Posts Tagged “burek”

It’s been a busy week at limeduck HQ. I will attempt to convey the highlights and then pull myself together to get over to Podcamp Boston, where I’m sure more blogworthy high jinks will ensue.

Fit the First: WIG 18

Webinnovatorsgroup boston (as their typography has it) has the tagline “Promoting Boston’s Web and Mobile Innovation Community.” Their 18th shindig was Tuesday night at the Royal Sonesta in Cambridge. It was a large (800 people) networking event with three short pitches and a handful of tabletop exhibits.

It was also the first live event where somebody recognized me as limeduck from my nametag. Scary.

I won’t spend a lot of time picking at the business models or technology of the three pitches, but I will say that the presentation slots were blessedly brief and not all that well-prepared. The crowd was great, however, bellowing out “how are you going to make money?” after each one.

Zeer: Consumer reviews for healthy eating. They won the audience choice award so they must be doing something right, and I do love me a food-related social network. But they do have that annoying way of enforcing first and last name in users. What if Cher wants to join?

Webnotes: Create and manage online annotations. Impressive functionality, but the demo crashed when 500 iphoners in the room tried to follow along. Next time, have a nice whale graphic ready.

Totspot: A place for parents to publish a page about their kids. Two young guys in company t-shirts under blazers kick off the pitch by saying that they’re not parents. If I was their VC, I’d have them grounded.

After the event, I was lucky enough to join a table of the cream of the twitterati at Helmand, one of my favorite places in town. Best Afghan restaurant in Boston sounds like faint praise but this place is special. We enjoyed several plates of delicious pumpkin kaddo and other morsels and pretty much closed the place down.

Fit the Second: Full moon over Scampo; MIA at DeCordova

Thursday, I foolishly accepted a dinner invite with some good people at work, having somehow completely forgotten about the DeCordova Museum’s roofdeck party. I hear the event was fantastic and the view was beautiful. And that somebody there was looking for limeduck. Scary. Since I’ve stopped driving to work, the DeCordova has felt very far away. Must make a visit soon.

Meanwhile, back in Boston, at the bar Clink (it’s a pun, get it?) in the Liberty Hotel, I noticed that Grgich Hills Fume Blanc was on the wine list for $75. Eek. I paid $45 at Casablanca, and a bunch less than that at Sabur. We had some different and delicious wines, but I was glad this one was on the company. We had a pleasant dinner outdoors at Scampo in the same hotel.

From left, risotto with fava beans, fresh mozzarella with carpaccio and smoked sea salt, and gnocchi with swiss chard. All very tasty and well prepared but not quite up to the hype of the setting. The Liberty seems to have become The Place to be seen. As we left, there was some kind of fashion shoot taking place at the valet parking stand. That seems a sign of something just a bit too very very.

On the way home, I spied the thunder moon attended by Jupiter.

Fit the Third: if a tree falls in Cambridge…

As you might have noticed, I’ve been doing some fundraising for the American Heart Association using my birthday as a rallying point. Last night the fundraising hit double my initial goal, and about 25 of the donors joined me at Sabur for small plates and wine. I was very pleased with the turnout and amazed at the fundraising total. Sabur’s team came through with great dishes - cheese burek, potato celery root cakes and balkan sausages were among the favorites - and even managed to get me a good deal on half a case of Grgich. A grand time was had by all, and I’m very grateful to everybody who came out and donated. The fundraising goes on, and I’m sure the dining and drinking will resume at some point.

Then the police called.

“Hello, this is the Cambridge police, we’re calling about your vehicle…” Last time I got a call like that, I was in Hong Kong and somebody had made off with my 18″ TRD wheels, and the police wanted me to move my wheel-less car before they towed it. Tonight they were calling to tell me that a tree had fallen on my car.

Then they asked me to hold on, had along discussion among themselves, and decided that in fact the tree had fallen on a neighboring car, but that I needed to come down right away to see if there was any damage to my car. I didn’t really see the urgency in that, so I got back to the party. When I finally got home, this is what I found.

A large piece of the huge ivy-covered tree had some off and apparently done some damage to whoever was parked behind me, but there wasn’t a (new) scratch on the juice box. Just lots of pollen, sap and bird poo.

All’s well that ends well. Off to Podcamp.

I’ve been to Sabur twice this month, which is more than usual but I’m starting to think not really often enough.  It’s hardly a neighborhood secret anymore, but Sabur is a cosy restaurant and lounge either in Teele square or just outside Davis sqaure, depending on your frame of reference.  It’s in a awful building which I think used to be an insurance agency, but they have done a good job of decorating two very different rooms - the dining room boasts an open hearth where lamb cooks away for hours, and the bar/lounge has funky low seating and a Balkan folk/hip-hop soundrack - and a patio.  There’s even parking for five or six cars.

Yes, but what about the food?  I’m glad you asked.  Sabur does a good job of never quite revealing what country’s food it represents, using vague statements about “Italy, Greece, Southern France, and the Balkans to North Africa and beyond”  I think they should be proud of wherever they come from, but there’s no reason to define the menu so narrowly.  That said, since there’s no shortage of Italian, Greek, French and even Moroccan places around, so I usually concentrate on Sabur’s Balkan roots when I go.

I spent a week in Croatia a few years ago and had a great time, not least when enjoying a flaky burek.  Sabur’s burek is the meat kind, with onions and potato in a flaky but supple dough, “hand-stretched” according to the menu, and sized such that you can share it, feel satisfied, and still have a main course.  A quick glance at the illustrations on wikipedia’s burek page reveals that Sabur dishes out the Bosnian spiral variety.  One day when I’m a big internet mogul, I’ll have a burek page, too. 

Other appetizers of note include the seasonal calamari not on the menu, the hummus with extra thick warm pita, and the zucchini & feta fritters with ajvar (a red pepper chutney or relish), which compare favorably with the delicious black-eyed pea fritters at VeeVee in JP.  Can’t decide?  Get the mezze and put yourself in the chef’s capable hands.

On the entree side, the signature dish is proabably the open hearth roast lamb, which is in fact prepared in an actual open hearth in the main dining room.  When I was there last, I asked how long it had been stewing, and they told me since around 4pm.  With stew, I think longer cooking is better.  If you like lamb, you should not leave Sabur without trying this.

I know that “wild mushroom guvech” just doesn’t sound great, but I can attest that it delivers.  I’m still not entirely clear on the concept of guvech, but it seems to be mostly tomatoes, onions and eggplant, plus some vegetables I’m less sure of, maybe squash?  But it’s the wld mushrooms that keep my interest.  Funky little crimini types, something portabella like, very possibly whatever was growing in the nearby woods.  Like a lot of Sabur, it’s got mediterranean polish but a distinctly slavic undertone. 

Less than excellent was the vegetable tagine over cous cous with sultanas, almonds, cinnamon and dates.   The vegatables were just not that exciting, and oddly for a tagine, the whole thing was on the cooler side of warm.  There are better tagines in this town, but don’t let that steer you away from Sabur’s mousaka or their really excellent roasted garlic polenta with artichokes, tomatoes and olives.  For a surprising use of sweet on salmon, try the salmon charmoula with apricot couscous and spinach.

In keeping with the mediterranean/balkan theme, Sabur’s wine list has a global selection from New Zealand to California plus some good choices from the usual European regions, and then throws a curve at you with wines from Macedonia, Croatia and Slovenia.  Try the Temjanika (tem-yan-ee-ka) from Macedonia, somthing like a chardonnay without the oppressive oak, or the Istrian (Croatia, near Italy and Slovenia) red Teran Othello Kozlovic.  Oddly absent were wines from Croatia’s Dalmatian coast or Dubrovnik.  Maybe this summer, they’ll get a nice Plavac Mali, like the one from Grgić and we can drink it on the patio.

If summer ever comes, that is.