The Cambridge Chronicles: Russell House Tavern rocks it

Last weekend, I went home to visit friends, see my family, and see the Hasty Pudding show at my alma mater, not necessarily in that order. So Friday night found my parents and me at Russell House Tavern, a new addition to Cambridge's Harvard Square, located in the space that used to be Z Square (and before that was, believe it or not, an enormous Finagle a Bagel).

It's a carefully-crafted and appealing hangout spot. There's a "tavern" vibe, for sure, but it easily straddles the lines between restaurant and bar (erring on the side of restaurant) and between beer haven and cocktail den (pretty much right down the middle). All the trends get their nod: extensive beer list, raw bar, wine on tap. Check, check, and check. Jugs of house-carbonated sparkling water provided gratis? You've earned my love already, Russell.

Dad had hit traffic, so Mom and I placed our order with our very professional and accommodating server. While we waited, a bread plate arrived, such as it was: hunks of crusty but pretty average white rolls accompanied by a dish of garlicky oil. Or should I say GARLICKY oil... I had two tiny bites and was blasting everyone around me with a garlic bath for the rest of the night. Consider yourself warned...

It looks innocuous, but yet...

Dad arrived just as the apps landed on the table. For him: a very large (and purportedly tasty Caesar salad).

The many shades of white

For Mom and me, a Little Gem Salad to share. The little lettuce hearts, accompanied by sliced apple, cashews, and a little round of toasted pecorino, looked appealing... but upon further investigation, it turned out the dressing had anchovies. Ah, well. I should have asked in advance. No matter; Mom enjoyed the salad while I prepped for the arrival of the entrees. All turned out fine in the end-- you'll see.

There were little mini lettuce bouquets under there

The entrees themselves followed the trend of huge portions. Dad's cowboy cut ribeye steak was Flintstones-sized and came with a dish of creamed spinach and a little pile of thyme-roasted carrots. Mom and I also shared a side of the carrots, which were tender, sweet, and well-seasoned, if a bit oily.

That's one huge steak

Our delish carrots

Mom chose the swordfish special, which came with fennel and orange salad and green herb aioli. It was an enormous slab o' fish that came on two large planks of toasted bread. She really enjoyed the fish, noting that many restaurants don't cook swordfish well, but Russell House nailed it.

Almost a whole fish there!

My choice was the local leaf salad with walnuts, dried figs, and mustard-cider vinaigrette. It doesn't look it in the photo, but this was one of the largest restaurant salads I've ever encountered. There were ample chunks of chewy dried figs, about a cup of crunchy walnuts, and an abundance of fresh leaves. The dressing was pungent and incredibly flavorful. I kept eating... and eating... and was eventually painfully full for the rest of the evening. I'm really glad I didn't indulge in the appetizer salad, because that would have put us in disaster territory. In any case, it was so, so good.

This really doesn't do this salad justice. It was about a foot in diameter and about 6" high.

Now, don't get me wrong: I liked both Z Square and Finagle a Bagel quite a bit, but I think Russell House Tavern is the best incarnation of that restaurant space that I've experienced. It begs for repeat visits, whether to explore more of the menu, dive into the extensive beer, wine, and cocktail lists, or just raid the dessert offerings. For turning a trio of relatively picky eaters into three happy (and quite full) campers, Russell House earns four Offset Spatulas with ease.

Russell House Tavern
14 JFK Street
Cambridge, MA
617-500-3055

West Side Steakhouse is indeed your neighborhood steak shop

I reported on West Side Steakhouse in its Plywood stage, but it's been fully open for a month or two now. I finally made it over there to check out the goods a couple of weeks ago.

The dining room is spare but comfortable, and the service is efficient but friendly. The bread to start consisted of olive and what looked like cheddar ciabatta; it was quite good, marred only by the rock-hard cold butter (a few minutes of softening would have done wonders for that).

Might also want to get cloth napkins to kick the "paper napkin in a basket" vibe up a notch...

My dining companion ordered the crab cakes to start. They looked slightly on the flaccid and soggy side to me, but he said that although they were a bit doughy they were still quite good and were packed full of crab. They were also made in-house, which is key to getting crab cakes of quality.

Lots of crab here

The crab cakes were followed up by a rib-eye steak, which was also pronounced delicious and was well-cooked. Note that, as is standard at steakhouses, all the meat here is a la carte, so if you order a steak you'll get just a steak unless you order sides separately.

Big ol' steak on a plate

That's where I came in. I ordered a trio of sides, starting with the grilled asparagus, which was surprisingly delicious, attractively caramelized and drizzled with a bit of reduced balsamic vinegar, which took the dish to the next level. I only wish there had been a few more spears here; seven pencil-thin pieces of asparagus is a tiny bit stingy for $7.50.

Asparagus FTW!

My other main veggie was the sauteed mushrooms, which were also quite flavorful due to their garlicky, peppery sauce. These weren't too greasy, which was merciful, and the portion here was plentiful. Note that these were cooked relatively lightly, which means they retained their spongy mushroomness, so if you're looking for the caramelized, almost-burnt mushroom consistency, these aren't for you.

Lots of different types of fungus here

For good measure, the final veggie was creamed spinach. I took a tiny bite of this, and it was rich and tasty. I'm no creamed spinach connoisseur, but this seemed to do the job.

Green plop

While we were there, the liquor license at WSS was pending, so there was neither booze sold nor BYOB allowed. Once the license comes through, I think the addition of alcohol to the mix will add some festiveness to both the food and the atmosphere. In the meantime, however, the food at WSS is surprisingly good and reasonably priced, and it's worth a try if you're looking for a low-key, genuine meal in the neighborhood.

West Side Steakhouse
597 Tenth Avenue, between 43rd and 44th Streets
212-564-4803

West Side Steakhouse looking to shake up Tenth Avenue

There's a lot of movement going on in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood, with restaurants and shops closing down and new places growing phoenix-like in their wake. The newest tantalizer is on Tenth Avenue, between 43rd and 44th, taking the place of the former and humerously-named "Gourmet Wok."

Yep, gourmet.

There's definitely construction going on there, but what's most interesting is the small public notice located beneath the three building permits:

West Side Steakhouse wants booze!

Could it be? A steakhouse, coming to Tenth Avenue? Any more reports, send them my way.

A brief bar interlude at Lansdowne Road

Let's travel back in time, shall we, to a few weeks ago, before I left for Vegas. For old time's sake, I met with JT and the bro at Lansdowne Road for a Bruins game and a few drinks. I got a Harpoon cider, which was delicious and appley and made me surprisingly drunk. But there was food, as well, of course. JT got a cheesesteak, which came with choice of cheese, chopped onions, and fries. The bro got a club sandwich, also with fries. I ate a few fries. They were warm and fried, although they were the kind that are starchy inside and thick outside, rather than... well... softer and yummier? I don't know, it was a while ago. All I remember is they tasted good. A few pictures to ease us back into the dining scene, and we'll be back on the wagon:

CheeEEEeese. Steak.

A sandwich with bacon? What could be better?

LWF&D goes to Wellesley, where the Ginger is Blue

The early part of this week found me in Massachusetts for a recruiting trip for work. Coincidentally, it was also my mom's birthday, so Mom, Dad and I convened at Blue Ginger in Wellesley, MA, on a quiet Monday night for a celebratory dinner.

Blue Ginger, Ming Tsai's flagship restaurant, is a tastefully decorated, comfortable Asian fusion restaurant just off the main street in Wellesley. We were greeted by an effusive host and led to a table near the open kitchen. Our waitress, who through the evening demonstrated herself to be both surly and languid, an odd combo, brought us menus and water. She did not smile. At all.

But that's okay, because we had bread! Three kinds! A flatbread that tasted like egg roll skins, a white bread with a crackly crust, and a white bread with a glossy crust. I downed a piece of the crackly white bread, and it was quite good, with a satisfying flavor and nice stretchy texture.

Nicely organized bread

Then the appetizers: both Mom and Dad went for the Sesame Caesar Salad. Both seemed to enjoy it; it looked simple but well done, as all Caesar salads should be.

All hail Caesar

On to the main courses. Mom chose the Sake-Miso Marinated Alaskan Butterfish, which came with bright dollops of sauce, a seaweed salad, and three small sushi rolls. She loved it.

Complicated plate

Dad went with the Grilled Hangar Steak with Roasted Tomatillo Sauce and Avocado Cream, Corn-Poblano Empanadas and Chayote Squash Slaw. Phew. He also enjoyed this dish, which looked creative and complex, while still simultaneously being colorful and symmetrical.

Steak hidden underneath

My choice was the Wok-Stirred Ginger-Soy Maitake Mushrooms, with a Truffled Parmesan Flan. When I first saw this dish, which was quite large despite being only an appetizer, I thought I was in for a total grease bomb. But the mushrooms were surprisingly and mercifully ungreasy, full of tasty soy-sauce-umami and devoid of spongy mushroom texture. The flan was also a pleasant surprise-- light and eggy like an un-bruleed creme brulee, with strong flavors of both parmesan and truffle. I cleaned my plate and didn't feel sodden or sick afterwards. Well done, Ming!

My yummy mushrooms

While we didn't order dessert (there was a Dairy Queen ice cream cake in my mom's future back home...), the kitchen sent out three small keffir-lime macaroons with an oblong marzipan disk piped with "Happy Birthday" in loopy chocolate. The macaroons were really good, and the lime flavor was intriguing and surprisingly delicious, the way it is in Tostitos with a hint of lime.

Happy birthday, Mom!

All in all, we all thoroughly enjoyed the food at Blue Ginger. The service, not so much-- our waitress really seemed to be having a bad time, and she made it clear to us. Constantly. But that didn't sully our experience-- while it wasn't quite Eleven Madison Park, it was a four Offset Spatula birthday dinner of the finest degree.

Blue Ginger

583 Washington Street, Wellesley, MA

781-283-5790

Wilted arugula and precious cheese at Pigalle

With my mom in town and a bunch of the bro's friends visiting, Monday night found us at Pigalle for a convivial and relatively reasonably priced meal. I used to go to Pigalle all the time and usually found the food to be good but the service atrocious. After a hiatus of a year or more, I was back to see whether the place still had its game on.

The short answer: no. But before I get into that, the highlight-- the bread basket. The bread at Pigalle is delicious, chewy with a substantial crust and good butter. However, it must be noted that the kitchen doesn't slice the loaves all the way through, so you have to wrestle with the whole loaf to rip yourself off an inevitably mangled slice. After three or four slices (not that I had three slices of bread. Ahem.), your arms get tired. I mean, hypothetically.

Intractable bread

For appetizers, we had two takers for the caesar salad. It looked standard, with croutons very clearly of the Pepperidge-Farm-from-a-box genre, but was definitely ample.

Does ANYBODY like those croutons?

AG went for the onion soup. It had some good melted cheese action and came in the appropriate brown-and-white crock. You know which one I mean.

Yeah, that one.

Appetizers (and several more loaves of bread) dispatched, we moved on to the entrees. Two members of our party had ordered the grilled yellowfin tuna, which came with grilled zucchini, roasted tomato and caper sauce, and a big cow patty of basil mashed potatoes. The mashed potatoes were suprisingly addictive (I ate most of them off my mom's plate), and the zucchini was zucchini-y but a bit oily and unseasoned.

So many battling grill marks

Two more diners ordered the steak-frites. The steak was huge-- but in my brother's portion, a big chunk of it was gristle. I tried a fry and it was nothing special.

Fries were a bit crispy and undersalted

AG ordered the caramelized pear salad, which came with spiced walnuts, dried cherries, and fourme d'ambert cheese. She requested goat cheese instead of the blue cheese, a substitution the kitchen has made gladly many times in the past, when we used to order that very same salad with frequency. This time, however, the waiter informed us that there would be a $2.50 additional charge for the goat cheese. This precipitated a small scene at our table-- WTF?? As AG put it, she wasn't even asking them to add anything to the salad, she was simply asking the cook to put his hand in a different bin. Regardless, the cheese was ordered, and it came out grilled, which was weird (and not to AG's taste). As a final denoument, the $2.50 cheese charge never showed up on the bill. Score!

The goat cheese looks like seared scallops.

My own selection was the arugula and roasted portabello salad. I requested the dressing on the side, a request they honored. The thing was, the waiter handed me my salad, and the arugula was... gross. I mean, it was yellow and wilted. Take a look:

Sad, sad, sad.

Now, I pretty much never send things back in restaurants, unless the kitchen has made an egregious mistake. And I was about to tuck into this nasty, skanky salad. But my mom encouraged me to ask them to replace it: after all, this salad had two ingredients, and one of them was arugula, and the arugula was icky. So I did, and the waiter was really nice about it, and he brought a new salad with pristene, lovely arugula, and no visible traces of the chef's saliva to boot. The new one looked like this:

So much better!

After all that, the salad was pretty average-- it was a lot of arugula and a bit of marinated roasted portabello, which was good but scarce in quantity. I wouldn't order the salad again.

After a lengthy debate post-entree, we ended up skipping dessert, paying the tab, and taking off. It should be noted that in addition to the food issues, the service was up and down-- there were long stretches where water and soda glasses went unfilled, but our waiter was genial and cordial throughout, which was pleasantly unexpected. I used to really like Pigalle, but now that I've found so many better options in the neighborhood, I wouldn't readily go back, except (perhaps) for the bread. Other members of our party enjoyed their food quite a bit, however, so taking that into consideration I'll give Pigalle a meager two Offset Spatulas.

Pigalle
790 Eighth Avenue, at 48th Street
212-489-2233