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.

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…