RUTH TOBIAS

Around the clock

RUTH TOBIAS — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 17:42:37 GMT

Savor sambuca and its siblings from morning until night
Any drink with which you can, reasonably and tastefully, both begin your morning and end your evening, is my kind of drink.

Any drink with which you can, reasonably and tastefully, both begin your morning and end your evening, is my kind of drink. Granted, depending on your grasp of reason, bounds on taste, and internal clock, you may doubt I’m ruling much out with that statement, excepting maybe Night Train. But I actually am thinking of one drink in particular: sambuca, the Italian liqueur distilled from elderberries and flavored with anise. In Italy (and even at some coffeehouses in the North End, like Caffe dello Sport), asking your barista for a caffe corretto to start the day will get you not a look of pity or disapproval but a steaming shot of sambuca-spiked espresso. And ordering sambuca con mosca (sambuca with flies) after dinner garners you a glass garnished not with dead bugs but with three coffee beans, often ignited to release their aromatic — if not downright aromatherapeutic — oils.

These bookend customs strike me as eminently civilized. True, that may partly be a function of the flavors themselves: after all, both coffee in its bitterness and anise in its intriguing, salty-earthy spin on sweetness are acquired, rather adult tastes. But it’s also a matter of the cheekiness implicit in their names — their injection of a little humor into daily routine. Interesting, then, that we Americans — an increasingly mechanical bunch of round-the-clock workers without the time or patience to cultivate the habits of living well — are about the only folks who haven’t developed a nationwide appreciation for licorice-like liquor. Sambuca has siblings all over the world, many of which possess their own constellation of rituals — often involving whiling away hot afternoons in style. Isn’t it time we, too, took a siesta — or several, all summer long — over something worth savoring (as opposed to guzzling)? Following are just a few to tickle your fancy for fennelesque flavors.

Aguardiente. Okay, perhaps I waxed a bit poetic about the inherent sophistication of anise spirits. Colombian aguardiente is your basic firewater, a sugarcane distillate best knocked back, shot after shot, in some ramshackle Andean dive. Barring that option, you can pick some up at Blanchard’s (103 Harvard Avenue, Allston, 617.782.5588) and transform your living room into a rough-and-tumble lean-to full of hooligans swigging Antioqueño ($16.99) straight from the bottle.

A toast to the Good Life

RUTH TOBIAS — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 20:58:07 GMT

so many vodkas … can’t we have more time?
The Russian word “vodka” translates as “little water.”
Read more

Dream on

RUTH TOBIAS — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 19:54:55 GMT

Some of Boston’s best chefs share their professional fantasies
It’s 4:30 on a Friday afternoon.

It’s 4:30 on a Friday afternoon. At the head of the conference table, your boss is moving his lips. Let’s hope the words coming out aren’t directed at you, because you haven’t caught one; instead, you’ve been lost in thoughts of silver platters strewn with oysters, glistening over layers of crushed ice. Or maybe it’s a honking steak you envision, pink and tender as a baby’s tush. Whatever it is, it has your name on it for later, and all your attention right now.

But what about the guys who are shucking those shellfish or slapping that chop on the grill? Where do their minds wander as they generate the stuff of your fantasies? I baited a few of my personal chefs — oops, sorry, personal favorite chefs (there go my own daydreams) — into spilling their innermost desires. Happily, they bit. Hey, Jamie Bissonnette (KO Prime), David Dubois (Franklin Café), Will Gilson (Garden at the Cellar), Andy Husbands (Tremont 647), and David Nevins (Neptune Oyster), thanks for sharing!

Q: Let’s dream big. The world would be a better place if only people ate more ______ and less/fewer ________.
Will Gilson: More meals with their families. [In a] restaurant or [at] home, it doesn’t matter. I think there’d be fewer problems with obesity, violence, and broken marriages if someone would just pass the butter across the table instead of leaving money on the counter for the kids to decide whether they want to spend it on McD’s or drugs.

And less food in their cars. All you can do when cardining is eat for sustenance, not pleasure. It stresses you out. When someone asks me where I go for a steak, I don’t say, “[I get it] sandwiched between two pieces of bread in the driver’s seat of my pickup.”

David Dubois: More homemade meals and fewer processed sugars and corn products that are killing us all.

David Nevins: [laughs] More sturgeon and less lobster. I don’t understand the lobster craze. There are so many great fish. But people go out and have a bad piece and they’re so turned off by it that they’re less amped to try something new, like sturgeon, which is so steak-like it’s amazing.

Jamie Bissonnette: More tripe and fewer bell peppers.

All alcohol, all the time

RUTH TOBIAS — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 16:41:52 GMT

Who needs mixers?

Ah, the mystique of a well-made martini. To hear connoisseurs tell it, you’d think it contained the clear-liquid keys to immortality, sexual prowess, and immeasurable wealth — in order of individual preference, no less. But don’t you believe it. You want to know a martini’s big secret? It’s made entirely of alcohol, kids. You’ve got your distilled spirit (gin), you’ve got your fortified wine (vermouth). There’s no juice, no syrup, no soda, no cream, no nothin’ but booze. Of course a round or two makes you superhuman.

Wantin’ me some of that delusional action, I decided to embark upon an all-alcohol crawl (“crawl” indeed being the operative word). I sought cocktails that, like martinis, contained only mixed liquors — not just the hard stuff but wines, liqueurs, and so on — but that, unlike martinis, weren’t, um, martinis. I’d be the anti-Bond.

First stop: the eye-shaped bar at Avila (1 Charles Street South, Boston, 617.267.4810), which has gradually become one of my happy-hour go-tos for its goodly and affordable array of yummy little nibbles — just the thing for averting an untimely meltdown. Perusing the drink list, I was promptly swayed by the Poached Pear ($12): with a blend of Absolut Pears vodka, peppercorn-infused Belle de Brillet (a pear-flavored cognac), and Cockburn’s 10-year tawny port coursing through my system, I’d soon be lightly poached myself — a fine state in which to contemplate a snack of duck eggs over-easy with asparagus and parmesan ($8).

As though he truly knew me, the bartender set down a glass so full I had to leave it on the bartop, bend over, and slurp the first couple of sips to cut down on spillage. Noting my anti-Bond-ian non-smooth moves, he excused himself: “I tend to overpour.” Oh, no apologies necessary. For all its potency, the concoction went down easy: between the richness of the port and the distinct hint of pepper, it really did smack of the namesake dessert (though without added sugar, which might have rendered it cloying). Before I could pop my first saltcod popper ($6) — funky little fritters, by the way, lightly crisped and served with a balsamic mayo to offset the pungent fish — I’d polished off the last sip.

Fresh city

RUTH TOBIAS — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 14:20:29 GMT

Sip a cocktail that smacks of summer vacation

Muscat Grape Martini at Dante

So you’ve had it with cocktail menus that read like Baskin Robbins’s freezer case. You figure if it were a kiddie scoop you wanted on a sweltering summer’s day, you’d get one; when it’s time to chill with the grownups out on the terrace, though, your choice of refreshment had better reflect your mature tastes — no devil’s food schnapps, no gummy-worm garnish. Besides, sugar triggers fatigue — the very opposite of refreshment.

Then again, Mary Poppins was an adult — a shrewd one at that, with apparently some medical training: she insisted that just a spoonful of sugar would help the medicine go down. Do you dare defy the authority of a nanny who can fly? Bottom line: maybe you can have your cake and drink it, too. That is to say, there are a few cocktails out there that are fun and new without being frou and frou, proving breezy rather than syrupy — that, in short, smack of summer vacation without reeking of high school.

Take the lemonade ($10) at Pigalle (75 Charles Street South, Boston, 617.423.4944). This ain’t the kind of lemonade the neighborhood munchkins peddle at their creaky little card tables for 10 cents a pop. But gee, it’d be swell if they did: you could kill a whole batch with the pocket change in your lawnmower shorts. Certainly it goes down that easily, but eschewing all the tooth-grinding sugar of its namesake in favor of, oh yeah, alcohol. Indeed, a dash of kaffir-lime syrup lends just a soupçon of sweetness to what’s otherwise a brisk, bubbly tonic of Absolut Citron, fresh lemon juice, and soda water. To get it, however, you’re gonna have to strip off that sweaty wifebeater and slip into something befitting its elegance — at Pigalle’s petite bar, you’ll be clinking glasses with the well-heeled and acid-peeled, not knocking back Dixie cups with the high-topped and freckled.

Speaking of fresh faces: at the Spanking-new Flat Iron Tapas Bar & Lounge (Bulfinch Hotel, 119 Merrimac Street, Boston, 617.778.2900), restaurant manager G. Tyler Titherington’s own bubbly verve belies the sort of name you’d associate with some julep-quaffing, veranda-haunting Civil War general. Likewise, his signature drink forgoes cloying, old-fashioned romance for refreshing contemporary edge. Off-menu but always available, the Hot Cucumber ($12), according to one of Titherington’s fledgling regulars, “is like drinking a salad that gives you a buzz.” True, that, thanks to a combination of fresh-squeezed cucumber juice and Hendrick’s gin, itself infused with cucumber and rose petals. A sprinkle of cayenne atop a float of three cuke coins adds kick, while spots of fresh lime juice and simple syrup soften the savory aspect.

Quality control

RUTH TOBIAS — Mon, 07 May 2007 21:46:12 GMT

Is your cocktail more than the sum of its parts?
Boozewise, I roll with the purists

Boozewise, I roll with the purists. My sweetie is a scotch maven; my main drinking buddies have been scoffing at Cosmos and knocking back Negronis since way back; hell, my mother knows her oro from her añejo. Too bad for them they have to put up with me, the opposite of a purist: I like what I like, including the occasional frozen-mintchip-yogurt-pretzel-triple-crème-tini (with who-knows-or-cares-what kind of vodka, natch). Does that make me an independent drinker or a dilettante? Or maybe just a filthy lush? Regardless, it means I get to play the stubborn fool and bombard patient bartenders with questions whose answers seem, to my loved ones, to be self-evident.

Take, for example, the received wisdom that well spirits are for mixing, and high-end spirits for sipping neat or on the rocks. (To clarify our terms, the former are generally cheaper mass products — your Myers’s Rum, your Gordon’s Vodka — while the latter are craft products: small-batch, extraaged, additive-free, what have you.) Phil Audino, general manager at the Franklin Café (278 Shawmut Avenue, Boston, 617.350.0010), explains that from a purist’s perspective, “it’s not worth it to order, say, a Macallan 12-year and soda. These things are meant to be had by themselves. You don’t want to kill the taste” of the single-malt you’ve just shelled out extra dough to savor in the first place.

Right, I get that. But what of the old adage that you can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear? Surely, by that converse logic, a superior cocktail calls for superior ingredients. Right?

Sitting with Audino one gray afternoon at the Franklin’s super-cozy, dark bar, I press him to elaborate on the role that liquor quality plays in mixology. Actually, he muses, it has shifted a bit in recent years. “We don’t really have well liquors anymore. In the past we’ve used Finlandia, Svedka, things you can get a little cheaper but that are still higher quality. But now, people are becoming more well versed. They’re calling their alcohol. Nobody simply asks for a vodka tonic anymore. If they do, we pour Absolut. In mixed drinks, we always try to use middle-ofthe-road stuff.” In other words, there’s a balance to be struck — no serious bartender is going to serve you the same swill you used to make trashcan punch on prom night, however closely the concoction you’ve ordered may resemble said party potable. But neither is he or she likely to lavish you with luxury. “If we’re going to add anything to a high-end liquor, we try to keep it clean and fresh,” Audino assures. A-ha! Then perhaps there are some exceptions to the rule that upgrading is for amateurs? At least in the case of some classic cocktails, he agrees. For instance, “an Old Fashioned is the type
of drink where you’d be willing to spring for something [high-end].”

Where everybody knows your name

RUTH TOBIAS — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 16:13:40 GMT

Local chefs dish on what makes a neighborhood place a neighborhood place
Around the turn of the millennium, we food writers were spilling way too much ink (fine, wasting our inkjet cartridges) on the cult of the neighborhood place.

Around the turn of the millennium, we food writers were spilling way too much ink (fine, wasting our inkjet cartridges) on the cult of the neighborhood place. The comfy, low-key 21st-century answer to the flashy, celebrity-chefdriven destinations of the ’80s and ’90s, it was your kitchen away from your kitchen, minus the messes and mistakes. The food was hearty, the folks easygoing, the tabs low. Simple.

Turns out, however, that simplicity isn’t that simple, at least not in Greater Boston. For one thing, as the city’s neighborhoods shape-shift, the good old joints they contain can stiffen up or become more supple with use. Take the North End, where pretty much every place was a neighborhood place until recently; now, post–Big Dig gentrification is gradually erasing the family-run trattorias, sketching a series of contemporary destinations in their place. Or the South End, whose transformation from gritty turf to bohemian enclave to yuppie haven is finally so complete that no eatery is safe from widespread overexposure (as the Franklin Café’s original customers will no doubt angrily attest). For another thing, no-fuss comfort is in the eye of the beholder, not to mention his/her palate and wallet; one man’s Locke-Ober is another man’s Silvertone. (Heck, if I had the funds, you’d be finding me slumped over my massive martini in an armchair at Julien Bar & Lounge night after night.)

What exactly, then, does the term “neighborhood place” mean to Bostonians now? I put the question to four chef-restaurateurs whose own establishments run the gamut of possible definitions. The South End’s Christine Didiuk, for instance, runs what may be the exemplar of the genre, the Dish (253 Shawmut Avenue, Boston, 617.426.7866) — an adorably cozy source for the sort of fancy snack you crave all too regularly (damn that potato-bacon pizza). Conversely, Anthony Caturano’s Prezza (24 Fleet Street, Boston, 617.227.1577) is by most standards a capital-D Destination in the North End — yet since it boasts one of the neighborhood’s few fully stocked liquor cabinets, it enjoys a scene worthy of a corner grill (only with betterdressed barflies). Whether Caturano’s sophomore venture, Copia (100 City Square, Charlestown, 617.242.6393), will execute a similar feat in its noman’s land between the North End and Charlestown’s main strip remains to be seen — though the success of a place like La Morra (48 Boylston Street, Brookline, 617.739.0007), Josh Ziskin’s go-to at the rougher edge of Brookline Village, shows it can be done. And then there’s Jamaica Plain’s Douglas Organ, who eschewed the acclaim of the eating elite in favor of hometown props when he turned dark, dreamy Arbor into bright, bustling Café D (711 Centre Street, Jamaica Plain, 617.522.9500). Here’s what they had to say.

How do you define the term “neighborhood place” in general?
Anthony Caturano: Cheers hit it on the spot: you want to go where everybody knows your name. It’s all about being remembered, being appreciated.

A guzzler’s glossary

RUTH TOBIAS — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 22:59:53 GMT

From amontillado to uisge beatha, we’ve got the definitions to help you dazzle your fellow boozers
“Alcoholic” and “articulate” rarely appear in the same slurred sentence, but it’s high time they did.

“Alcoholic” and “articulate” rarely appear in the same slurred sentence, but it’s high time they did. After all, the vocabularies of vintners, distillers, brewers, barkeepers, and other pros of the proof the world over are themselves legion; what each consists of — from scientific jargon to slang, archaisms to bastardizations and back again — is all but infinite.

Of course, if you’re quite serious about developing a drunkard’s dictionary, a guzzler’s glossary, a lush’s lexicon, you’d better bone up elsewhere — because we’re not. Behold instead our completely random, totally slapdash list of terms and fun tidbits, specifically designed by us staunch dilettantes for — whom else? — the cocktail-party conversationalist. May you dazzle your fellow boozers with factoids henceforth.

Amontillado
Think of it as sherry’s adolescence: no longer a fino, not yet an oloroso. At either end of the spectrum spanned by Spain’s famed fortified wine, fino sherries — generally drunk as aperitifs — are relatively young, dry, and pale, as well as lower in alcohol content than oloroso sherries, which are older, darker, sweeter, and more appropriate after dinner. Amontillado, meanwhile, is essentially a deflowered fino, having lost the latter’s characteristic layer of yeast, called flor, which retards oxidization and therefore the aging process that deepens a sherry’s color and flavor.

Now, a tapas bar that doesn’t serve sherry is like a burger joint that doesn’t serve Coke — as fishy as it is practically unheard of — so you can be sure to find at least a few selections at your favorite tapería. However, only Taberna de Haro (999 Beacon Street, Brookline, 617.277.8272) actually describes its cute little countertop as a sherry bar, where nips and nibbles are to be taken together before or as dinner.

Arak at Marty's Liquor

Arak
Like Greek ouzo and Turkish raki (see below), this is an anise-flavored distillate of must — that is, crushed grapes and/or their juice — most often associated with Middle Eastern countries like Lebanon and Syria. Commonly diluted with water and served with ice as an accompaniment to meze, it’s available at Marty’s Liquors (193 Harvard Avenue, Allston, 617.782.3250), for one, which carries a fair selection.

Botrytis Cinerea
You might call it nature’s passito. Better known as noble rot (or pourriture noble to those of you fluent in vin-Français), this mold is indirect manna for dessert wine drinkers (provided it develops under the right conditions): it causes the grapes it infects to shrivel, thereby concentrating their sugars. The end result: superior after-dinner sippers, perhaps the most fêted of which is Bordeaux’s liquid-gold sauternes. While this rich, super-smooth near-syrup isn’t hard to spot on high-end wine lists citywide, its availability at a non-French (in fact Italian) restaurant like Prezza (24 Fleet Street, Boston, 617.227.1577), which keeps a few bottles of Château d’Yquem on hand, comes as an especially pleasant surprise at meal’s end (assuming a several-hundred-dollar tab doesn’t subsequently come as a nasty shock, that is).

Finer wine?

RUTH TOBIAS — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 20:04:34 GMT

Getting to the bottom of the organic-wine trend
How'd you like a bit of stag’s bladder with that Bordeaux?

How'd you like a bit of stag’s bladder with that Bordeaux? No? Perhaps, then, a sprinkling of the ashes of plant lice over your sangiovese? Still no? Not even a spritz of horsehair tea in your tocai? Well, we don’t blame you. Oenology is intimidating enough as it is — but with more and more winemakers acting like witch doctors via the adoption of organic- and biodynamic-farming methods (some of which do indeed incorporate the aforementioned materials), it can begin to seem downright creepy.

Luckily, some local connoisseurs of eco-viticulture are happy to help demystify the subject for us lazy lushes — er, lay folk. Among them is Peter Nelson; as an instructor of Introductory Wine Tasting at the Boston Center for Adult Education (5 Comm Ave, Boston, 617.267.4430) as well as the wine director at Umbria (295 Franklin Street, Boston, 617.338.1000), he’s particularly articulate regarding the movement’s pros and cons. So articulate, in fact, that we decided to quote him at length (how we lazy lushes love eloquent interviewees).

What’s the difference between organic and biodynamic winemaking?
“Organic” means no chemicals of any kind are used. There’s no artificial or manmade input — no herbicides, no fertilizers. In this country, to be certified organic, you can’t use sulfur in the winery at any stage in the winemaking process [including during post-harvest production, when sulfites might function as a preservative rather than as an insecticide]. So you have wines made from organically grown grapes, and then you have organic wines, which are much more rare.

There are two things that separate biodynamic from organic viticulture. One is not so difficult for people to understand. It creates within a vineyard — which is essentially a monoculture — an ecosystem, so that the management of the vineyard happens in a natural way. In class I use the example of the rose bushes planted at the ends of rows of vines in Bordeaux. Sure, it looks nice, but the reason they’re there is that aphids prefer them, so theoretically they’ll leave the wines alone.

The chosen ones

RUTH TOBIAS — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 20:33:32 GMT

When it comes to bartenders, which drinks separate the masters from mere mixologists?
You may be a mighty fine scribbler, but until you’ve penned a sestina, you’ve got no business calling yourself a poet.

You may be a mighty fine scribbler, but until you’ve penned a sestina, you’ve got no business calling yourself a poet. Perhaps you’re a talented cook — but you’re no chef until you’ve sweated over your first galantine (or is that a ballotine? You’d better be sure). And as for you actors, you’re all just hams without at least a little Shakespeare under your belts. In short, every profession possesses yardsticks by which to measure its craft — and you can bet every professional’s going to whip them out to show amateurs what’s what.

Granted, in the bartending world, these yardsticks tend to be somewhat flexible. After all, alcohol and total accuracy don’t exactly mix. No wonder, then, that the origins of so many cocktails remain apocryphal; no wonder debates rage over authentic recipes and precise definitions. And no wonder it’s so much fun to get bartenders started on the question: which concoctions separate the men and women from the boys and girls? Which drinks make masters of mere mixologists?

To give credit where it’s due, this line of inquiry might not have occurred to me if not for a recent conversation at the bar at Anise (1 Kendall Square, Building 300, Cambridge, 617.577.8668) with beverage director Frank Reardon. Asked by my dining companion — himself a consummate cocktail connoisseur — for a Negroni, Reardon recalled that he’d obtained a prior position at No. 9 Park based on his knowledge of the recipe.

Anise's Frank Reardon

Later, after pondering the implications of his remark, I pressed Reardon — who’s best known for his stint at Jasper White’s Summer Shack, where he ran Frankie’s Sports Bar — to elaborate on his own standards. “I think of a Negroni, a Sidecar, a Pisco Sour . . . There are probably 10 bartenders in town who know how to do ’em,” he said. “For them, it’s their life, it’s their passion to make great drinks, the way great chefs are passionate about making great food. You can make dinner so complete with a great drink.” To this, I could testify based on my Anise experience alone; flanking an excellent meal of spicy wild-fern stalks and twice-cooked pork belly were Frank’s French Connection ($7) — a sprightly, vodka-based blend of anise and citrus — and the refreshing twist on a classic that is the orange mojito ($7).

Party of six

RUTH TOBIAS — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 23:15:06 GMT

Some of our best local chefs sit down for a (virtual)round-table on Boston’s dining present — and future
The opportunity to gather six of the city’s most talented chefs together at one table and engage in a lively heart-to-heart about all things culinary is extremely rare.

The opportunity to gather six of the city’s most talented chefs together at one table and engage in a lively heart-to-heart about all things culinary is extremely rare. In fact, I didn’t get said opportunity. Hell, didn’t even try. These folks are just too ridiculously busy, thanks to you all, clamoring for grub out there. Like baby birds, the lot of you.

But I did get a few of them to take five and chat with me one-on-one. I pestered Daniel Bruce of Meritage (Boston Harbor Hotel, 70 Rowes Wharf, Boston, 617.439.3995), a local pioneer of the trend toward wine-paired small plates; Ian Just of longlived French bistro Les Zygomates (129 South Street, Boston, 617.542.5108) and its Italian counterpart, Sorriso (107 South Street, Boston, 617.259.1560); David Kinkead, who, with his brother Bob, has created a two-in-one contemporary menu inspired by fraternal oneupmanship at Sibling Rivalry (525 Tremont Street, Boston, 617.338.5338); owner Krista Kranyak and chef David Punch of intimate nook Ten Tables (597 Centre Street, Jamaica Plain, 617.524.8810); and Peter McCarthy, the man behind Somerville fine-dining destination Evoo (118 Beacon Street, Somerville, 617.661.3866). They all showed me the Beantown dining scene through their eyes — confiding their pleasures, preoccupations, and predictions. Wanna see?

You’re sitting down to a nice, quiet meal at your own restaurant. What do you order off the current menu, from start to finish?

Peter McCarthy: That’s a tough one. Everything’s so good — of course I’m going to say that. But I’d have to say, in the mood I’m in right now, I’d want the pâté I made from a pig we got from southern Vermont that came out awesome, just right. I’d start with that and then get the Duck Duck Goose [an Evoo signature] . It’s duck confit, goose breast, and foie gras. The only thing that ever changes is the availability of the vegetables that go with it. This time of year, it’s kale from Verrill Farm and green beans from the local farmers’ market. And I’m in a chocolate mood, so I’d say the brownie custard with raspberries. I’m amazed at the quality of the local raspberries. But if you asked me again in 10 minutes, I’d probably give you three different answers.

Krista Kranyak: I would do the rock-shrimp-and-clam cassoulet for an appetizer, our braised beef short ribs with rosemary polenta, and the warm Arborio rice pudding with coconut, cardamom, and pistachios. This time of year you want heartier food, braised meats, warm desserts. I love warm desserts.

Textbook cases

RUTH TOBIAS — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 23:17:11 GMT

Ever wonder what a real trattoria is like? which of our bistros and brasseries are most authentic? check out which local restaurants are true epicurean epitomes.
You're wandering through a foreign city, hungry and homesick, when you spot a neon sign just down the street: AMERICAN BAR & GRILL.

You're wandering through a foreign city, hungry and homesick, when you spot a neon sign just down the street: AMERICAN BAR & GRILL. Delight surging through you, you throw open the door . . . only to find not the woody roadhouse-esque haunt you craved — with gum-snapping waitresses slinging burgers and pitchers of beer to a good old 4/4 beat — but something indistinguishable from the eateries you’ve been frequenting all along, except for perhaps a few cheesy rock posters on the wall, a few strange and sorry excuses for junk food on the menu. (And you thought the real thing was bad.) You head back out, even more depressed than before by the false advertising.

Well, things are tough all over. After all, we Americans misapply more than our share of restaurant labels. The pseudo-Euro La Maison de la Casa House Calvin Trillin satirized in the 1970s is today’s generic X and Such Bistro, Enoteca, Pub & Lounge. Still, amid the shoddy imitations, Boston boasts some shining exemplars of many a gastro-ethnic genre. A few of our favorites can teleport you across borders and over seas.

La trattoria
Stateside, the word trattoria may point you toward just about any purveyor of pasta. Not so in Italy, where it refers rather specifically to a mid-level neighborhood eatery, often family-run; somewhat spiffier than the humble, tavern-like osteria, but more casual and cheaper than a ristorante. Nestled near Fenway, of all places, the much-acclaimed Trattoria Toscana (130 Jersey Street, Boston, 617.247.9508) is the real thing, true to the region it’s named for in its wonderful way with grilled meats (not to mention with its espresso machine). A little lesser-known, though, is Trattoria Pulcinella in Huron Village (147 Huron Avenue, Cambridge, 617.491.6336). From the rough-hewn wooden ceiling beams to the mismatched ceramic servingware, this tiny place certainly looks the part of the trattoria vera, but more importantly, it lives the part with warmth and earnestness. To say the menu doesn’t claim allegiance to any particular Italian region is hardly to say it’s generic; on the contrary, it favors relatively uncommon (or at least unexpected) preparations and ingredients — there’s plenty of game and offal; cream gets as much play as tomatoes; walnuts crop up with some frequency (as per the cuisines of central Italy). What’s more, the kitchen shows a restraint that blasts the stereotype of heavy-handed Italian home cooking. Along with a pungent schmear of bottarga di tonno (tuna roe), thick slices of superb mozzarella get just a touch of olive oil and lemon ($13). A thin layer of zucchini-potato purée is the gently earthy foundation for slivers of grilled calamari; grilled shrimp add a bit of sweetness ($13). And for all its hearty ingredients — Marsala, cream, mushrooms — a dish of veal scaloppini ($24) doesn’t overwhelm but simply warms your cockles.

Settle down

RUTH TOBIAS — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 16:11:03 GMT

Ginger makes cocktails easy on the stomach
Ginger is God’s way of forgiving greed.

Soho Iced Tea at Grafton Street

Ginger is God’s way of forgiving greed. After all, it facilitates the digestive process, relieving indigestion and nausea. So just as we gluttons can gorge ourselves while relying on ginger to come to the rescue, we bona fide boozers can knock ’em back with the knowledge that a little Zingiber officinale will help keep our livers in the pink. And these days — since impatience, too, is among our many vices — we don’t even have to wait for the morningafter tea to steep; ginger is cropping up in our very cocktails.

Not that gingered tipples are anything new. Londoners, those long-time lushes, have been sipping Stone’s Original Green Ginger Wine — a golden apéritif made with ground ginger and raisins; think mead, but lighter and spicier — since the mid 18th century. Having recently had my first revelatory sip at Abba, a superb Asian-Med spot in Orleans, I returned from the Cape with a missionary’s zealous conviction that Everybody Must Get Stone’s. Granted, not everybody sells it — in fact it’s rather hard to find — but you can score a bottle for $11.99 at Blanchard’s (103 Harvard Avenue, Allston, 617.782.5588). Similarly, the yummy ginsengand- honey-laced Canton Ginger Liqueur supposedly descended from an ancient Chinese concoction (it’s no longer readily available, so if you happen across a bottle, snap it up). And of course, there’s the Dark and Stormy, the decades-old Bermudan classic to whose origins the distillers of Gosling’s Black Seal Rum lay claim. The recipe is refreshment itself, if not simplicity itself: the blend of rum, ginger beer, and lime sounds easy enough to prepare until you consider that the ultimate garnish is a waterfront view. So unless you happen to hold some sweet real estate, skip the self-bartending and hightail it down to a harborside bar.

Actually, what’s brewing at one such establishment, the Intrigue Café (Boston Harbor Hotel, 70 Rowes Wharf, Boston, 617.856.7744), is no storm but just good old green tea, which is mixed with Chopin Vodka in a glass containing muddled mint and ginger syrup. Called the Natural ($10), it’s got antioxidants out the yin-yang thanks to every single ingredient — including the ginger, excluding the booze. A round of these, and you’ll be staving off flu bugs as well as the tummy troubles accompanying hangovers. Drinking: good and good for ya!

Game on?

RUTH TOBIAS — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 15:11:16 GMT

Score a touchdown with the perfect football-food wines
Autumn, and the livin’ is easy — at least for you beer buffs.

Autumn, and the livin’ is easy — at least for you beer buffs. After all, it’s football season; you’ve got your game, your chips and dip, and your tub of choice brews, and you’re set through the new year. Meanwhile, we winos get left out in the cold, yearning from kick-off to OT for nothing so much as a wedge of Brillat-Savarin with a spot of viognier …

But not this year. In the dreary face of another dry spell, I set out on a life-saving — or at least lifestyle-saving — mission: to find wines I could pair with the sort of game-day snacks that, admittedly, go so fabulously with beer. Well, okay — I set out to find experts who could find the wines for me. (We winos are capable of only so much.) Here’s what they had to say.

Silvertone Bar & Grill (69 Bromfield Street, Boston, 617.338.7887) being a mecca for comfort foodies and oenophiles alike, who better to seek out than owner Josh Childs? But since he isn’t around when I stop by, general manager Mary Palmer talks to him for me. Childs-via-Palmer points out that choosing a wine to drink with, say, Buffalo wings isn’t as challenging as you might think: just focus on flavors that either match closely or counter one another completely. For instance, says Palmer, “wings are spicy, so to complement that spice, you might want to select a zinfandel from California or a syrah from the Rhône region of France.” Conversely, “a nice contrast could possibly be a Loire Valley white or a German riesling that would cleanse your palate with each sip.” Okay, I ask, if it’s so easy, what about, say, nachos? “Nachos are another matter,” admits Palmer. “Josh suggests any kind of sparkling wine, be it from California or a French Champagne.” That said, don’t blow your stash on a bottle of Dom just to wash down a mess o’ chips and cheese; think affordable, easy-drinking, lightly sweet sparklers to balance out the salt and spice.

Young guns

RUTH TOBIAS — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 15:10:12 GMT

Meet the new guard of twentysomething wine experts
Your average American oenophile, circa 1980: soon-to-be-dead white guy with Benjamins to burn on Bordeaux.

Your average American oenophile, circa 1980: soon-to-be-dead white guy with Benjamins to burn on Bordeaux. Your average American oenophile today: actually, there’s no such thing. Demographics and statistics don’t seem to have much bearing on love for the grape these days. Thanks to both the dining public’s greater savvy and increasingly sexy marketing campaigns, wine has finally found real favor among much-younger drinkers.

Of course, the fact that some of these young imbibers go on to become young sommeliers and young wine retailers only adds to the appeal and comfort level of fledgling connoisseurs; hey, if they look like you and talk like you, they probably drink like you too. Well, except that they get to do it on and around the clock. Talk about a job perk.

Actually, glam perks, among other things, are exactly what we talked about with two of the city’s twentysomething wine wizards: wine director Matt Reiser of UpStairs on the Square (91 Winthrop Street, Cambridge, 617.864.1933) and Kelly Coggins, associate of the Wine Bottega (341 Hanover Street, Boston, 617.227.6607) and Adonna Imports (the importing and distributing company owned by Il Capriccio’s Jeannie Rogers). Read it and weep with jealousy (not to mention thirst).

Q: How did you get into the wine business? What is the defining moment of your career so far?
Kelly Coggins: I’ve been serious about wine for six years now. I fell in love with it when I started college [at the Culinary Institute of America]. Some friends and I got together at the end of the first week to have a small party; everyone brought a wine and a cheese. I still remember the first glass I had there — a Belinda NV prosecco. I started tasting everything I could, reading every book about wine I could find. For my 21st birthday, my parents paid for me to take the introductory test for the Court of Master Sommeliers. I passed and was certified a sommelier.

Then I moved to Boston to accept a job managing the Federalist. But, as you might expect, being a 21-year-old wine geek meant fighting an uphill battle with a clientele and a staff double my age. [Even now], being 24 and having a baby face are no great assets in the world of wine. I’ve fought hard to get where I am. I still get people asking me if I’m old enough to drink wine, let alone sell it. I guess they think I’m an idiot savant or just making up whatever I tell them.

Bittersweet

RUTH TOBIAS — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 17:21:23 GMT

From appetite stimulant to stomach soother, bitters cure what ails you
On a family trip to Italy last year, my old dad, bless him, was crippled daily by excruciating tummy aches.

On a family trip to Italy last year, my old dad, bless him, was crippled daily by excruciating tummy aches. (Not the most appetizing way to start a column usually devoted to the glamour of guzzling, but bear with me.) After one too many emergency pit stops — much to the annoyance of one too many caffè waiters — I urged him, for all our sakes, to try a digestivo after dinner. That evening he had his first glass of bitters — and from the next morning on, his belly saw nothing but blue skies. He started swearing by the stuff nightly, fearing piles of pasta no longer.

No wonder amari, as the Italians call bitters, are nearly as much a part of the Italian diet as espresso and wine, be they aperitivos — drunk before a meal to stimulate the appetite — or the aforementioned digestivos, drunk afterward to settle the stomach. But here in the US — where they were once marketed as patent medicines — bitters function primarily as mixers, thanks to their distinctive little kick. Still, they all answer to the same basic description: they are spirits either distilled from or infused with botanicals, from orange peel to gentian root to cinchona bark (the source of quinine). And for all their various purposes, they really work.

That said, don’t go gulping down the entire contents of the little bottles you see behind any given bar; those are aromatic bitters, best reserved for mixing. Take the near-ubiquitous Angostura brand: invented in Venezuela and now produced in Trinidad — where it’s also a common cooking ingredient — it’s your go-to for old-fashioned cocktails like, well, the Old Fashioned, a favorite with Caffè Umbra (1395 Washington Street, Boston, 617.867.0707) bartender David Williams. “It was the first drink I ever made when I was about 12 years old, because it was my mother’s favorite drink. So it’s a near-and-dear drink. But no one orders them anymore, really.” We say be the first kid on your block to bring it back. When you order an Old Fashioned from Williams, he’ll “use turbinado sugar, a splash of bitters, a cherry, and a slice of orange; muddle it all in the bottom of the glass until it’s good and mushy; pack the glass with ice and pour [Canadian Club] whiskey on top” for $8.50. The mere description, he admits to us Boozers, “sounds good right now. You’re making me want one.”

Drunk munchies

RUTH TOBIAS — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 15:34:28 GMT

Put down the Ding Dongs; there’s a better way
I have a drinking problem.

I have a drinking problem. No, not the kind that could scramble my brain, chew it up, and spit it out with a side of liver (at least not yet); just the kind that leaves me lurching down convenience-store aisles in the wee hours, looking for treats in all the wrong places — among the pork rinds, the turkey jerky, the Ding Dongs. If you, too, have picked up your share of snacks that didn’t love you back, if the junk you down when you’re drunk has you moaning in the morning, take it from a recovering grub-gobbler like me: there are munchies out there that can meet the needs of both the carouser and the connoisseur in you. Here are a few of my personal faves. Just do me a favor in return and straighten up before actually entering any of these fine establishments, will ya? Make me look good.

Karisik Pide, Brookline Family Restaurant
(305 Washington Street, Brookline, 617.277.4466)
You can have your pizza parlors and your late-night greasy spoons; we’ve got a place that’s both in one, and Turkish on top. Brookline Family Restaurant looks for all the world like a small-town diner, and it acts like one at breakfast, slinging hangover helpers aplenty. (For more on culinary cure-alls, see sidebar on page 34.) But from midday to nearly midnight (11 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, to be precise), enormous — and generally excellent — platters of Eastern Mediterranean noshes are the norm. While the juicy kebabs are superb, skewers and impaired dexterity probably don’t mix — which brings us to the Turkish pizzas. The lambtopped pie called lahmacun is justly popular, but I’m partial to the megameaty karisik pide, or combination pita ($14.50). The warm, glistening kayak-shaped crust is French-bread smooth. Piled atop it, on a bed of creamy cheese that’s similar to mozzarella but less stringy, are goodies galore: disks of slightly spicy smoked sausage, ground beef fried up with bits of onion and green pepper, and scraps of pastrami — which may sound odd but adds a neat salt tang — plus slices of fresh tomato and green pepper. And when you polish that off, traditional pastries await, messy with shredded wheat and syrup. How nice to take home something that’s even more disheveled than you are.

Hot stuff?

RUTH TOBIAS — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 20:52:40 GMT

Optimum serving temperatures will keep your booze tasting its best
We dread the verbs heat waves dredge up: stifle. Swelter. Parch. But oh, how we love the ones liquids evoke: quench. Slake. And best of all, chill.

We dread the verbs heat waves dredge up: stifle. Swelter. Parch. But oh, how we love the ones liquids evoke: quench. Slake. And best of all, chill. Of course, if all you want to do is cool off, you may as well guzzle ice water. If you want to do it in style - that is, with booze - you should know that colder isn't necessarily better. A pint of ale, a glass of shiraz, a proper martini: all thrive on optimum serving temperatures. We asked the ethanol experts for a few tips on making, not breaking, your poison.

Beer
There isn't a beer nut in Boston who doesn't count the Publick House (1648 Beacon Street, Brookline, 617.277.2880) among the rarest of local treasures. And its crown jewel may well be not this or that cask-conditioned curio, but owner David Ciccolo - who proves passionate, not pompous, when satisfying his customers' thirst for knowledge as well as for craft brew. For one thing, though he cautions that the ins and outs of optimum serving temperature are virtually in exhaustible, he actually manages to sum it up nicely: "The bottom line is this: the colder the beer, the less flavor you're going to get. Craft beer has so many depths of flavor that cold kills."

Therefore, a good rule of thumb is that type determines temperature. Take easy-to-drink beers like lagers and pilsners: "there's a little bit less complexity there, so you can serve them at 38 degrees," or the average refrigerator setting - a bonus, Ciccolo acknowledges, "in this kind of weather." But as you add depth, add degrees. "Amber ales, pale ales, IPAs - those can be served a little warmer, say, 42 to 44 degrees. They have a lot more complexity than most - and I repeat, most - lagers." He observes that at the Publick House - where space restrictions dictate that all draft beers be served at the same temperature - "we have a lot of customers who know what they're doing: they'll order a beer and then wait to drink it." If it's a little too cold," they let it warm up first."

Then there are "the darker, richer beers - Trappist ales, imperial stouts. With those, you're just peeling back layer after layer as you drink them." To obtain their ideal of 55 degrees, says Ciccolo, "what we do here is we keep them at cellar temperature, then stick them in ice for four to five minutes." Hey, if it's something really frosty you want, go to Wendy's.

Meat

RUTH TOBIAS — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 16:12:06 GMT

The hungry man’s manual
We may scream for ice cream and go cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, but we beat our breasts for meat, the source of perhaps our most primitive cravings.

We may scream for ice cream and go cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, but we beat our breasts for meat, the source of perhaps our most primitive cravings. That goes double for you guys — hard-wired (and hard-bodied) as you are to relish the hunt, to harbor a bloodlust for your prey (which might otherwise become predator). But in a city as uber-civilized, health-conscious, and cramped as ours —where the buffalo don’t roam (but the veggie activists do) and even space for a proper grill is scarce — well, it’s hard out here for a carnivore. With this compilation of tips from local meat mavens, we’re just trying to make it all a little easier.

Ordering it: from butcher shops to chop-houses

Grill 23's Jay Murray

"When people come to a steak house," says Ruth’s Chris Steak House GM Domenic D’Olimpio, "the first thing they’re going to look at is the filet. " He’s right: loin cuts are no-brainers. Your filet mignons, your T-bones, your New York strips — these are the most tender (and among the leanest) cuts, hence the easiest to prepare: the less you mess with them, the better. According to butcher Ron Savenor of Beacon Hill (and now Cambridge) institution Savenor’s, you should place your order with just two key factors in mind. The first is bright-red color. That indicates the meat is fresh, freshly cut. Beyond that, probably the most important thing is the marbling, which dictates how well it’s going to eat. That’s the oleaginous unsaturated fat. Contrary to what the world believes, that’s actually the good cholesterol. People see marbling and they think, ‘Oh, that’s terrible,’ and it’s not. "

But wait. If the loins are so lean, won’t they have less marbling? Bingo, beef-brainiac. Tenderness, though a virtue in itself, is not synonymous with flavor. In fact, among the threads that run through our conversations with the experts, one of the most common concerns the merits of humbler cuts. Says Savenor, "People come in and say, ‘I only eat sirloin,’ or ‘I only eat tenderloin.’ My advice is, try different cuts and different recipes."

Sham-pagne

RUTH TOBIAS — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 01:25:36 GMT

Getting acquainted with the other sparkling wines
"Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends!"

"Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends!" However clever, whoever ﬁrst made that punny toast (and, no, dear readers, it was not Fall Out Boy) was forgetting a third alternative: sham Champagne for all. Or, to put it another way, real sparkling wine for all. You see, the term "Champagne" simply refers to sparkling wine from the eponymous region of France; the designation is primarily geographical. Granted, it may be secondarily qualitative: experts consider Champagne to be the world’s best sparkling wine due to the region’s fortuitous combination of cool climate and chalky soil (which, conversely, makes for dreadful still wines). But, for all its cachet, it doesn’t imply that its non-Champenoise brethren are merely poor imitations — any more than a Bordeaux label, by disassociation, sheds a negative light on a Barolo.

So lay to rest those harrowing ﬂashbacks of your ﬁrst New Year’s Day hangover, brought on by one too many plastic ﬂutes of the swill that is cold duck (a German invention, originally meant to stretch a bottle of leftover Champagne by mixing it with inferior wine and sugar, which we Americans brieﬂy revived as a fad in our era of shame — the ’70s, of course). This holiday season, you can replace them with warm and fuzzy — make that chilled and ﬁzzy — memories of truly tasteful sparkling wines from Italy, Spain, and even California. Of course, the fact that they’re generally much more affordable than Champagne means you don’t have to limit their consumption to special occasions — which is, in itself, something to celebrate. To learn more, come along with us on a bubbly bar crawl.

In Italy, as in France, the best-known sparkling wines come from the north. There’s Piedmontese Asti spumante, made with the Moscato grape by the Charmat method of fermentation — which, though less painstaking and venerated than the classic méthode champenoise, still beats the polyester pants off tacky carbonation. There’s the sparkling red known as Brachetto d’Acqui, also from Piedmont — drunk as a dessert wine by well-bred types, downed like soda pop by people like us. And from the Veneto, there’s prosecco, generally the driest of Italian sparklers and thus best served as an aperitivo. Now, since the bar at Prezza (24 Fleet Street, Boston, 617.227.1577) is one of the classiest yet coziest in the North End, it’s our ﬁrst-round pick for a toast this time of year. Ask for a glass of Zardetto Prosecco di Conegliano Brut ($7), and you’ll get a ﬂuteful of sparkling wine from Conegliano-Valdobbiadene, the most highly acclaimed (and hard-to-pronounce) sub-region of prosecco production. You’ll understand why from the ﬁrst sip: it’s clean and zippy, with racing bubbles not so much obscuring as constituting its ﬂavor — much the way the hue of a "blurred redbud," according to the Elizabeth Bishop poem, looks "almost more like movement than any placeable color."