Move over cupcake — PIE is the new kid in town!
It wasn’t that long ago that cupcakes busted onto the scene – with cupcake exclusive bakeries popping up all over the country, including Seattle, people were going out for a cupcake after dinner, knocking ice cream off it’s throne.
Well, now, cupcake has a run for its frosting.
The talk around town is that pie is the new cupcake. In Seattle alone, there are at least five pie exclusive businesses, which already beats out the four cupcake shops that the city has held dear for the past few years.
Let’s break down Seattle’s pie hot spots –
Pie
Neighborhood: Fremont
Claim to pie fame: Pie offers a different variety of pies every single day including savory pies, late-night pies, vegetarian pies and morning pies
What to get: The portions at Pie are all single serving, just like a (ahem) cupcake would be. The mac n’ cheese pie is popular from the savory menu and the banana cream pie is a hit on the sweet list.
Find them: 3515 – 35th Avenue North // www.sweetandsavorypie.com
Seattle Pie Company
Neighborhood: Magnolia
Claim to pie fame: What started as a small husband and wife pie baking venture turned quickly into a huge success including winning Seattle Magazine’s Best Pie of 2010 and a mention in acclaimed Sunset Magazine.
What to get: The Deserted Island Pie is a customer favorite for sure – strawberries, apples, marionberries and raspberries mixed together with a yummy crumb topping. Keep an eye out for Pie Cones coming this summer – yes, that’s pie in an ice cream cone!
Find them: 3111 West McGraw Street // www.seattlepiecompany.com
Shoofly Pie Company
Neighborhood: West Seattle
Claim to pie fame: Pies that are classic and delicious without too many bells and whistles. Shoofly is where you want to go to bring back memories of baking with your grandmother on summer vacations as a child.
What to get: If you’re a key-lime fan, Shoofly Pie Company will be your new favorite place. We also love that you can pick up balls of fresh dough for making your own pie at home!
Find them: 4444 California Avenue Southwest // www.shooflypiecompany.com
A La Mode Pies
Neighborhood: Wherever you live in Seattle or the Eastside
Claim to pie fame: Pie delivery. Yes, you read that correctly. You can have pie delivered. And not just any pie, but amazingly delicious and innovative pies created with mostly local and organic ingredients. Delivery is free within Seattle and just $5 on the Eastside.
What to get: Whatever pie you order from Al a Mode Pies, add some LolliPies as well. They are little mini pies on a stick that are perfect for little pie-lovers or that baby shower you offered to host for the co-worker you hardly know – choose from apple cinnamon, cherries jubilee and blue Hawaiian (blueberry with coconut and pineapple)
Find them: Order online at www.alamodeseattle.com // also served at many restaurants around the city including Blue Moon Burgers in Fremont and Zeitgeist Coffee in Pioneer Square.
High 5 Pie
Neighborhood: Capitol Hill
Claim to pie fame: Major pie creativity happening at High 5 Pie including Pie in a Jar (pie baked in actual Mason Jars that even come with a lid, not that you’ll need to use it) and Flipsides (pockets of pie for on the go pie eating). Bonus points for High 5 Pie’s gluten-free options.
What to get: Peanut butter lovers can’t miss both PB options on the menu – the Peanut Butter and Jelly Pie and the Peanut Butter and Chocolate Pie. Not into PB? The cherry almond pie gets rave reviews.
Find them: 1400 – 12th Avenue // www.highfivepie.com
Guisados – Not Your Average Carne Asada Taco
Living in southern California, it’s next to impossible to not eat a taco once in your life. There are the countless taco trucks along Cesar Chavez and Beverly Blvd; they were a thing before food trucks became a thing. While Guisados is a brick and mortar restaurant instead of a mobile taco truck, it has the taco truck mentality. Order at the counter, watch your taco being assembled fresh after you order, stuff your face with it, and then order another.
Where Guisados differs from the taco truck experience is that it doesn’t just have your run of the mill carne asadas, carnitas, and cabeza tacos. Instead, it has exotic-sounding things like calabacitas and mole casipoblano. What might surprise you is that this humble little taco spot also has an amuse bouche and even a chef’s choice sampler platter.
The amuse bouche, a small cup of whatever soup they’re featuring that day, is enough to whet the appetite while you’re waiting for the food to be assembled. The first time I went, it was a rich, fresh-tasting cilantro soup with just the right touch of acidity. The second time, it was a wonderfully spiced chicken broth. A hot bowl of that soup would be perfect on a chilly day.
First-timers willing to try anything should definitely go for the sampler platter. It’s a plate of six miniature tacos each piled high with the first six taco fillings on the menu. On one particular day, the six tacos were chicharron, tinga de pollo, steak picado, mole poblano, chuleta en salsa verde, bistek rojo, and cochinita pibil.
My favorites on that day were the chicarron and cochinita pibil tacos. The chicharon had that perfect chewy but tender texture with that guilt-inducing richness. The cochinita pibil was juicy, spicy, and definitely gives Yucas, my previous spot for cochinita pibil, a run for their money. The tinga de pollo has a chili pepper drawing next to it, indicating that it’s spicy and yes, it is definitely a not-foolin’ around spicy. I usually save that one for last or else I can’t taste the other tacos after it.
What’s icing on the cake is that Guisados also offers a couple of vegetarian and possibly vegan tacos (if you ask them to leave off the cheese). The vegetarian options aren’t as plentiful or as exciting sounding as the meat options, but it’s always nice to have. The days I was there, they had a grilled mushroom and cilantro taco as well as a zucchini taco. Unfortunately, most of the time, the amuse bouche of soup is not vegetarian.
On a street in Boyle Heights that boasts of hundreds of other places to get tacos and tamales, it’s hard for a new restaurant to stand out. What Guisados has to offer is a regionally different taco filling, and attention to ingredients. After one chat with the owner, it’s apparent that he really cares about the quality of his ingredients, how his taco fillings turn out, and his customers. One of the times I visited was in the middle of Lent and he admitted to having more fish and vegetable options on the menu to cater to his Catholic customers who still want a delicious taco. How’s that for customer service?
Meet Fred Hempel: A not-so-typical farmer
Fred Hempel is not your typical farmer.
The owner of the 9 ½-acre Baia Nicchia farm in Sunol, Hempel is a former geneticist. As such, he likes to tinker and create. Over the years, through grafting and cross-breeding, he’s developed 10 new varieties of tomatoes.
You might already have tried a few of these flavorful wonders, as he sells his seeds to Seeds of Change, the certified organic seed supplier, which in turn makes them available to gardeners across the nation. You also may have enjoyed them at many Bay Area restaurants. He’s a darling among chefs, who eagerly feature his luscious, organic tomatoes on their summer menus. He’s even worked closely with a couple of them, including Jonah Rhodehamel, executive chef of Oliveto in Oakland, to create their own signature tomato.
Try Hempel’s tomatoes for yourself this summer, when he’ll be selling them as usual at the Menlo Park farmers market, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., Sundays, in the Chestnut Street parking lot between Santa Cruz and Menlo Avenues; and at his Sunol farm stand, 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesdays, located in front of the Jazz Café.
Meantime, you can also try one of Hempel’s newest inventions – herbal teas made from organic herbs and vegetables that he grows and dries to create unusual blends that can be enjoyed both hot and cold.
All caffeine-free, the selection of tea blends varies throughout the year, depending upon what’s in season. Currently, Hempel is featuring “Mixed Spearmint’’ (a soothing blend of five different spearmints), “Red-Stem Peppermint,’’ and “Savory Sunolean Spearmint’’ (a mix of Persian spearmint, anise hyssop, sage flowers and French tarragon that gives it a slight savory quality).
A staple is the “Grey Dog’’ tea, named for Hempel’s Greyhound, Lady Bug. Five percent of sales of this particular tea are donated to Greyhound Friends for Life , a Bay Area organization dedicated to helping Greyhounds find a second home with caring families after their racetrack days are over.
The “Grey Dog’’ tea contains red-stem peppermint, lemon balm, and lemon thyme, as well as Dolce di Minervino peppers and Mareko Fana peppers. Yes, peppers. In fact, Dolce di Minervino is a little-known, sweet Italian frying pepper and Mareko Fana is the main pepper used in Ethiopian Berbere spice mix. Together, they add a touch of warm spiciness to this tea that will subtly tingle the back of your throat.
The teabags ($8 for 10) are packaged in compostable clamshell containers. Gift tins also are available for $10 (for 10 tea bags).
“The teas are selling very well,’’ Hempel says. “In fact, it’s been difficult at times, particularly when we run out of ingredients that are seasonal at our farm.’’
The popularity of the teas shouldn’t be so surprising, though. After all, this is a man who has a knack for creating things that just taste great.
LA’s Best Sunday Suppers
It’s Sunday evening, you’ve just woken up from a breakfast-booze induced nap, and you’re hungry. Back in the day you’re loving mother prepared giant delicious multi-course Sunday Suppers for the family, but you’re too lazy to put on such an orchestrated dining event yourself, and even more relevant: you’re too cheap.
Luckily, there are quite a few restaurants in LA that offer weekly prix-fixe ‘Sunday Supper’ dinner deals that allow you to eat like a king on the salary of a court jester. These dinners are a great opportunity for you to get drunk & fat on the cheap and try out a new restaurant with your LA family (i.e. friends) – and there isn’t anything not to love about that! Plus, unlike Mom’s Sunday suppers, there’s no dishes duty afterward!
So without further adieu, here is our round up of our favorite LA Sunday Suppers:
Dominick’s on Beverly has been running their Sunday supper deal for as long as we can remember & they remain one of our favorite picks. For $15/person, you can score some amazing Italian eats. The menu changes weekly but you can usually expect to start with a salad, fill up on some pasta, and end with some sweet gelato or tiramisu. If a $15 3-course meal isn’t mind blowing enough, during Sunday Supper you can also add a bottle of wine for just $12, or sip on some Moretti beer for just $3 a bottle. (PS: Dominick’s hipster brother Little Dom’s in Los Feliz features the same deal on Mondays!)
If you have swankier taste and your bank account has yet to catch up, head to Cecconi’s in West Hollywood for their ridiculously cheap, family-style, Sunday dinners. Call up three of your trendiest (or hungriest) friends and for just $50, the four of you can enjoy salad, pizza, and pasta, all served family style. That’s right, $50 for all of you! That’s just $12.50 each, which would normally only get you an appetizer at Cecconi’s. And to fulfill your wino needs, pair your meal with bottles of house wine for $25 a pop.
Fancy pants Mediterranean food seems to be the latest trend in LA these days & our favorite of these trendy newbies is definitely the casually chic Momed in Beverly Hills. Not only is their food freaking delicious (just thinking of their duck schwarma has me salivating puddles all over my desk), but they also have a great Sunday Supper deal, for just $25/person. The menu includes six small plate items, a seasonal specialty entrée, & a desert. That’s like an 8-course meal! On top of all this, the wine list is very reasonably priced (starting at $5 glass) and features great wines from the Mediterranean region.
Sotto is a pretty new spot in West LA, so new that we haven’t even had the chance to check it out… yet! But their Sunday Supper is calling our names and we can’t wait to find ourselves there one Sunday in the near future. For $30 a person you get five (yes, 5!) courses. Their menu is market driven and changes constantly, so you can definitely expect some pretty delicious fresh fare. Plus, you can booze through your five courses with $15 bottles of wine or $7 specialty cocktails.
To read about other Sunday dinner deals or prix-fixe choices available during the week, check out our blog at www.FinerThingsLa.com!
Even the Water is Vegan: A meat eater’s experience at Seattle’s vegan Plum Bistro.
I have a confession to make.
My best friend is vegan.
There, I said it.
I hope you’re still reading.
(You know I’m kidding, right?)
Having a vegan best friend is hard work. When she comes over for dinner, I scour the food blogs for recipes that will be tasty for her, while still satisfying my meat and cheese loving family. I usually end up giving up and ordering pizza (with an olive oil base and no cheese, of course).
Her thirtieth birthday was a few weeks ago and because I love her so much, as do the rest of our friends, we all put big cheesy smiles on our faces when she told us that she wanted to have her birthday dinner at Plum Bistro on Capitol Hill. I had actually heard a lot of buzz about Plum Bistro without even realizing that it was a vegan restaurant. But still, I was nervous.
I figured that my best bet was to go online beforehand and check out the menu so that I knew exactly what to order before I even got there. I think that some of my anxiousness about going to Plum was the anticipation of that moment when the waitress asked for my order and I don’t pronounce anything right and accidentally ask for cheese on my “burger.”
The menu was a bit intimidating. I must admit that I just believed that being vegan was just about NOT eating dairy and meat products. I didn’t realize, or ever consider, that vegans need to replace these foods with other healthy proteins. So I tackled the menu, item by item, and with the help of Google. I learned about tempeh and quinoa and burgers that were made from seitan. After educating myself about what vegans actually eat, my nervousness turned into curiosity.
First of all, the restaurant itself is gorgeous. Located on 12th Avenue in the heart of the hill, the space feels warm and intimate, but with open ceilings and glass walls. The drink list is amazing and uses fresh ingredients – I chose one with rum, fresh blueberries and basil with crushed ice. They also have a nice selection of specialty beers, which impressed my husband.
The funniest moment of the evening (trust me, there were many) came just after we sat down. One of our dear friends looked at her glass of water, which had been waiting for us on the table when we sat down and skeptically asked, “What is this?” I think she was relieved when we all reassured her that it was just water.
My recommendation to non-vegans who go to Plum Bistro is to order from the appetizer menu. We ordered one of everything for the table to share and I fell in love with all of them – the Spicy Cajun Mac ‘N’ Yease was buttery and rich, the Avocado Roll plentiful, especially with the chipotle mayo. We also had some yam fries that are no longer on the appetizer menu, but come as a side with some of the dinner items – they were crisp and flavorful.
I can’t say that going to Plum Bistro made me any more open to becoming vegan myself, but it certainly opened my mind to the world of veganism and especially to the realization that there are not many options for vegans when they dine out. I was so impressed with the willingness of the servers at Plum to explain what menu items were and what they taste like. Plus, the prices at Plum Bistro were extremely reasonable, considering that the ingredients they use are 100% organic.
Plum Bistro should definitely be on your must-try list for dining in Seattle, whether you are vegan, non-vegan, or just hungry.
Plum Bistro is located at 1429 Twelfth Avenue. It’s small, so I’d recommend making reservations if you are with a crowd. 206-838-5333 or online at http://www.plumbistroseattle.com
Note to readers: The water is not actually vegan at Plum Bistro. It’s just a joke.
5 Fun First Date Bars in Los Angeles
These days, first dates tend to be on the more casual side. While coffee dates are fine and dandy, booze always wins. It’s an unspoken fact it helps you get loose. But keep it pleasant, not sloppy. So where to go? Most guys will pick something close to where they live…just in case it goes really well (wink wink, nudge nudge). I’m more inclined to pick something where they either have food or you can get food nearby. See above on keeping it pleasant.
Normal, no drama bar: Spring Street Bar – DTLA
At first, this bar seems more about the beer. But look closely, it features some fine bottles of bourbon. And the bartenders will gamely make you a cocktail if you ask.
Food options: Spring Street serves deli sandwiches and a great potato salad. But if munching from a bag of chips ain’t your steez, head over to nearby Gorbals. Get the banh mi poutine!
High end, craft cocktail bar: Roger Room – Mid-City
If your date hasn’t even been, impress them by leading them to this unmarked, circus-themed bar. At first, they’ll wonder why you’re taking them to Trashy Lingerie on the next block or if you’re really into kinky dates, the strip club across the street. But no, you’ll find the Roger Room next to the Coronet Theatre. The crowd is a nice mix of locals and the craft cocktails here are stellar. Try any of the gin cocktails or for a smooth cocktail with a tough name, the Thug Life.
Themed, kitschy bar: Tiki-Ti – Los Feliz
The Tiki-Ti just celebrated 50 years of business. It’s family owned and they take care of their customers with some of the greatest tropical drinks around. Get cozy at the bar and order Ray’s Mistake. And when people start to chant “toro, toro, toro!”- join in because it’s fun. Someone just ordered a Blood and Sand. Beware it’s cash only and smoke friendly (one of the few bars in L.A. that can legally allow smoking). Also, there’s no beer or wine. As they say, you can get beer anywhere.
Wine Bar: Vintage Enoteca – Hollywood
Sometimes it’s tough in Hollywood. You want to fit in. But not too much. After all, you’re not the sort to wear footie pajamas and hopefully your date doesn’t either. You want to exude class? Drinking wine seems to imply that. Head over to Vintage Enoteca and let them take care of you. Small bar bites include flatbreads, salumi and cheese plates and bruschetta. Perhaps you’ll both reach for olives at the same time when your date goes well.
The Dive Bar: The Liquid Kitty – West Los Angeles
With a neon martini glass marking the entrance, the Liquid Kitty lately has become less of a dive bar and more of a neighborhood bar in recent years. Often you can find a food truck outside and the friendly barkeeps will ask you if you want a regular or large martini. Go for the large. It’s always worth it. Pick a fun themed night like iPod night on Wednesdays. Impress your date with your DJ skills. Or if live music is your thing, try Thursdays for funk music. The best part about this bar? It’s dark as hell so ladies, skip the pancake makeup. You’ll look marvelous in the dim reddish glow.
Ready more by Shauna at TheMinty.com
Food + beer + 1: The only ingredients for a perfect Seattle weekend
As the work week drew to a close last Friday, I felt like I was floating all the way home. It was sunny, warmish and I was excited about everything my wife and I had planned for the weekend.
For starters, there were people everywhere, everyone wanted to be outside and for good reason at that; it has been a cold, gray and wet winter. I don’t know about you, but I’m about ready to ditch that scene and embrace some sunnier skies and warmer days.
We knew that we had a lot planned for Saturday and Saturday night so we knew that we’d need to take it easy on Friday. We went out for sushi at one of my favorite places in our neighborhood, Hana Restaurant. For the first time in what seems like forever we ordered the perfect amount of sushi. Usually it’s a case of the “eyes being bigger than my stomach” syndrome and I feel compelled to eat to the point of having a food baby (possibly twins) but we did alright this last time out. Edamame got our evening started along with a giant bottle of Kirin and were followed by a veggie roll, spider roll and a third roll whose identity I cannot recall at the moment as well as pieces of shrimp, yellow tail, salmon, octopus and tuna nigiri. Absolutely delightful and I might make it a priority to eat there at least once a week.
Because I am new to the city and my wife is reacquainting herself with it, we have committed to exploring other neighborhoods and seeing as much as we can especially now since the weather is slowly getting nicer. After a morning run we hopped in the car and drove over to the junction in West Seattle. We ate at Elliot Bay Brewery & Pub. Sadly we didn’t try any of the beers on tap on account of heading to a beer event later that night but that didn’t stop my wife from enjoying her quinoa salad and I devoured a grilled salmon sandwich in near record time. We walked up and down California Ave SW, exploring some of the shops over there and then made our way back home.
We quickly changed (clothes, not our personalities) and began making our way to the Museum of Flight to attend the Hops and Props event that they were hosting. We decided to take public transportation down there and changed busses at 5th and Pine. I swear that there are more people downtown on a weekend afternoon than there are on a Wednesday morning at rush hour. Anyway, we eventually made it down to the Museum and began to help out our friends at Full Throttle Bottles, one of the main sponsors of the event.
The event is a fundraiser for the museum and attracts around 40+ craft breweries and some 1500 attendees (total guess- there were a lot of folks there) all there to drink beer, eat food, drink beer, check-out the museum, drink beer, eat more food, drink beer and drink beer. I can sum-up my night in three words: SO MUCH FUN.
Aside from eating my weight in corn dogs and jambalaya, I got to try some lovely IPAs that I’d not had before and made some friends with some of the brewery reps too. When my wife and I head to Portland at the end of the month we’re getting a private tour of the Laurelwood Brewery but this probably more a result of my affiliation with Full Throttle Bottles rather than my being an incredibly charming individual. Anyway, it was a great event with fun people, good food and great beer. And there are planes hanging from the ceilings everywhere with an outstanding WW I and WW II exhibit that shouldn’t be missed, even if you’re not into planes and what have you.
Sunday was spent mostly recovering from Saturday night though we did manage to eat at Glo’s that morning. That was my first time there and now I know why people are always queued-up outside that place. The food was delicious and I am pretty sure that the hash browns they serve are among the best I’ve ever had. For whatever reason I had a hankering for corned beef hash which is unusual because I don’t really eat red meat anymore and am rarely interested in eating it anyway. Well Glo’s was kind enough to accommodate my yearning and I cleared my plate (including scrambled eggs and toast).
Returning home to lie paralyzed in food coma we finally tore ourselves off the couch once again, to gorge on more food. This time we ventured into the ID down to Harbor City Restaurant for dim sum. We ordered modestly and so far this is the best Chinese food I’ve had since moving here. We ordered shiu mai, spring rolls, pork puns and this fried shrimp with tofu dish. The shiu mai is served as an order of four and they are the biggest shiu mai I have ever seen. The spring rolls are other-worldly and the pork puns were stuffed with the sweetest pork. Both dishes were terrific. The shrimp and tofu thing was really good too. It was served in a sweet brown sauce but I couldn’t help but drench everything in hot sauce.
So even though I gained 4 ½ pounds over the weekend and probably contributed to my bad cholesterol increasing about 11 points I think it was well worth it. Although I just noticed that my left arm feels kind of tingly- is that bad?
Luke’s Local: Redefining Train Station Food
Heading home on Caltrain after a stressful day at work, wouldn’t it be a godsend to get off the train, then walk just a few steps to pick up a gourmet, ready-to-heat meal and organic vegetables to take home?
You can – at Luke’s Local at the Hillsdale Station in San Mateo. This tiny store opened last year in an old, long-vacant ticket office in the parking lot. It sells tasty local and sustainable products, including dripped-to-order Blue Bottle Coffee, Free-Trade bananas, and meals-to-go such as Dungeness crab mac ‘n’ cheese ($7.99) and gnocchi with marinara ($6.99). You need not sneak them on your commute, either, since Caltrain does allow food and beverages on its trains.
Indeed, the Palo Alto Caltrain station has a gourmet coffee stand, and San Francisco station boasts a Subway sandwiches locale. But the Hillsdale station is the only one that sells unique entrees like these that can be warmed up conveniently at home or the office.
It is the brainchild of Luke Chappell, whose family founded the iconic Tom’s of Maine, which makes toothpaste, soap and other natural care products. Chappell, an entrepreneur from the early age of 11 when he started his own bagel business in Maine, thought commuters would embrace a convenience store steps from the platform that offered quality food, especially since the Hillsdale station is set back from El Camino Real and is surrounded by hundreds of parking spaces, making it a chore to grab any kind of sustenance quickly.
“I want to do food that people don’t expect at a train station’’, Chappell says.
Wood bins outside stock flowers and fruit. A refrigerator case holds salads and breakfast burritos, all made fresh daily at a commercial kitchen. Place your order through what was once the pass-through window for the old ticket office. And take a load off on the large wood bench inside that was original to the building.
Chappell’s newest offering is a once-a-week meal and produce box, a joint effort with Farmshares, a Community Supported Agriculture program by local farms in the Capay Valley. Imagine a CSA delivery box that you pick up every Wednesday night at the train station, containing a variety of locally grown produce, as well as a selection of two to four Luke’s Local prepared entrees of your choice. Each week, a local guest chef creates the entrees, too, ensuring a variety of eats. Among the recent offerings have been miso sesame arctic char by Roger Feeley of Soul Cocina and Southern pork pot pie by Blair Warsham of graffEats.
The standard veggie box (produce with two vegetarian dishes of your choice and a burrito) is $25. A regular box (produce with two meals and a burrito) is $32. A large box (produce plus four entrees and two burritos) is $54. You can add extra items, too, including a half-pound bag of Blue Bottle Coffee beans ($8) or a chorizo breakfast burrito ($4.49).
Boxes must be ordered ahead of time at the shop or by email with a credit card. As an incentive, all new subscribers receive a 50 percent discount on their first order, too.
Read more by Carolyn at Foodgal.com
Save Room for Dessert?
Often restaurants and their patrons overlook that sweet ending to the meal: dessert. All the focus gets put into the meal itself, and dessert menus simply feature the expected chocolate layer cake or brownie sundae. Diners, full from polishing off those last morsels of their entrees, don’t give a second thought to these everyday desserts. But some restaurants (mainly those with dedicated pastry chefs) actually go out of their way to make sure dessert stacks up to dinner. If you’re heading to any of these spots, it’s highly recommended that you save room for dessert.
Bergamot’s Pastry Chef Stacy Mirabello tantalizes diner’s tastebuds with combinations like chocolate and avocado and ingredients that sound more savory than sweet like black pepper, basil, and olive oil. Her desserts are whimsical and never boring. On a typical evening, you might find That Grapefruit Dessert, a warm madeleine cake topped with grapefruit wedges and white wine sabayon, or fresh, sugary beignets with a sweet-sour lemon filling.
Market is Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s Boston outpost. Like the savory dishes such as frisee and goat cheese salad with pickled peaches and crystallized wasabi, dessert is quite a novelty. A play on peanut butter and jelly, the grape soufflé with a nutty praline sauce is light, airy, and memorable. It’s not always on the menu, but you’re likely to find another type of soufflé and other interesting dessert choices.
If you can spare any stomach space after indulging in Mistral’s truffle macaroni with Madeira and Parmesan, dessert is a must. Executive Pastry Chef Shane Gray can take a basic concept like a s’more and fashion it into an elegant dish of chocolate mousse topped with a graham cracker crumble and a towering swirl of toasted marshmallow.
Oleana’s desserts are so good that Pastry Chef Maura Kilpatrick opened nearby bakery Sofra to sell more sweet treats. Some of Oleana’s plated desserts can be found as to-go bakery items over at Sofra. One of which is the chocolate-hazelnut baklava — cinnamon-honey syrup-soaked phyllo dough layered with bittersweet chocolate and hazelnuts. The desserts change with the seasons, and in the summer when Oleana participates in Mass Farmers Markets’ Strawberry Dessert Festival to raise money for local farmers markets, you’re likely to find fresh strawberries incorporated into an upscale shortcake. The Baked Alaska with coconut ice cream and passion fruit caramel is also intriguing.
At Sel de La Terre, the creative desserts abound, but luckily, you don’t have to choose just one. The Grand Dessert for Two provides miniature versions of all the desserts. If you go all in and order this sampler, a large platter will be set on your table and you won’t know whether to start with orange vanilla bean crème brulee or maple goat cheese mousse. And then when you start digging into chocolate desserts like the flourless chocolate decadence cake with blood orange gel and the almond chocolate mousse layer cake, you’ll be happy to see there’s also chai tea panna cotta with red wine-poached Anjou pears to cut some of the richness. Each dessert is unique and layered with flavor.
One could go to Ten Tables just for the chocolate terrine with sea salt and Thai basil ice cream and leave perfectly satisfied. The rich chocolate cake paired with the cool, slightly savory ice cream is a definite crowd-pleaser. And while panna cotta might seem a little ordinary, Ten Tables takes it from ordinary to extraordinary with the addition of Greek yogurt for a little tang and some fresh strawberries to simultaneously complement and cut the creaminess.
What restaurant serves your favorite desserts?
Kobe Beef Pho at Noodle Guy
When Susan Feniger’s Street first opened with its $16 bowl of pho, I was one of the many who balked at that inflated price. When I heard about the $12 bowl of kobe beef pho at Noodle Guy, I didn’t balk as much since it was kobe beef after all. I was also surprised to see an over $10 bowl of pho in the San Gabriel Valley, which is home of the $5 bowl of pho. I didn’t think that Asian immigrants would actually stand for such an expensive bowl of pho.
I usually judge pho using three categories: broth, noodles, and meat. If any of those three categories fail, you get a bad bowl of pho. No matter how good the broth is, the entire meal is ruined if you have soggy noodles, or poor quality meat.
My first time at Noodle Guy, a newish restaurant sitting in a strip mall on Valley Blvd., I splurged and ordered their house special pho (which comes with slices of beef flank, brisket, tendon, and tripe) with a kobe beef substitution. The menu doesn’t mention anything about subbing kobe beef in for the regular beef, but there was a huge banner by the parking lot. The kobe beef brings the usual $6 bowl of pho up to the $12 price point.
The extra charge is worth it if you’ve never had kobe beef pho. The meat is barely cooked and therefore very melt-in-your-mouth tender. It also has a very strong, almost grassy, beef flavor. It’s definitely a meaty flavor, but not in an off way. The difference in taste is subtler than I expected, but it was noticeable if you pay attention. It tastes almost like the way you’d imagine an open field with fresh damp dirt and long blades of grass would smell like.
The broth at Noodle Guy also did not disappoint. It was slightly sweet, and very aromatic with star anise. It also had a velvety richness, probably from the bits of fat and cartilage melted off from the bones it was made with. It was certainly a full-bodied enough to support the flavor of the kobe beef.
The rice noodles at Noodle Guy are wider than the usual ones served in pho, but not as wide as say, the rice noodles in pad see ew. The thicker noodles make sense because the broth is so rich and has such a creamy mouth feel, that a thinner noodle would do a poor job of delivering the soup to your mouth. Sure, you can always use a spoon, but one of the best things about pho is slurping up the bits of soup that cling to the noodles.
Would I order the pho with kobe beef again? Unless I were really hankering for it, probably not. That’s not to say the beef wasn’t good. It was very, very good. But so was everything else. The broth was wonderfully spiced and had a great texture. The noodles were perfectly cooked and still had a nice chew for rice noodles. The tendon was buttery and melted in my mouth. The tripe was easily chewable and not overcooked. The bowl was perfect without the need for kobe beef.
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Photo by Louise Yang
