Posts Tagged “albarino”

I recently helped a friend set up a blog. It’s a bit like turning somebody on to a drug – you know it’s bad for them and it’s going to eat up their life, but it’s already eaten yours, so why not share?  Over time, I’ve been “blogfather” to more than a couple of RSS feeds, some of which are in the duckroll blogroll at right.  Tonight I was rewarded with a wonderful dinner of thanks, and it’s only right that I should blog about it.

L took me to Great Bay in the Hotel Commonwealth, an excellent choice for many reasons, not least that she’s pesco-vegetarian. Great Bay – another awesome Michael Schlow joint – is in a beautiful space with a vaulted ceiling and a central sashimi station with a great lampshade-like canopy floating above it.  I recommend sitting at it if you can.  As is often the case, it was a bit dark for good photos, but I did the best I could with the meager candle.  Also note (excuses, excuses) that Great Bay’s online menu is a season or three behind what was served, so I don’t have all the precise details of ingredients.  I guess you’ll just have to check it out for yourself.

Service was attentive almost to the point of making us nervous, but they split both our soup and salad without complaint, and I’m sure we got more than the usual portion in total.  We started with a nice half bottle of Albariño from Lagar de Cevera, a salad with golden beets and candied pecans and a marvelous butternut squash bisque with perfect little scallops lurking just beneath the oil-dotted surface.

From the raw bar, we had Tasmanian salmon sashimi wrapped around crisp daikon with a topping that looked like tapenade but was actually black bean, rocoto pepper and lotus root for a nice zing.

Next up, two small plates as a main: lobster and shrimp dumplings with ginger soy and crab cake over corn salsa with a squirt of lime.  Despite the engaging and limey presentation, the crab cake was merely good, while the dumplings were more rustic in appearance but exceptionally tasty with a good dose of lobster meat.

Satisfied but not quite full, we walked through the hotel to the other end where we had coffee and superb dark chocolate cake with coffee buttercream at the bar of Eastern Standard.  As if having two great restaurants weren’t reason enough, I also love the Hotel Commonwealth because it hosts the Panopticon Gallery of Photography. Thanks to its hallway location, Panopticon never really closes and so might just be the art venue with the best hours in town.  We were lucky enough to see the new show – it doesn’t officially open until tomorrow with the reception on Friday – called Prohibition: Celebrating the Repeal, Photographs from the Collection of the Boston Public Library.  The show features modern prints of vintage photos from the BPL collection depicting life under prohibition and ties in with the 75th anniversary of repeal coming up on December 5.  In addition, images by Panopticon regulars Bradford Washburn, Karin Rosenthal, John Ponwall and Keith Johnson (among others) were on view.  Don’t miss it.

It seems goofy, but I’m thinking I should take a holiday in my own hometown and stay at the Commonweath.  When the weather gets cold, being able to see great photos and eat great food without going outside sounds pretty good.  Kenmore square has come a long way since I first moved here, that’s for sure.

Holiday weeks can be longer and shorter at the same time.  I spent a couple of days in New York City with family and returned to full-bore autumn and a brief but intense two-day work week.  Celebrating exceptional September results, half the company headed off to Sabur for drinks and apps. We enjoyed a bottle of Macedonian Vranec and the chef’s whim of appetizers, notably grape leaves, pickles, hummus and polenta.  I can’t believe that I haven’t been to Sabur since July, but I got the text from J that she was 30 minutes from a table at Toro, so I had to split.

Entertaining former Bostonian K and his new wife L, J had managed to hold down some seats at the packed bar until we all arrived and eventually got seated at the communal long table.  Toro is dark beyond trendiness so I couldn’t get the photos that I might have wanted, but I agreed to use the flash just once to capture one of J’s favorite dishes, which I’m sure will be written up on her blog soon enough.

We enjoyed a fine bottle of Albariño (they have several, we got the cheap one and didn’t mind a bit), borquerones (anchovies!), erizos en suquet (sea urchin, lobster and crab meat stew in tomato sauce), smoked beef tongue with lentils, grilled cauliflower, brussels sprouts with sea salt, and maiz asado con aioli y queso cojita (the house special, grilled corn with aoili, lime, and cheese – messy and delicious).  Small without being stingy, none of these dishes cost more than $13, and we did not leave hungry.

And then we got one more dish, the one that I had been thinking about since I started my fall game kick, the conejo cocido, cava braised rabbit with carrot marmelade and burgundy snails.

Honestly I could take or leave the snails.  Maybe they were there as a play on the tortoise and the hare, but they orbited the main part of the dish without really participating.  The rabbit and carrots (another cheeky combo, but one that works here as it did at Rino’s) were perfectly done.  The mildly gamy rabbit fell apart under the fork and the carrots were prepared with an offsetting sweetness, like a slightly crunchy tzimmes.  The official start to rabbit season is still a week away, but so far, the signs are very positive.