While my primary goal at Offbeat Eats is to document the obscure and unusual places out there, sometimes I still get to be a tourist. And when it came to finding a place to take several of my fellow walkers on our “Death March”, most of whom hadn’t spent a lot of time in Boston, for me the choice of venue was fairly obvious: Durgin-Park, one of Boston’s venerable restaurants, serving up Boston schrod, seafood, and steaks since 1826. Named after Messrs Durgin and Park who were the original owners of the place, it’s located in Quincy Market at 340 Faneuil Hall (North Market), a location its been inhabiting since it opened, albeit with some (minor) renovations (the plumbing in the men’s room appears to be date from the late Victorian era).

One of the very notable things about Durgin-Park is that it’s one of those time capsule restaurants. Aside from a few (very few) tweaks to the menu, and obviously higher prices, the experience at Durgin-Park is almost exactly the same that I remember from my first visit in the late ’70s (and my visits in ’95, ’99, and ’01, for that matter), although the service doesn’t seem as surly as I recall from some of my previous visits (some of that is probably my getting used to the general surliness of Boston in general, to be honest). I’m sure that if you go back far enough in time you’d find a different experience, but the current Durgin-Park ambiance and menu harken back to at least the 1950s and the era of white-shirted servers and red-checked tablecloths. And that’s one of the reasons I like to go there, since it’s one of the oldest restaurants in the country, and one of the old respected seniors of Boston dining (along with nearby Jacob Wirth and the Union Oyster House, the latter of which goes back to the colonial era).

Oysters

As I mentioned above, the menu at at Durgin-Park is pretty basic, with a variety of seafood, steaks, and other Yankee classics. If you find yourself craving an old-style pot roast, shepherd’s pie, plate of roast beef, or a breadcrumb-crusted Boston schrod, well, Durgin-Park is one of the places to go. They’ve also got a pretty good selection of fresh seafood, and more than a few steaks (one of the sights as you come in is the very large lump charcoal grill they use for most of their steaks), and prime rib (with sizes ranging from the 12 oz Boston Cut up to the 32 oz Durgin Cut, which comes out as a giant Flintstone-style slab o’ meat overhanging the plate). We ended up going pretty basic: I ended up with the Boston Cut prime rib and an extra order of baked beans, while Carol ordered prime rib and a plate of oysters to start.

Baked Beans

The oysters were a great start to the meal, with half a dozen substantial oysters. Nothing fancy here, just a plate of half-shell oysters on ice served up with lemon, fresh-grated horseradish, and cocktail sauce, but quite the good dish of oysters. The oysters were fresh, nicely cleaned, and ready to eat, and a rather satisfying treat after a long day of hiking.

Next up were the baked beans. There was a time, not even that long ago, when pretty much every place within about a 75 mile radius of Boston had baked beans on the menu, often served up in a crock, and Durgin-Park still serves them up like that. I’ll have to admit, while they aren’t fancy dining, I rather like Boston-style baked beans, and the ones at Durgin-Park are definitely some of the better beans I’ve had, with rich molasses and salt pork notes, and obviously having been simmered long enough to be tender and yummy, but not yet falling apart.

Prime Rib

Durgin-Park remains olde school when in comes to presentation as well. You order the prime rib, your plate comes, and it’s just a slab of prime rib on the plate. No garnish, just the meat. And I’m fine with that, since they do a rather good job with it. The prime rib came cooked perfectly medium rare, very juicy, and having a rather pleasantly spiced rub crust to it. Not an overly fatty cut, it was a great way to round out a day of walking, washing it down with a Durgin Ale (house beer that’s made by Harpoon).

And actually, when you come down to it, Durgin-Park is actually a good Offbeat Eats destination, since it’s one of the very few places out there still serving the old New England dessert stalwart: Indian Pudding (and doing a decent job of it). And it’s the only place I’ve found that serves coffee jello (also not sampled this time, while interesting, it’s not something I’m craving, especially after a full day of heavy eating). There are definitely more offbeat places, and finer dining to be had, but Durgin-Park earns a spot of respect for me for delivering a consistent experience, decade after decade.

Related posts:

1. Shabu-Zen (Boston, MA)
2. Hei La Moon (Boston, MA)
3. Liberty Bell Roast Beef (South Boston, MA)

The next stop on our Boston March was the Super 88 in Allston. Super 88 is a regional chain of Asian grocery stores (now part of the larger Hong Kong Supermarket chain), and the Allston location opened to much fanfare in 2002. In addition to having good Asian produce and seafood section, it also had an onsite bakery and a really good selection of basic Chinese groceries. More importantly, however, was that the front of the store was made into the “88 Food Connection”, a small food court featuring half a dozen Asian food vendors, including Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Bubble Tea, and other wonderful spots. It’s a great little place to meet up with friends and grab a quick Asian treat, so we decided it was also a good stop on the March. And one of those vendors, Pho Viet’s, is one of the better places around Boston to grab Vietnamese food.

For a place that’s basically a stall in a larger food court, Pho Viet’s has one of more expansive menus I’ve seen, with everything from Pho to Cha Gio to several varieties of Banh Mi, all presented primarily with a pictorial menu (with a very rare exception to the “Asian places seem to have lousy food photography” rule) with numbers for us non-Vietnamese speakers to order. While I really do want to try some of their substantial dishes like my favorites Com Suom or Bun Cha Gio Bun Thit Nuong, this time I simply wanted a nice barbecue pork banh mi, and that’s what we ordered.

Banh Mi

And we were pleasantly surprised. There’s usually not a huge amount of variation between one place’s banh mi and another, but this one was surprisingly well put together. A nice warm and crusty bun. A flavorful meat with both crispy and meaty notes coming through. Good, crispy, and tangy vegetables. And most importantly, a thin schmear of Asian-style mayo applied as a condiment and not a thick layer, protecting the crustiness of the bread and adding some nice moisture without being too fatty.

Super 88

All in all, a great stop. I should mention that I’m always a bit hesitant coming here, since the years haven’t been all that kind to Super 88 itself. While highly anticipated when it opened, over the years the quality of the market started to sag. Starting around 2008, some of the live fish started to disappear, followed by the bakery, and some of the nicer products. Shortly after that, the market went from “cluttered but clean”, to “dingy and worn” in a shockingly fast period, and by 2009, most of the other Super 88s closed, and the remaining locations, including the Allston one, were bought by Hong Kong Supermarkets, a California-based chain. If you look by the main entrance, you can still see a now-tattered “Hong Kong Supermarket Coming Soon” banner, but don’t hold your breath. The conversion happened in 2009, but about the only real change was the name on the receipts, and a noticeable decline in overall quality, and a lot of neglect (heck, 4 years later, the building still is labeled with www.super88market.com in foot tall letters, but that web site is long defunct). Depending on my visits (which are primarily to locate obscure Chinese items I can’t get out at >H-Mart, which is now my Asian-grocery-of-choice, and opened right about the time Super 88 started to decline), Super 88 itself alternates between “worn and grungy” and “downright disgusting”). But the food court soldiers on, and is still reasonably decent despite the dilapidation of the associated market.

Related posts:

1. Nam Viet (Arlington, VA)
2. H-Mart (Burlington, MA)
3. Pho Dao #1 (Murrieta, CA)

The next planned stop on the Boston Death March was Liberty Bell Roast Beef. If I had to pick one particular sandwich that represented Massachusetts, it would have to be the roast beef sandwich. Sure, the Lobster Roll is a contender as well, but that’s more of a “Coastal New England” thing, whereas a quick trip through Massachusetts will show that there is no shortage of roast beef places. The epicenter is the North Shore, with no end of places selling roast beef sandwiches from small restaurants and shacks (most of which sport someone’s first name, like Nick’s or Kelly’s), but they are found throughout Massachusetts, with Boston lying on the bottom edge of what I call the “Roast beef sandwich belt”. And Liberty Bell Roast Beef was right on our route, so it was obligatory that we stop there for a break.

Liberty Bell Menu

Liberty Bell is one of those typical MA roast beef shop: a basic shop with tile floors, somewhat spartan furniture, and an ordering counter, and little else. Like most of the other roast beef places, Liberty bell has the standard roast beef shop menu: about a half dozen varieties of roast beef sandwich in different combinations, and then a gazillion options for “all things fried”, with a lot of seafood. But for me, the choice was obvious: I came here for a roast beef sandwich, and a roast beef sandwich is what I ordered: a “King Size” with horseradish sauce.

King Size Beef

A good North Shore-style roast beef is really a simple sandwich: rare (it must still be pink!) roast beef, sliced thin, piled onto a soft onion rolls, and doused with either BBQ sauce or horseradish sauce (I prefer the latter, especially if it’s a good horseradish sauce). And the King Size from Liberty Bell was a particularly good exemplar of the type: a nice onion roll with a bit of crispiness to it, a substantial inch-thick layer of thin, pink, and juicy roast beef, and a rather pungent horseradish sauce with detectable bits of grated horseradish in it. A particularly good roast beef sandwich, and it even had a particularly good price tag ($6.95, which at most places around Boston these days only gets you a meager “small” sandwich).

Marchers

As an aside, the staff at Liberty Bell was particularly friendly. A group of 18 or so people, most of us with cameras, descending upon a small restaurant like this and taking over all of the seating often gets a comment from the staff, and Liberty Bell was no exception. The woman at the counter was very pleased that Liberty Bell made our itinerary, and she was a gracious host explaining the history of the joint and describing the clientele. We rather enjoyed our sandwiches (the best roast beef I’ve had in Boston itself), and I’d be more and happy to return on another trip.

Related posts:

1. Billy’s Famous Roast Beef (Wakefield, MA)
2. Nick’s Famous Roast Beef (Beverly, MA)
3. Hartland Famous Roast Beef Supper (Hartland, VT)

Prior to starting our 21.7 mile march through the various neighborhoods of Boston, we needed a place to have a breakfast, meet up with other hikers, and get a good start to the day. Luckily, only about 100 feet away from the Savin Hill T station is McKenna’s Cafe. A cozy little cafe (note to others: we showed up at 7am to a near-empty cafe, but those showing up later on a Saturday, I’d expect a wait, the place is pretty small), it fits well into the neighborhood. Savin Hill is a surprisingly quiet and mellow corner of Dorchester (and, indeed, even several of my Boston friends mentioned that it was one of those T stops they’ve never gotten off at), and this is the exact sort of cafe you expect in a neighborhood like this. Walk in, get greeted by the staff, and quickly get seated with some coffee to peruse the menu.

The menu at McKenna’s is your basic American breakfast joint menu, with pancakes, French toast, omelets, scrambles, and the like. One notable difference from many other places is that they also have a lot of Irish breakfast items (bangers, black and white pudding, and the like), and a few healthier options (several egg white specials, several turkey dishes, and such). After some review, I settled on one of the healthier items (the Energizer, an English muffin with layers of egg white, turkey, and Swiss) and a side of home fries to balance it out. I had to be somewhat reserved, since I was expecting to eat at over half a dozen places during the day. Carol decided to order up some French toast and share my home fries.

Energizer

It’s one of those menu items that doesn’t lend itself to good food photography (the colors are a bit bland), but this was actually a very good breakfast sandwich: a nicely-toasted English muffin, several layers of moist turkey that had been lightly grilled, some fried egg whites, and two layers of Swiss cheese. The result was a nice combination of egg, cheese, and turkey, without being too heavy. I’d certainly get this again if I was in the mood for a breakfast sandwich.

French Toast

Carol’s French toast was quite good as well. She had opted for the granola-crusted French toast, and the result was two substantial slabs of nicely-fried French toast. The inside was light and fluffy, the outside crunchy, and the granola added some pleasant texture. I’m not usually a French toast fan (having suffered through too many bad renditions of it), but here it’s good, and I’d be happy ordering it.

Home fries

The home fries, however, were the real surprise. One of the big disappointments I had moving to New England is that most places up here don’t do hash browns (shredded potatoes), but home fries (fried potato chunks). Done well, home fries can be excellent (in particular, up my way the Tumble Inn Diner and the Fairlee Diner both do some boss home fries), but all too often a place either (a) breaks out the Sysco bag and fries them up, or (b) just dices some potatoes up and throws ‘em in the fryer. Either way, the result is usually a pile of fairly disappointing starchy or waxy lumps of potato. Well, McKenna’s goes down as another place that knows how to actually cook home fries correctly. My home fries were nice and perfectly fluffy in the middle (with no waxiness or starchiness), warm, and having the perfect crispy exterior. These weren’t just good home fries, but probably the best I’ve had in Massachusetts.

Overall, we liked McKenna’s a lot. It’s a nice little neighborhood gem in a somewhat quiet part of Boston, and they have a nice cozy little cafe that was a great way to start our day of hiking. I’d like to come back and try McKenna’s another time. I rather liked my breakfast (and loved the home fries), and I would like another chance to try some of the more complete breakfast menu entrees on a day when I’m not having to conserve stomach space.

Related posts:

1. The Friendly Toast (Cambridge, MA)
2. Pines Cafe Redux (Palmdale, CA)
3. Maria’s Cafe (Minneapolis, MN)

One of the places that I’ve often liked going in the Boston area, but also seems to have eluded my attempts to actually write it up, is the Elephant Walk. Opened in 1991, and currently sporting three locations (Boston and Waltham in addition to the Cambridge location we visited), the Elephant Walk serves up a combination of French and Cambodian cuisine (the combination isn’t as unusual as you might think, courtesy of the French colonization of the region, which leaves vestiges of French cooking, such as French-style bread and coffee beverages, to this day), as well as some modern interpretations of these dishes. Oddly enough, I discovered Elephant Walk first through distinctly non-French and non-Cambodian means: several years ago, I attended a Belgian beer festival at the Cyclorama sponsored by Beeradvocate.com, and the two caterers for the event were Waffle Haus of Vermont (who normally sells excellent Belgian Waffles on Vermont ski slops) and The Elephant Walk, who provided sandwiches and Belgian frites. The latter of which they did a particularly good job with, so I decided to try them out at some point, originally doing so circa 2007 when I needed to visit some subcontractors at MIT for work. And since then, I’ve enjoyed it, so when I needed to find a place to dine with several out-of-town friends, The Elephant Walk ended up being our venue of choice.

First of all, as I’ve mentioned above, The Elephant Walk is a bit of a culinary oddity with a combined French and Cambodian menu, especially since there isn’t a lot of fusion going on here: the menu lists “Traditional Cambodian”, “Original Cambodian”, and “Original French” as separate menu sections, but my visits here have never strayed from the Cambodian menus thus far (since I’ve got a much wider variety of French places I can draw upon). But there are a lot of great options here, including several somlahr (soups), roulleaux (spring rolls), loc lac (a marinated beef dish), and amok trey (fish wrapped in spice paste and steamed in banana leaves, similar to an Indian chutneywala). For me, it was a relatively straightforward choice: I ordered up some roulleaux and the nightly soup special, Somlah Machou (sour soup). Carol ordered the same main dish, along with a chilled avocado and citrus soup appetizer.

Chilled Avocado Citrus Soup

Starting with the appetizers, I was as pleased as always by the spring rolls here. Cambodian roulleaux are really similar (differing only slightly in spicing) to Vietnamese fried spring rolls (cha gio). The Elephant Walk are a great example of fried spring rolls done well. And they certainly don’t skimp with the vegetables, so an order of roulleaux comes out with arather bountiful plate of basil, lettuce, mint, and sprouts. I always love spring rolls they are done nicely (I still have fond memories of when I first discovered Vietnamese cha gio at a now-defunct Vietnamese phở joint in Scottsdale, AZ), with nice tender and moist interiors, tangy sauce, crisp wrappers, and fresh veggies, and the roulleaux at The Elephant Walk met this mark quite nicely.

Somla Machou

Carol’s soup appetizer, the Chilled Avocado Citrus Soup, was a very pleasant surprise for both of us. This was one of those dishes that I was surprised I liked at all, since it’s the type I’d never order—I’m not particularly a fan of either avocados nor chilled soup. However, the resulting soup was very pleasant: a rich, savory yet citrusy soup with light spicing, this was one of the best chilled soups I’ve ever sampled. I’ve already tracked down the recipe (on WBUR’s web site), and we’re going to try and recreate this one on our own.

Loc Lac

For my appetizer, I opted for the Somlah Machou Kroeung Saik Chrouk (sour soup with kroeung and pork), and this was a quite pleasant main dish: several large chunks of very tender and flavorful pork in a rich sour broth tasting of kroeung, a Cambodian spice paste made from lemongrass, shallots, garlic, kaffir, chiles, and galangal. It’s really quite a flavor explosion, but it works quite well with the pork. Aside from a slight saltiness (pervasive through most of the meal, actually), this was a very satisfying and enjoyable dish.

I’ll mention one other dish from the evening, my friend Steve ordered the Loc Lac (cubed beef in a garlic pepper sauce), another classic Cambodian dish. While I didn’t sample his on this visit, I’ve had this on previous trips, and it was a very flavorful and spicy beef dish. It still looked good on this visit, and remains one of the dishes I’d recommend.

Moka Liegeois

For dessert, we ended up going pure French, with their Moka Liegeois. For those that haven’t had it, Liegeois is a classic French dessert of lightly sweetened cold coffee, ice cream and cream, usually served as a parfait. The Elephant Walk has a nice version of this done in a mocha style, with two house-made ice creams (coffee and chocolate) over a layered almond, coffee, and chocolate cake, drenched with sweet cold coffee. I rather enjoyed it, although I would have liked more of the rather pleasant layered cake included.

Overall, The Elephant Walk was a reasonable success. I enjoyed all of my dishes, got to introduce some friends to Cambodian food (although admittedly some of them didn’t enjoy it as much as I do), and they were able to handle a booking for six people for a busy Friday night. I hope to be back several times, either here or the Boston location.

Related posts:

1. Sofra Bakery (Cambridge, MA)
2. Miracle of Science Bar and Grill (Cambridge, MA)
3. Craigie on Main (Cambridge, MA)

After a very pleasant and successful visit to Burlington, it was time to head back down I-89 to New Hampshire, which gave us a good excuse to stop by and check out Prohibition Pig. Like my previous review of Church and Main, Prohibition Pig is a joint that rose of out the ashes of another well-regarded restaurant. In this case, Prohibition Pig replaced the well-loved Alchemist Brewpub, which after the damages of Hurricane Irene, decided to close the brewpub and focus on their nearby brewery/cannery (which produces the well-regarded Heady Topper). The Brewpub was sold, and thus Prohibition Pig was born.

Prohibition Pig keeps much of the same focus on beer that The Alchemist did, instead bringing in beers primarily from nearby breweries… and doing a good job at it. Choices during our visit included beers from Lawson’s Finest Liquids and Hill Farmstead, both top-notch VT brewers, and even some Peche Mortel from one of my favorite Quebec brewers, Dieu du Ciel. But the motto of Prohibition Pig is “Smoked Meat and Libations”, and they pair their excellent bar with a menu focusing on local meats, primarily with smoking and curing. The result is that the restaurant’s new incarnation still packs people in, and we even found the place fully busy during what I call the “lupper” period (the doldrums between lunch and supper service).

Cracklins

I found a rather lot to like about Prohibition Pig. After enjoying our opening round of Lawson’s and Hill Farmstead beers, we decided to order up some appetizers, and two items jumped out on the menu: duck fat fries, and pork cracklins. While duck fat fries seem to be the “potato fad du jour”, I’m quite frankly not used to seeing cracklins on menus, particularly this far north of the Mason Dixon line, so we had to order them up.

I’ll have to say that the cracklins were indeed quite the success. $5 gets you a fairly large skillet of poppin’ fresh (literally: served in a still-hot skillet, a few of the cracklins were still popping enough to pop out of the skillet), these were probably the best cracklins I’ve ever had. Crisp. Light. Melt-in-your mouth. Not greasy at all. These were everything that bagged pork rinds from the convenience store aren’t, and one that I’ll happily come order again. That said, if I order them again I’m ordering them with less spice, since the salt in the spice mix was a bit strong. But not enough so to detract from an otherwise perfect dish.

Duck Fat Fries

The duck fat fries, however, were something of a disappointment. As I mention above, duck fat fries in the last few years have started to show up on menus everywhere, and I’m often finding that the novelty value of offering them up in duck fat gets overwhelms the fundamentals of good fry cookery: a crisp exterior and a fluffy interior. These fries didn’t quite have that: they came out with a nice, crispy appearance and smell, but digging into them, the texture was more waxy than fluffy. At first I thought this was the use of the wrong potatoes, but these were Kennebecs, which generally do quite well as fries, so I’m going to guess that these just were parcooked enough. A bit of a shame, since these had potential to be great fries. Until then, I’ll do most of my fry munching down at Worthy Burger.

Reuben

Moving on to the entrees, we again found things hit and miss. I’ll start with where things went well. My entree was the house special (a reuben with house-smoked pastrami), and that dish was a solid success. The pastrami was fairly unique: this was a drier pastrami than most I’ve had, but still tender and very flavorful, with a very rich smoke layer penetrating into the meat. I’m always a bit suspicious of anything even BBQ-like in New England (I generally believe that the phrase “New England BBQ” should be met with suspicion, if not outright fear), but the house pastrami was quite nicely done, enough so that I’ll actually have to try some of the barbecue menu items next time I come, since this place shows potential. The pastrami also worked well in the sandwich with some house-made sauerkraut, and served up with a pleasant potato salad (of the kind that actually features the potatoes, and not the typical “potatoes hiding in an egg and mayo salad” that most places have), and this was more than enough to make up for the lackluster duck fries.

House Burger

However, Carol’s luck wasn’t as good. She wasn’t sure whether to try the pulled pork sandwich or the burger, and opted for the House Burger, which is served up with pimento cheese, grilled cippoline onions, and house-made bacon. Some of this worked: the bacon, for example was top-notch, and Carol said she’d love having a sandwich made of nothing but that bacon. The pimento cheese was pleasant as well. But the cippoline onions just didn’t work here, they were fried up just to the point of being gummy, and didn’t really add anything (particularly flavor-wise). And the burger itself was somewhat smaller, and rather overcooked, and seemed to be an afterthought to the rest of the toppings. A great hamburger starts with a good patty, and this wasn’t it.

So in the end I found Prohibition Pig to be a mixed bag. They’ve got some serious talent there: both the cracklins and pastrami were top-rate, enough so to draw me back the next time I’m in the area. The beer list was quite good (and the cocktails also looked promising), and the space nice. But along with everything they are doing well, there is a lot of room for improvement here. I hope they are able to kick things up a notch by the next time I visit.

Related posts:

1. The Fort (Lebanon, NH)
2. Worthy Burger (South Royalton, VT)
3. Iron Hill Brewery (Newark, DE)

The corner of Church and Main in Burlington is one of those spots that frustrated me. At the very bottom of the Church Street Marketplace, it’s a nice location, and for quite a few years it was the home of one of my favorite Burlington restaurants, Smokejack’s. However, like a lot of restaurants (good and bad), Smokejack’s closed in 2008, and the place sat empty for a few years before finally reopening as Church and Main. We’d walked by it several times since it opened, and people always seemed to be enjoying themselves in there (particularly with cocktails), so when I had to find a place in Burlington to celebrate Carol’s birthday, I decided to give Church and Main a try.

Maple Manhattan

Church and Main is basically an upscale “American Bistro” focusing on cocktails, a very extensive wine list, and the showcasing of local ingredients (particularly meats and cheeses), making it a slightly more upscale dining establishment than much of Church Street (apart from Leunig’s). Since the bar (and it’s rather outgoing bartenders) are a prominent feature of the place, we both decided to start with cocktails, Carol with a Maple Manhattan, and myself with a “Budding Romance” (a rather pleasant concoction of hibiscus-infused vodka, Lillet rouge, creme de peche, and champagne). The Maple Manhattan is what really impressed me: usually the use of Maple in a cocktail isn’t the greatest idea, since it usually hits like a sugar hammer, but this was a well-done cocktail: it still tasted just like a Manhattan should, but with just a hint of maple flavor and sweetness, adding to the cocktail instead of covering it up. I’ll definitely want to come back and sit at the bar at some point.

Calamari

For appetizers, we opted for two: the calamari and a wedge salad. The calamari was quite notable, since it wasn’t your normal presentation; instead of the normal calamari flour breading Church and Main does theirs with a light rice flour batter and a chili-ginger sauce. The result was a light, pleasant dish with predominantly Asian flavors, and I found it rather enjoyable (even if the calamari itself was right on the border of being overcooked).

Wedge Salad

My salad was a result of me giving into one of my weaknesses. I’m generally not a great fan of iceberg lettuce, but I do rather find myself unable to resist that old steakhouse classic, the wedge salad, where a giant wedge of iceberg lettuce is served up dripping with bleu cheese dressing and bacon. Well done, it’s actually quite a good dish. Here at Church and Main, they had their own rendition of it: substituting prosciutto for bacon, using mini-iceberg heads, and dressing it lightly
but adding several large chunks of high quality local bleu cheese. The result was a nice and enjoyable riff on the normal wedge salad, although to be honest, I would probably have liked it more with a good pancetta or even North Country Smokehouse bacon, but the prosciutto did work well enough.

Church Filet

For the main course, I opted for one of their featured entrees, the Church Filet. A relatively simple dish, this was a nicely done filet (extremely tender and cooked to my requested medium rare, although with a slight bit more sear on the outside than I usually prefer), served up with a nice medley of potatos, carrots, and mushrooms. Not a particularly fancy dish, but a dish done well.

Chicken Roulade

Carol did quite well, too, with their featured chicken dish. Basically a roulade made by rolling the white and dark meat chicken, cooking it sous vide, and then finishing it on the grill, this was a well-conceived and executed chicken dish: the chicken was moist and flavorful, but crispy.

Overall, we were pleased with Church and Main. There’s a lot of potential here, especially on the cocktail front, and while their basic concept of “inventive American” was good, some dishes carried it off much better than others. And the execution was just a spot off of what I like for this level of dining. There’s nothing wrong per se with Church and Main, and I’ll certainly be coming back. But I hope they can turn it up a notch.

Related posts:

1. American Flatbread Burlington Hearth (Burlington, VT)
2. Hong’s Chinese Dumplings (Burlington, VT)
3. A Single Pebble (Burlington, VT)

As those that have been to this site a lot have noticed, I have a weakness for hot dogs. Indeed, a coworker claiming that “hot dogs are just hot dogs” was one of my inspirations for starting this blog, since there are really quite a few varieties of hot dogs in existence (indeed, I’ve got as far as the Iceland Pylsur in my reviews). One of the more intriguing things I like is when essentially the same concept, like the “Chili dog”, gets some regional variations. When I was growing up (in the Southwest), a chili dog was simply a “chili dog” (albeit with the caveat that the sort of chili that makes a good condiment isn’t the same sort that tastes good in a bowl). The “Coney Island” dog is a variant of this with “Coney sauce”, a meaty, near-chili spicy meat sauce, and can be spotted by that name ranging from Michigan all the way over to Massachusetts. However, nearly the exact same dog as a “Coney Dog”, with a slightly drier and less spicy sauce, goes by the name “Texas Hot” or a “Michigan” (likely in homage to the Coney Island variety primarily coming from Michigan) in Upstate New York and Vermont (and as far north as northern Quebec, my friend Ben has a great story about buying a “Michigan” hot dog at a food cart in Radisson, Quebec in far, far, northern Quebec). And a particularly good example of the “Michigan” hot dog can be found at Beansie’s Bus in Burlington, VT.

Beansie’s Menu

Parked in a more-or-less permanent spot on the North side of Burlington’s Battery Park, Beansie’s Bus is a fairly common sighting from April to around November, selling hot dogs, burgers, fries, and the ever-important creemee (for non-Vermonters: regional name for soft serve) out of a converted school bus (and from what I’ve heard, the current Beansie’s Bus is actually just the current bus in a lineage going back all the way to 1944!). It’s really a nice arrangment: Battery Park is a fairly pleasant park and playground, and it has a rather pleasant view down the bluffs to Lake Champlain, the Burlington waterfront, and the distant Adirondack mountains. It’s also obviously a local tradition, since I usually see this place with 20 people in line on a Saturday afternoon.

A pair of Michigans

In any case, we were here for the Michigans, and that’s what we got. Since we were between meals (sadly, the life of a food blogger often involves careful pacing!), that was the entirety of our order. But a minute later, we had our pair of Michigans and wandered over to the bluffs to sit on a bench and enjoy the hot dogs while soaking up the scenery (and the pleasant unusually warm 76 degree weather). So, how was the dog? Beansie’s Michigan starts with a good quality dog, in this case a McKenzie of Vermont hot dog. Those are one of my favorites for widely-available hot dogs. While some might scoff at their being a primarily-pork hot dog, I’ve always liked McKenzie dogs, having natural casings (the snap is important), good smokiness, and more than a little spice. The next major ingredient was the Michigan sauce, and like most other “Michigans” I’ve had, this was a sauce that focused on the meat and not spice, with a rich beefy flavor and nice spicing without getting greasy. Add in some ketchup, mustard, and onions, and this was a rather enjoyable hot dog.

The view

I liked Beansie’s. They put together their hot dogs with care, have a nice location by the park, and they’ve got reasonable prices and friendly service. I’d like to come back here again with more stomach space and try other their fries. And maybe a creemee.

Related posts:

1. Leo’s Coney Island (Howell, MI)
2. Jim’s Texas Hots (Corning, NY)
3. Pink’s Hot Dogs (Los Angeles)

For a modestly-sized city in one of the nation’s smallest statea, Burlington, Vermont has a surprisingly good selection of restaurants, enough that we always have a bit of trouble figuring out which place to go. One of the perennial contenders for a dinner in Burlington is a smallish place on Bank Street a bit away from the hustle of the Church Street Marketplace: A Single Pebble.

A Single Pebble is one of those places that inhabits a semi-funky space, in what used to be a strip of houses in a block now surrounded by the Burlington Center Mall, Church Street, and a parking garage. If you didn’t know the place was here, you might never stumble upon it, but it’s a reasonably sized restaurant that occupies what used to be two houses and the yard between then (since built over), and most of the seating areas still vaguely resemble their old purpose (indeed, this visit’s seating was in what was obviously the original dining room of one of the houses).

Hanging Pork

The staff at A Single Pebble is definitely trained to be friendly and explain the dishes, and they always seem excited to tell me about the current specials, and explain unfamiliar dishes on the menu. Menu-wise, I’d place A Single Pebble someplace between a good American-style Chinese restaurant and some of the more authentic places I’ve been in NYC and San Francisco: the focus at A Single Pebble is primarily on traditional Chinese and Taiwanese dishes, with a lot of the specials playing around with more modern interpretations of these dishes (with non-Chinese spices or more western preparation techniques). The result is a combination of classic dishes done well and a little bit of playfulness. This time, while I was again tempted by the Chef’s Tasting Menu of 8 course, we opted to stay lighter and do fairly traditional, with an order of hanging pork, and two entrees, one of Sha Cha Beef and one of Three Cup Chicken.

Sha Cha Beef

The hanging pork was the first to arrive (one quirk I’ve noticed on previous visits to A Single Pebble is that they seem to put your entire meal ticket in at one time, and all the items come out immediately as fired, so your dishes have a tendency to arrive in random order), and this was a great start to the meal. A reasonable generous portion of tender pork marinated in a five spice sauce, this had everything I look for in a “Chinese Barbecue” dish: the pork was perfectly tender and not overcooked, the sauce was spicy and tangy, sticking to the outside of the pork in a perfectly crispy crust. The pork was served on a bed of tender greens that were good in their own right, but also a good vehicle for chasing down leftover bits of the five spice sauce. This was one of those dishes that will inspire me to attempt a recreation at home.

Next arriving was the Sha Cha Beef, which is basically marinated beef in a rich savory sauce served in a warmed steel pot over wide rice noodles. This is one of those dished where each component works nicely. The beef was very flavorful and paired nicely with the sauce and veggies. The noodles worked both as an accompaniment to the beef, as their own item, crisping to the warm steel pot and chasing down the rest of the sauce. Again, another solid performer.

Three Cup Chicken

Last to arrive was the Three Cup Chicken. A classic Taiwanese dish, this is named for the sauce which is primarily equal portions of soy sauce, rice wine, and sesame oil. The result is tender chunk of chicken with a rich flavor, a very crispy coating from the sauces, and a nice dose of basil, ginger, and garlic. This was quite enjoyable, although probably the weakest dish of the evening (by the time we finished it, it was a bit heavy, and a bit salty… I can see why a few online reviewers refer to the place as “A Salty Pebble”).

A Single Pebble stands out for me, since I’ve mentioned several times (like in my recent review of Shangri-La), that Northern New England seems to suffer from a lack of good Chinese places, even heavily westernized ones. But A Single Pebble has proven to me over several trips that it’s not just “good by Northern New England standards”, but it’s also one of the best Chinese places I’ve eaten in the United States. And from my several visits, it’s clear that we’re not yet done exploring A Single Pebble. Each time we’ve gone it has brought us new surprises, and we have yet to do their tasting menu, or tried the mock eel which many diners have praised. I’m looking forward to another trip back here.

Related posts:

1. Hong’s Chinese Dumplings (Burlington, VT)
2. American Flatbread Burlington Hearth (Burlington, VT)
3. Pho Hong (Burlington, VT)

Back in February, we came to Kismet to check out a pop-up restaurant they host on Wednesday nights (you can read my review of Himitsu Sushi here). In addition to introducing us to the rather good sushi of Himitsu’s traveling restaurant, this gave us a decent introduction to Kismet as well. While waiting for our Himitsu sushi, we looked over the Kismet menu, and decided to come back and check them out sometime. Well, this Friday we were headed up to Burlington for an extended weekend, and it had us passing through Montpelier during the “late breakfast” period of the day. While we almost ended up going to our standard Montpelier breakfast destination, Coffee Corner, we decided that going over to Kismet and checking out their brunch menu would be a good idea.

Wok-seared rice scramble

Kismet’s approach to dining is pretty straightforward: they are trying to make fairly simple dishes based primarily on local ingredients. Their brunch menu is a good example of this, with their standard menu (they’ve got an expanded menu on weekends) offering fare ranging from biscuits and gravy (with both meat and vegetarian versions available), variants of Eggs Benedict (including a version served up on a crepe), huevos rancheros, and even a poutine. Most everything features local ingredients, as well as most items being available with vegetarian options such as tempeh or tofu.

The dish that attracted both of us was the “wok-seared scramble”, offering up a wok-ful of either potatoes or rice, seasonal veggies, ginger, basil, either eggs, tofu or cheese, and optional chicken or tempeh. It sounded like a good combination, so we both went for it. Carol ordered up first, going for a version with rice, poached eggs, and tempeh. I went a little more traditional, going for potatoes and poached eggs in mine, with my also opting for a “Bit of Sunshine” beverage of fresh-squeezed carrot and orange juice (made with some really dark carrots).

Wok-seared potato scramble

A short while later, our scrambles arrived. Carol’s was quite pleasing, with a very rice organic brown rice base with a lot of ginger serving as the foundation, heaped with seared broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, two nicely-poached eggs, and several large chunks of tempeh. I’m usually a little bit dubious of tempeh, but the folks at Kismet did a good job cooking it up into some tender chunks that absorbed the sauce. Overall, the dish was quite pleasing.

My version of it was nominally the same dish, but the different ingredients really changed the character. My potatoes were nicely done crispy chunks of home fries (making these some of the better home fries of the area), which nicely combined with the veggies and ginger/basil wok sauce to give a dish that was halfway between a standard “eggs and home fries” breakfast and a wok dish. I think I preferred Carol’s version, but both were quite pleasant (next time, however, I’m going to try cheese and tempeh instead), and I’d call both a flavorful success.

Carrot and Orange Juice

Overall, we were pleased. Kismet is serving up a brunch menu that does a successful job of not just integrating local ingredients, but doing so with some inventive dishes with pleasing options for both meat and vegetarian diners. I’d love to come back, especially to try their expanded weekend menu.

Related posts:

1. Coffee Corner (Montpelier, VT)
2. Himitsu Sushi (Montpelier, VT)
3. Home Hill Inn (Plainfield, NH)

Our walk last weekend through, well, most of Boston, ended up taking us right down Hanover street through the very center of Boston’s North End (their Little Italy), and right past the epicenter of activity on a warm weekend evening: Mike’s Pastry.

Okay, I’ll be honest, Mike’s Pastry is anything but offbeat. In fact, it’s almost guaranteed that if I mention that I’m going to Boston to eat, someone in the group will insist on my going to Mike’s Pastry. So, just like all the little offbeat places I review, occasionally I have to review the iconic ones as well. So on a fairly pleasant spring evening, we found ourselves waiting on the sidewalk, and then sharpening our elbows and working our way into the semi-anarchic interior of Mikes for some cannoli.

The Crowd

I think the ritual is part of what people like about Mike’s. If you can look past the crowds of people, it’s really a pleasant shop, with stamped tin everywhere… but unless you go doing the slowest off-hours, you’ll barely see it. Instead, most of your view of Mike’s will be of the sidewalk outside, the large “Mike’s Pastry” sign, and then of the back of the people in front of you all trying to suss out which is the shortest line (with many egregious examples of line cutting in the process). Until you get to the very front of the line, all you can really see is a series of photos along the top of the wall showing the many (around 20) varieties of cannoli, so that by the time you get to the front of the line, you better know what you want before the person behind you knifes you.

Cannoli

But when you get to the front, you are greeted by a surprisingly friendly (at least by Boston standards) clerk who will take your order, efficiently line it up on the counter for your inspection, and then deftly package it up in the classic blue and white box tied with string (that you see people toting all around the city). The crowd will then push in around you and quickly convect you back to the street, where you can find a semi-quiet spot to go eat some of your plunder (Paul Revere Park down the way is usually pretty good for this if there aren’t too many Colonial re-enactors hanging about).

The Iconic Box

It’s a bit of drama, and it’s worth asking why people wait through such an experience when there are a handful of other great-looking and well respected cannoli places within a stone’s throw (such as the also highly-regarded Modern Pastry just across the street). I can’t answer that, since I’ve actually only been to Mike’s (so far, I’ll do Modern in a few weeks), but what I can say is that Mike’s definitely has earned their reputation as a must-visit joint for people new to Boston, since the cannoli are really quite good. The fillings are rich and flavorful with a nice creamy but dense texture that you expect from a good ricotta. I find it slightly sweet for my palate, but it’s definitely not overly sweet. Combine that with a rather larger-than-normal and perfectly crisped cannoli shell, some nuts/sprinkles/chocolate chips for the ends, and an ample dose of powder sugar applied to the whole assembly, and it’s one of the better exemplars out there for what cannoli should be like.

Leave the gun, take the cannoli

There’s definitely some substance here, and between the waiting, the mild rudeness of other customers, the tradition (I first had a cannoli from Mike’s in the 70s, and it was damn near identical) and the actual cannoli variety and quality, there’s something to be said for Mike’s. There’s a reason there’s a line.

Related posts:

1. El Triunfo (Boston, MA)
2. Santarpio’s (East Boston, MA)
3. Hei La Moon (Boston, MA)

Last year my coworker introduced me to Sofra in Cambridge, and we’ve been back to that part of Cambridge several times, and also started exploring the rest of that neighborhood (West Cambridge/Belmont). Looking around, there are actually some pretty neat places around there, such as Eastern Lamejun Bakers (which came highly recommended by an Armenian friend of mine), a few good wine stores, and some rather nice vintage stores. We also found ourselves walking by Shangri-La Chinese Cuisine, and became intrigued due to the large number of Chinese people waiting around outside for a table. So we put on our list to check out, and after this weekend’s hiking trip in Boston, it seemed like a good place to grab dinner.

Pork Belly with Preserved Mustard

I’ll be honest, in that Shangri-La, to outside appearances, is the sort of Chinese place that I’d usually wouldn’t show up on my radar: the Northeast is chock-a-block with all sorts of heavily-Americanized Chinese places, and the name Shangri-La reminds me of entirely too many tacky “Chinese” places that I went in the 70s, dishing out chop suey and sweet and sour chicken. Don’t get me wrong, I actually do like the occasional General Tso’s chicken or egg rolls, for example, but usually I find myself craving some more adventuresome and flavorful Chinese food.

Beef and Turnip Hot Pot

And Shangri-La did quite well on that front. After getting seated (we arrived at 8:30pm, and the place was still busy and crammed), as I was looking over the menu, I was immediately greeted with a nice selection of Taiwanese and Szechuan dishes, hot pots, and noodle dishes. Particularly, I was quickly drawn to one of my favorite Chinese menu items: pork belly with preserved vegetables (mustard greens, in this case). And when it arrived from the kitchen, I was quite happy with the result: A generous plate piled up with a big mound of preserved mustard greens topped with several slabs of tender, marinated, but still slightly crispy pork belly. The result had all the flavors and textures I like: a nice saltiness to the greens, a good marinated pork with tender fat that wasn’t really greasy, and just enough crisp texture to the pork skin. I’d get this again in an instant.

Carol opted for one of the hot pots (beef and turnip), and was rewarded with a rich and flavorful stew of large, tender and spicy beef chunks, nicely simmered turnip, and a rich broth full of pepper, lemongrass, garlic, and ginger notes. I’m not usually a fan of turnip, but it worked well here, nicely softened by the cooking but still having some tooth, absorbing much of the flavor of the rich broth, but still having a distinct turnip taste as well. Also a particularly good entree.

Chinese Broccoli

And deciding that we wanted to have some more green vegetables, we went for another personal favorite, Chinese Broccoli (gai lan). I almost always enjoy this at Chinese places (and curse my local groceries in NH for not carrying it), but often the result of ordering it is a large plate of it swimming in oyster sauce. Here, it was stir-fried in a light-and-not-greasy oil just to the point of being al-dente, with just a bit of garlic to give it some more flavor. The result was a pleasant side dish of greens.

So, Shangri-La is one of those places that at first glance I might not have been interested in, but when I ended up stopping in, I’m saddened I didn’t know about this place sooner. It’s a nice little Chinese/Taiwanese/Szechuan restaurant with a nice menu and good food. I’ll definitely be back.

Related posts:

1. Hei La Moon (Boston, MA)
2. Belmont Hall (Manchester, NH)
3. Craigie on Main (Cambridge, MA)

A many of my regular readers know, I’ve got a regular tradition of going on an annual “Death March”, in which I and a bunch of friends pick some random large US city (New York, San Francisco, and Chicago in previous years), pick a nice walking route through it (usually around 20 miles), and spend a day walking and eating our way through the city (you don’t feel too guilty about stopping for a hot dog, pizza slice, or taco if you’ve been walking 20 miles!). One of the challenges is that many large cities, particularly in business areas, can have large stretches that don’t have a lot of takeout food, or if they do, the places require some advanced scouting. So this last weekend, we did an exploratory trip looking for more stops on next month’s Boston Death March. So that’s how we found ourselves wandering around Berkeley Street in Boston’s South End, stumbling upon El Triunfo.

El Triunfo Menu

El Triunfo is one of those classic hole-in-the-wall Mexican joints, in which the restaurant consists of a single storefront with an ordering counter and a few (in this case, exactly three) stools at a counter for on-site eating. So it’s almost entirely takeout. That said, we discovered after ordering when those three seats were available that the cashier could get us a seat “next door”. And indeed, the vacant-looking store-front next door was a weird semi-furnished annex to El Triunfo filled with a half-dozen tables and a bunch of construction debris. It’s hard to tell what’s going on here, it’s either a very slow effort at expanding El Triunfo, or a former space that’s being decommissioned. Any locals know the answer?

Tacos

In any case, we found that despite a few people in line in front of us, El Triunfo was running fairly smoothly, and we were soon selecting our items from the fairly wide menu of Mexican and Salvadoran food, the latter including some nice-looking pupusas. So we ended up each ordering a chicken taco with all the toppings, and a pupusa served up with curtido (pickled cabbage). We were quickly treated to a plate of two good looking tacos, and then watched as the staff threw a pair of fresh-pressed pupusas on the grill for cooking. A few minutes later they served these up as well with a baggie (literally a ziploc bag) of curtido and we wandered into next-door’s semi-furnished space for eating.

Pupusas

How was the food? The tacos were good: the chicken was flavorful, the toppings good (I actually enjoyed the guacamole, which is unusual, since most guacamole tastes like greasy cleaning products to me), and the tacos nicely seared. I’ve had better, even in Boston, but this was quite a serviceable taco in what’s generally a part of town lacking in options. Where El Triunfo really shined was their pupusas, which were fresh, flavorful, and nicely crisped, and served up with a fairly tasty curtido. I was quite pleased (I think the last pupusa I enjoyed this much was back in Yuma, AZ).

Sure, El Triunfo is pretty much a dive with some quirks, but our food was good and I’m sure it’s popular with the locals. So, Boston readers, what are your favorite burrito and taco shops?

Related posts:

1. Flaco’s Tacos (Austin, TX)
2. Sportello (Boston, MA)
3. Santarpio’s (East Boston, MA)

Mostly, this will be an improvement. Mapping should be faster, with more options. But a few things will work a little differently. And I’m sure a few things will need tweaking. But please let me know if you find anything that’s not working how you think it should.

You’ve probably noticed by now that my normal at-least-weekly posting rate has dwindled to nearly nothing. The reason is two fold. The minor reason is that I haven’t been traveling much (aside from a bunch of repeat trips to Boxborough, MA), so I haven’t encountered my usual number of new places to try. But that’s not much of an excuse, since I’ve still got a good half dozen local places that are still overdue for a review.

The other is that three weeks ago I was diagnosed with a kidney stone. It started as a minor inconvenience, but then as the weeks of discomfort, pain, and nausea (especially the nausea), last Tuesday the docs took one look at my x-ray and decided that action was required: in this case a stent (to stabilize the kidney, the stone is still in there).

I’ve discovered that while kidney stones are a huge amount of, well, un-fun, the stent isn’t much better. So until this situation rides itself out and I’m given a clean bill of health, I’m on a regimen of bed rest, painkillers, and non-confrontational food.

So, in the meantime, enjoy the rest of the blog, stay healthy yourselves (drink lots of water!), and I hope to talk with you soon.

And any place that you folks are dying to have me review when I’m back on my feet? I can always start my research early…

I knew that eventually the concept of the “pop-up restaurant” was going to hit the area. For those that aren’t familiar with the pop-up concept, it’s basically a temporary restaurant, where a chef or kitchen team opens up in a temporary space or borrows another restaurant’s space for a night, serving their food and menu instead of the normal fare. It’s a good way for chefs to test out concepts or run limited restaurants, and they’ve been all the buzz the last few years. Indeed, one place I’ve reviewed here, Dock Kitchen in London, started as a pop-up. And like most any culinary fad, eventually it finds its way here to northern New England. In this case, the pop-up restaurant is a sushi place, Himitsu Sushi.

Himitsu Sushi Menu

“Himitsu” actually means “secret”, and it’s a good name for a pop-up restaurants. Himitsu is run by a pair of Vermonters, Nate Kulchak and Megan Dolan. Kulchak, an experienced sushi chef, moved to Vermont from the Caribbean to be closer to family, and soon found themselves partnering with Kismet in Montpelier, who had a regular “visiting chef” series going. Next thing you know, their business was taking off, and now Himitsu Sushi is a four-night-a-week affair. But the catch is that every night they are in a different town, on a semi-regular rotation. As I write this, they are currently on a four-day schedule, with Mondays at The Bees Knees in Morrisville, Tuesdays at the Lareau Farm (aka “American Flatbread”) in Waitsfield, Wednesdays at Kismet in Montpelier, and Thursdays at the Green Goddess in Stowe. Right now I recommend checking out their Facebook page to verify their schedule and locations.

None of these locations are particularly convenient for us, but we decided that one of these weeks we’d check them out when they were in Montpelier. So last night after work, we hopped in the car and drove the hour up to Montpelier to check them out at Kismet. Alas, I left both good cameras at home, but managed to still get some decent shots.

Kombuchatini

Walking into Kismet, I was reminded of the fact that a pop-up restaurant ends up being a bit of a fusion of the guest chef and the host restaurant, both in ambiance (the overall feel of the place is pretty much the same as any other night) and in menu (since Himitsu makes use of the bar services of Kismet, so the drink menu is primarily that of Kismet). And I was also glad, from the generally busy state of things, that I had called ahead before leaving Hanover to place a restaurant. So obviously Kismet’s “Secret Sushi Night with Himitsu” has caught on. But we were both quickly seated, and sipping at our Kombuchatinis, a pleasant mixed cocktail based primarily on kombucha.

Moving on to the main Himitsu menu, they’ve got a rather nice mix of Japanese-style appetizers (including sushi standards like miso soup, edamame, and fried tofu), as well as a handful of more creative dishes, like a Japanese-inspired version of a tuna ceviche salad, and their “Karub Kuri”, which was a braised short rib served up with vegetables in a rich curry sauce. The rest of the menu was basically maki rolls, and this is where I immediately noticed something a bit unusual: almost every menu item on the sushi menu included avocado. Apparently the owners of Himitsu are either huge fans of avocado, or they found a really good supplier, since it seemed to be more present than nori as a wrapper on the menu. Personally, I found that a bit of a shame, since I’m generally not a fan of avocado, but a lot of other people love it, so I guess most people would groove with this.

Tuna Ceviche

We ended up deciding on two appetizers and two maki rolls for our meal, getting the abovementioned tuna ceviche and Karub Kuri as starters. The tuna ceviche was a great opening to the meal. Served up with red onion, cilantro, watermelon, jalapeno, and a coconut foam, this was a nice variation on a classic ceviche. While I’m not a great fan of watermelon, here it combined with the cilantro and jalapeno quite nicely, and the coconut foam actually added a nice soft and sweet note. The main ingredient, however, was the tuna, and it is obvious that even with the challenges involved in running a mobile sushi kitchen, Himitsu has a decent seafood supplier, since this was very rich and tender tuna.

Karub Kuri

The Karub Kuri was also very pleasant, with a perfectly braised and tender beef short rib delivered up on a bed of tiny fingerling potatoes with a topping of veggies and very rich Japanese-style curry sauce. This was a perfect little dish, with the tender shreds of beef combining nicely with the potatoes and curry sauce. I’d happily order the full entree version of this dish on our next visit.

Rolls

For the main course, I was rather pleased with the two rolls we ordered. The first was the KB, which was a maki roll made with spicy salmon and tempura cilantro wrapped with mango and jalapeno. While the mango wrapper gave it the appearance of being wrapped in American cheese, it was actually a very pleasant (if slightly sweet) roll, with the crispy fried cilantro giving it a nice crunchy and bitter note, while the jalapeno gave it some nice bite (I’m rather a fan of paper-thin jalapeno in sushi dishes). I’d certainly get this again. Our other roll, the McManus, was a more basic rolls, basically a stadard maki roll with substantial portions of good salmon, tuna, and scallion roll.

Overall, we were very pleased with Himitsu Sushi. Vermont, by combination of its rural character and the lack of a seashore, doesn’t have a lot of sushi places (indeed, there’s only one other I’ve been to that I’d recommend at all, and that’s San Sai in Burlington), so Himitsu Sushi fills that niche very nicely. And they seem to leverage the pop-up concept well, partnering with quite a few nice restaurants to bring their product to several towns across Vermont. They won’t be a regular destination of ours (it’s hard, when only rarely does my path cross theirs), but I certainly wouldn’t mind another visit. Maybe next time with less avocado?

Related posts:

1. Mikasa Sushi Bar (Montreal, Quebec, Canada)
2. Sushi Ran (Sausalito, CA)
3. Skinny Pancake (Montpelier, VT)

Well, it’s been a while since my last update. I haven’t been traveling much, mostly hitting up local favorites like Worthy Burger. But some recent projects at work have caused me to spend a lot of time testing, and as a result, I’ve spent a rather large amount of time in Massachusetts at a subcontractor around Fort Devens and Boxborough.

Like a lot of my work destinations, the area is pleasant enough, but it’s not an area with a lot of notable food options. Indeed, it takes a bit of research to find anything other than the restaurant associated with the hotel… if you know otherwise, please let me know! But when looking at various local reviews, there was one place nearby that did get consistently good reviews: Woo Jung.

Woo Jung’s Cozy Interior

Located just outside of downtown Ayer, MA, Woo Jung is a cozy little Korean place. Located in a small, nondescript building just down from a strip mall, Woo Jung is one of those places that unless you were looking for it, it probably wouldn’t register on your radar. It’s a tiny place, with seating for maybe 25 customers fairly tightly packed into a small dining room, but it’s also a warm and inviting spot. Grateful that I had called ahead for reservations, my coworker and I were quickly greeted and seated.

Banchan

And quickly found ourselves with a nice table full of hot tea and banchan. Banchan are one of the things I like about Korean food: a nice, broad assortment of little side dishes, in this case some very flavorful kimchi, some similarly spiced bamboo shoot, and several pickled vegetables and sprouts. Woo Jung definitely has some of the more flavorful banchan I’ve had in recent history.

Kimbap

We then placed our orders. We started with a side order of kimbap (a sushi-like Korean appetizer with rice and nori wrapped around marinated beef and veggies). Meanwhile, I opted for one of my favorites: jajangmyeon, which is basically a noodle dish served up with a black bean and pork sauce. My coworker opted for one of her favorites: kimchi chigae (kimchi soup).

Jajangmyeon

The kimbap was a great start to the meal, with a rather sizable plate of sliced kimbap arriving shortly after our order, with the center still a bit warm. Using a nice rice with a fairly strong sesame oil flavoring to it, this was a really good rice roll built around a core of really flavorful beef and pickled veggies. The result was a nice combination of the flavors I like most about Korean food: sesame oil, peppers, and marinated beef.

Jajangmyeon (mixed)

My noodles were similarly good. While jajangmyeon arrives as a not-terribly-photogenic dish, once the sauce is mixed into the noodles, the result is a very rich and plentiful bowl of tasty noodles covered with a rich, porky brown sauce that is usually very salty, but here at Woo Jung it was more savory and flavorful, with a nice rich profile of flavors. I ended up filling up only halfway through my bowl, leaving enough for a very good lunch at work the next day.

Kimchi Chigae

Similarly, my coworker thoroughly enjoyed her kimchi chigae. The soup was fragrant, with plentiful amounts of seafood sitting in a rich and spicy kimchi broth. Served up with some rice, the resulting dish was also more than she could eat as well, so we both ended up with a good amount of leftovers for lunch.

Overall, we both really enjoyed Woo Jung. It’s one of the best Korean restaurants I’ve been to, and takes very good care in preparing their dishes. The staff is friendly and efficient as well. Our only mistake? We didn’t realize that Woo Jung is BYOB, so next time we’ll bring some beer along as well.

Related posts:

1. Chi-Lantro Korean BBQ Taco Truck (Austin, TX)
2. H-Mart (Burlington, MA)
3. Matsu Chan (Canton, MI)

Coming back home to New Hampshire from Cleveland requires a rather lengthy drive across New York State, with two options: the Thruway, or the slightly longer route taking the Southern Tier. Due to some rather heavy snow coming off of the lake, we opted for the Southern Tier route, which resulted in us passing through Corning, NY around lunch time. We decided to stop there, since the location was convenient, and I’ve got a soft spot for Corning since I was born there. Like most of our visits there, we ended up on Market Street downtown, this time giving Atlas Brick Oven Pizzeria a try.

Atlas Interior

Atlas is like a lot of the places on Market Street, a fairly narrow building that they’ve converted to a restaurant by having the main pizza making operation downstairs, with some seating and the prominent brick oven, while having the upstairs configured as a large bar and dining room. Taking a seat upstairs, we quickly decided on some Southern Tier beer, some green salads, and our standard pizza order, a large sausage and mushroom pizza.

Pizza

The pizza came out about 15 minutes later. Compared to a lot of the places I’ve been for pizza in upstate New York, Atlas did quite a good job with the toppings: the sausage was more spicy than sweet and not overly applied. The cheese was good and starting to get a good toast on it, and both the sausage and mushrooms were good quality: the sausage having a pleasant spiciness to it, while the mushrooms were fresh (anyone else hate canned mushrooms on a pizza?). So they had that part of the pizza down pat.

The crust, however, was a letdown. They had a good enough dough, but the resulting crust was a little undercooked. The whole point of having a large brick oven is that you can get a really nice crust, with a good amount of toasting and a bit of charring. Here, the crust was just past “cooked”, and really could have used a few more minutes in the oven, and the cornicione was just lightly toasted. The result was an “okay” pizza, when just a little more cooking, or a slightly hotter oven, could have made for a really good pizza. Next time I’ll have to specify that I want my pizza well done.

Overall, Atlas was a rather decent pit stop, however, and they had enough good things with the pizza that I’ll give them another try at some point. But on this trip, the pizza was just a bit disappointing.

Related posts:

1. John’s Pizzeria (West Village, Manhattan, NY)
2. Grimaldi’s (Brooklyn, NY)
3. Yetty’s Pizza (Herkimer, NY)

For our last dinner in the Cleveland area, we were looking for a lighter dinner (have you seen all hot dogs, steaks, and pork products I consumed in the last few entries?), and as a result, we decided to check out a relative newcomer on the Cleveland scene, D.C. Pasta Co. in Strongsville, OH. First of all, the D.C. Pasta Co. name comes not from our nation’s capital, but from the owners’ initials, D.C. is the combined effort of Ohio chef Dante Boccuzzi (primarily known for his “Dante” and “d.b.a” restaurants), and Carmela del Busso (known for “Oggi”), giving the place it’s initials. D.C., situated in a small strip mall complex in Strongsville, is designed to be a fairly casual Italian place featuring house made pasta.

Reflecting this approach, the menu at D.C. is relatively simple, fitting on a single sheet of paper, and the menu focuses primarily on a list of eight pasta dishes made with their in-house pasta, as well as a reasonable assortment of Italian starters, cheese, salumi, and a few secondi. But really, it’s primarily about the pasta, with each dish being available in three sizes ranging from “Appetizer” up to “Entree”. This allows (and the staff encourages) mixing and matching of these to make up the dinner you want. Add in a reasonably good wine list (with a lot of good wines in the $30 range), and it looked encouraging enough.

Polenta

So, after looking over the menu, we ordered up some polenta and some salumi to start, and both arrived relatively quickly. The polenta was a rather pleasant start to the meal, being perfectly cooked to my preferences with a creamy texture with just a little bit of tooth to it, I enjoyed this, and it showed that someone in the kitchen was paying attention. For the salumi, we got some sopressata and some prosciutto, both of which were nicely done as well.

Salumi

For the main course, we both decided to avail ourselves of the “plate full of appetizers” approach recommended by the waitstaff. I opted for a plate with two meatballs (lamb and pork), an appetizer-sized Bucatini con Salsa Di Agnello (bucatini with lamb and basil), and and appetizer-sized Cavatelli con Patate Dolci (Cavatelli in Sweet Potato Sauce).

Pasta selection

First, lets talk about where this dinner worked really well; the pasta at D.C. Pasta lives up to it’s namesake, being perfectly prepared and cooked fresh pasta, with just enough firmness. This wasn’t your typical “pasta as an afterthought” that so many restaurants are guilty of, but proper noodles. And the Bucatini in particular had a rich lamb ragù with some flavorful basil notes on top. Combine that with the meatballs, of which both flavors were nicely seasoned and cooked with just the right amount of crispiness, and they’ve got some good concepts here. The Cavatelli with sweet potatoes was a nice concept, and the cavatelli itself also perfectly cooked, but this was where D.C. started to show their weakness, since this dish was a bit oversauced. I could see where they were going with this, but honestly, this would have been a much better dish with half the sauce.

Carol’s Dinner

Carol’s results were similar, she opted for a similar mix, with two meatball (like me, she went for lamb and pork), Strozzapretti di Barbabietole (strozzapretti with beets), Linguine alla Carbonara, and some gnochetti. The gnochetti and strozzapretti where both quite good, showing the same overall level of pasta quality, and a decent sauce, and we enjoyed both, but the linguine was much like my cavatelli, practically swimming in sauce that was heavily loaded with egg and cream. Lightly dressed, and this would be a good dish, but as served, it was entirely too soupy.

While we didn’t get dessert, there was one thing about the dessert menu that stuck out to me: the waitress was quite enthusiastic about dessert, but then quickly mentioned, quite proudly, that aside from the mousse di cioccolato, that most of the other desserts weren’t made by D.C., but instead imported from Italy. This seems strange to me, since I’ve actually had quite a few delicious dessert in Cleveland showcasing the talents of local pastry chefs and local dairy providers, so this seemed a bit off-key to me, like they are missing a good opportunity. Indeed, we ended up passing on dessert.

The other thing I’ll mention about D.C. is that we found the service a little lacking. Drinks and appetizer orders were quickly taken, but while the appetizers quickly arrived from the kitchen, the wine apparently needed 20 minutes to get located and served. Similarly, our appetizers were finished and the plates bussed before our dinner order was taken, and we again had a long wait before some bread appeared, and then after that, finally, our entrees. When they arrived, the items were mixed up between our orders, and one pasta dish was missing altogether, requiring a bit of a shuffle and another trip of the waitress back to the kitchen before things were squared away. I’ll be honest, some of it wasn’t our waitress’s fault, since she had quite a large number of other tables with some very demanding customers, so some of this was just bad luck, and some of it a staffing shortage as well. But in the end, for a place that’s been open almost a year, I generally expect a better level of service, even for a place catering to the “casual” diner.

Don’t get me wrong, however, D.C. Pasta Co. has a lot of potential. Their primary goal is providing quality pasta in a fairly casual environment, and they do that quite well, with a nice menu structure that encourages sharing. The pasta is good, and most of the sauces and meatballs both conceptually sound and decently executed, they just need to refine a few dishes and work on emphasizing service a bit more. Right now, they aren’t on the top of my revisit list (Cleveland has a lot of really great places competing for my limited visits…), but I hope they can take it up a notch.

Related posts:

1. Trattoria Delia (Burlington, VT)
2. AMP 150 (Cleveland, OH)
3. Greenhouse Tavern Revisited (Cleveland, OH)

After we did the Cleveland Museum of Art, it was time for a late lunch. We wanted something interesting, but not something that was going to be heavy enough that we wouldn’t be hungry come dinner. After a little bit of discussion, we decided that it was time to check out Happy Dog on the West Side, known known for their wide variety of hot dog toppings.

Okay, I can already feel the skeptical vibe coming from some of my readers. The world has a lot of hot dog places, what makes a place like Happy Dog worth some of your precious stomach space? And I’ll be the first to admit, hot dogs as a menu item are often a high-risk item: while there are a lot of really great hot dog places out there (Indeed, I’ve reviewed about 20 on this site), there are a lot of dubious ones as well, and for every lovingly-assembled Gold Coast Chicago Dog, or pepper-relished-covered Blackie’s hot dog I’ve had, I’ve also been served up more than my share of Oscar Mayer 10 per lb hot dogs slapped onto a stale bun with ketchup and mustard to know that hot dogs generally aren’t the sort of thing I get without doing some research first. But I’ll tell you that from my visit, Happy Dog isn’t one of those places, instead, they are a great dive-ish joint that’s serving up some really great hot dogs with some good toppings.

Happy Dog Interior

So, let’s work our way through all the things that make Happy Dog great. First of all, despite the focus on hot dogs, Happy Dog is a bar that serves hot dogs, not a hot dog place that sells beer. There’s an important different there, especially when it comes to ambiance, but this is definitely a “bar”. Walking in the door, the interior of Happy Dog, it’s like you are walking into the bar area of a bowling alley on the wrong side of the tracks: the colors are subdued, the lighting a bit dim, the seating a little dilapidated, and the floorspace dominated by a bar and a small impromptu stage. Nothing wrong with that, indeed, I usually like divish places like this, since it means the people here care about their beer more than maintaining a TGI Friday’s atmosphere. Then you sit down, order up some beers, and the bartender then comes by with a couple of stubby pencils (again, like a cheap bowling alley) and half-sheet menus for ordering your dogs.

Toppings List

The hot dogs are $5 each, with your choice of a real hot dog or a fake veggie one, and then all of the toppings you can cram on there from the list. Let’s start with the building blocks, however. This isn’t your run-of-the-mill generic hot dog, the hot dogs at Happy Dog are custom-made, quarter-pound each, coarse-ground and extra spicy hot dogs from Blue Ribbon Meats, a local purveyor of sausages. These are a good quality hot dog, with some quality meat, some good spice, and a nice texture from the coarse grind. I’d actually say these were similar to a slightly milder version of a Polish Boy or a Half Smoke, but in any case, Happy Dog starts with a great dog. Then they put that dog on a bun from Orlando Baking on Cleveland’s Near-East Side, for a bun that’s got a little more heft than your standard side-split bun.

But then the toppings are where Happy Dog really puts it into overdrive. As I mentioned above, the hot dog menu takes up half a sheet of paper, with a total of 50 standard toppings (plus a few specials and secret toppings as well). I’ve been to a lot of places that have a lot of hot dog toppings, but usually “a lot of hot dog toppings” means “standard condiments, chili, kraut, cheese, and maybe some pepper relish”.

Rich’s Hot Dog #1

Here, it means everything from the ordinary (#3, Ordinary Yellow Mustard), to upscale versions of standard condiments (like #2 Chipotle Ketchup, #20 Alien Pickle Relish, or #28 Yuengling Sauerkraut), to unusual (#34 Marinated Cremini Mushrooms or #15 Brazilian Chimichurri), to the downright excessive (#49 Sunny Side Up Egg, #31 Pimento Mac and Cheese, or #30 Bourbon Pork and Beans). And on top of that, most of these aren’t the short of topping where you just order a can from the Sysco truck and dish it out; most of the sauces and relishes are house-made, and several of the items are freshly prepared. This is truly one of those over-the-top lists of toppings, way more than I was expecting. Sure, there are a few dubious toppings on the list, like item #29, Coco Puffs. I’m sure if I lived there I’d eventually I’d go cuckoo for Coco Puffs and try it out, but I’m also pretty sure that I’m not missing anything by not trying it.

Fries and toppings

The fries are similar, they’ve got the options for fries or tater tots, with a list of toppings that’s still extensive, but a subset of those available for the hot dogs. And adding to the rest of that, they’ve also got 20 beers on tap, focusing on regional small breweries for most of the taps. So from a conceptual standpoint, this place is great.

So, how were the actual hot dogs? Aside from some amount of decision paralysis brought on not only by the sheer number of topping options, but the various combinations thereof (according to the waitress, the only real limit with toppings is that at some point they run out of room to keep adding them, which happens around 10 toppings), my mental combinatorics come up with about 10 billion possibilities, which drops to about 100 million when I rule out toppings I find completely uninteresting, it took me a while to come up with my first dog: chopped Roma tomatoes, escarole, pickled onions, and chopped applewood smoked bacon.

Rich’s Hot Dog #2

And when the dog arrived a few minutes later, the dog was everything I expected. The hot dog itself was a good, solid dog. The roma tomatoes were fresh, the escarole nicely sauteed and garlicky, the pickled onions exactly like what I’d expect from a good taco cart, and the bacon chopped and applied none-to-sparingly. The resulting hot dog was a nice combination of flavors and textures.

Carol went a bit more conservative with her first dog, going for caramelized onions and mole, but the resulting dog worked well, with a nice combination of onion tastes and sweet-but-spicy mole. The fries were similarly good: nice crisp fries that were nicely complimented by the sauces, in our case, thai chile and garlics sauce, and black truffle honey mustard. In fact, the latter of these was so good I opted to include it on my second hot dog.

Carol’s Hot Dog #1

Rounding out our hot dog orders, my second dog was a combination of my favorite spicy toppings (Black truffle honey butter, sriracha, chimichurri, onions, and sport peppers), and I was pleased with this. This was more than a little spice (albeit from several competing cuisines), which worked with the nice spicy hot dog. I’d get this again, although the habanero hot sauce will make it on there next time.

Carol’s second dog, meanwhile, was all the guilty pleasure toppings (mac and cheese, baked beans, and mole), and while that wasn’t a combination I’d go for every day, mac and cheese makes for a pretty good hot dog topping.

Carol’s Hot Dog #2

Overall, I was really pleased with Happy Dog. They start with a good hot dog, and have an impressive list of toppings (in both length and quality). Unlike a lot of hot dog places, the list wasn’t a gimmick, but the cornerstone of a great hot dog eating experience. I could easy see coming back a half dozen times before growing tired of this particular topping list.

Related posts:

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3. Market Garden (Cleveland, OH)