Passable Parrish Café – Boston

I by chance went to both the Back Bay and South End locations last week. Back Bay is bustling and more crowded, and South end is quaint and sweet despite its Mass Ave location, like the Montagues and Capulets (minus the bloodshed), they are

Two restaurants, both alike in dignity,

In fair Boston, where we lay our scene.

The salads are solid, none of that solid-water-nonsense-we-call -iceberg lettuce! The Eddie’s Spinach Salad is well-blended with the right amount of light vinaigrette, refreshing for a humidly sweltering Boston summer’s eve. The guava paste is interesting though it’s really just smooth, pasty red sugar. The Hot and Cold Chicken Salad presents an interesting mix for those seeking something equally healthy but heartier and more filling  than salad. However, it presents a gastronomic quandary: do you eat it quickly so that you can fully experience the hot vs cold theme that permeates the dish or do you savor it slowly but allow the underlying rice to transfer its heat to the salad thus negating the principal on which this dish was built?

All the sandwiches look lovely, and I’ve been told the Luna is a good choice for birdlovers. The Lumiere is a tasty concoction of curried pork slices but here is where Parrish fails at the finer details. The pork is dry, and there was little else on the sandwich to disguise the dryness or enhance the flavor. To be fair, it was still good and I still gladly ate my half.

IMO, the Parrish originals are the best things on the menu. The baked mac and cheese has gooey gruyere, and the juicy mushroom add-on was the perfect touch. Get the half order and split it with a friend. Too much of a good thing is a good thing but too much of a rich thing makes you forget it was good.

The Mac and Cheese Flatbread Pizza is a surprisingly worthy artery-clogger. The menu description boasts excessiveness, but the chef has managed to find a balance in ingredients, mostly due to cleverly placed slices of fresh tomato. Still, I could only stomach two of the four slices but I truly lack any real complaints about this macaroni, chicken, and cheese concoction and it makes for a fabulous hangover cure the next morning. The “Cajun” fried mac and cheese ball on the side is a different story. The breading it flavorless, and the restaurant’s idea of “Cajun” is a cartoon-character-sneeze-inducing overload of pepper on an otherwise flavorless ball that physically looks like the inside of an arterial fatty streak. Lose the fat on the side. Literally…

The one thing that physically hurt me was Ken Oringer’s Cobbed Corn Tapas. I almost sobbed hysterically when I saw two massive ears of corn crudely topped with a hastily-strewn dash of garlic mayo. I astutely spared myself the distress of ordering this dish, but I observed it painfully at the next table. Do not order this dish, I forbid it. The crude appearance of it is a disservice to a legendary chef. As I have previously declared Toro the best restaurant in Boston, pleasepleaseplease just go there for the corn. It’s literally only 4-5 blocks away!

In sum, though the food at Parrish Café is by all definitions GOOD, it is a reproduction of a famous artist’s painting. The borrowed sandwiches are great but it’s clearly not the original genius. That being said, these affordable replicas can hold their own for any casual lunch or dinner, but I would highly recommend regarding them as an opportunity to sample the originals. If you like what you ate, please make a point of patronizing the original restaurant. And remember not to lose perspective – you can’t judge a book by its cover and you can’t judge a restaurant’s food by its replica.