuck with a more familiar Chinese herbal. The menu offerings were vast and varied, offering up plenty of meats, seafood and vegetable options. As any canny reader can assume, Yue and I aren’t remotely vegetarian, so the initial offering of veggies were enough for us, and we opted for meat plates. Yue ordered beef, while I went for a combination of beef and pork.

For the benefit of any readers who haven’t tried hot pot, it’s served by placing a large pan full of broth on a burner set into the table. The broth boils, and the diners put in the vegetables/meat/etc., and once those have been cooked in the broth, they’re taken out and put in a smaller bowl, where they can cool in a marinade of soy and barbecue sauces, along with a mixture of chopped garlic, scallions, peppers, and vinegar. Once it cools enough to not scald your tongue, it’s ready to eat.

What makes hot pot so fun is how much it’s tailored to each diner’s tastes. If you want miso soup but your partner wants beef broth, it’s cool! Don’t like how napa cabbage gets limp when it’s boiled? No problem, just don’t put it in! Are you in the mood for some meat but your friend is a vegetarian? No need to worry, there’s a handy divider in the pot to keep everything separate! Yue and I tend to have similar tastes in food, which is great, but it never hurts to have the option to cater more to your tastes.

Kaze Shabu Shabu is hardly the only hot pot place in Chinatown (actually, I think there are about three others on the same block), but of the ones I’ve tried, I think it’s my favorite so far. The portions are just the right size to not leave you feeling too full, but it’s certainly enough to satisfy one’s appetite. It also seems to be far less crowded than the other hot pot places nearby, and not having to wait for a table is always a plus as far as I’m concerned. If you’re looking for something to warm you up for the next spate of cold weather we’re due for, give Kaze Shabu Shabu a shot.

-Connor

Ittoku – Allston

For our last dinner of the year, Yue and I went to Ittoku in Allston, way up on Commonwealth Ave. Ittoku specializes in Japanese small plates, almost like tapas. We ordered fried oysters, buttered mushrooms, fried squid legs, a variety of yakitori barbecue, a plate of omusoba, and a sushi to clear our palate.

The salty taste of oysters, fried or otherwise, always reminds me of the summers I spent growing up in Rhode Island, spending time on the beach. That’s a little strange, because I didn’t actually start liking the taste of oysters until I was already late in my teens, but whatever. Still, on a night as brutally cold as New Year’s Eve in Boston, I don’t mind anything that calls to mind warm summer days.

Yue had been craving calamari for at least a week, and mentioned it each time we went out somewhere (usually to places that had no reason to have calamari on the menu). Ittoku’s fried squid legs aren’t technically calamari, but they’re a close enough substitute. The last time we were there, over the summer, we ordered takoyaki, or fried octopus balls. We almost ordered them again, but we figured we had already ordered a lot. Good takoyaki isn’t exactly hard to find if you know where to look, but Ittoku has some of the best I’ve had in Boston, so if you think it won’t put you into too deep of a food coma, it’s worth a try for sure.

Omusoba is made up of soba noodles wrapped up in eggs, kind of like a noodle omelette. Savory sauce is then poured over the top, and would traditionally be done in patterns like a heart. Ittoku eschews that in favor of just a garnish, though in my opinion it does nothing to detract from the presentation. The noodles are savory and very filling, but the calories are well worth it.

Ittoku offers various barbecued skewers of meat, kind of like the ones I wrote about at Mala, though with less cumin and more barbecue sauce. Rather than picking just one or two, they also offer the option of a chef’s combo, where the kitchen will give you five or ten skewers of their choosing, so you can get a larger sampling. The ones we got were, in order from top to bottom, lamb, pork, chicken, beef, and then chicken again.

The last time we went to Ittoku was in late summer, and we had to wait in line for a while to be seated. This time the restaurant was much less busy, which is likely due to a combination of the bitter cold and the local student population fleeing to warmer climates for the holidays. If you would prefer to check out Ittoku in a more temperate season, it’s probably best to make a reservation, or be prepared to wait for a bit. The wait is worth it, and it’s one of the more authentic Japanese restaurants in the Boston area.

-Connor