Loathsome Legal Harborside - Boston

The 2^nd Floor of Legal Harborside is a stem cell…that died. With a breathtaking waterfront location, pristine dining room, tasty drinks, and a menu that screamed of quality seafood, this imposing structure stood full of promise. Tragically, this stem cell never differentiated, and instead of becoming the neuron that I so desperately wanted it to be, it just rolled over and died.

The promise was manifest in the saintly patience of the staff. Thanks to a couple of incompetent cabbies, our group ended up being 45 minutes late for our reservation, but the host and hostess showed no signs of irritation.

Unfortunately, when it was time to order, Legal Harborside redefined the phrase “to die for”. Apparently their tasting menu is so illustriously elusive that when the majority of a table of 8 wants to order it, and the remainder of the table is fatally allergic to half the things on it, it is not possible to accommodate that. The waiter found it appropriate to repeatedly inform us, that the tasting menu can only be served to the entire table. Translation: order from the regular menu or die. This is the comment that killed the stem cell, and believe me, all attempts to revive it failed miserably.

My Olive Oil Poached Tuna had beluga lentils that looked and tasted like the barnacles you’d scrape off the bottom of the whale. Dry, flat, hard, grainy little black disks of blandness, it’s like the items of this dish were assembled with whatever the kitchen had left over. The pork belly wasn’t actually pork belly. It was more likely just pork with a crispy skin. Or a pig with an eating disorder…The meat was tender and the skin was tasty, but it did nothing to help the bland, perfectly seared tuna.

On a slightly higher note, the Misty Knoll Farms Chicken was actually juicy. Not as well-made as it could have been, but not at all dry with some flavor going past skin-deep. The ravioli was pretty genius, enclosing a poached egg that poured radiant rays of yolky sunshine on the surrounding white canvas of mashed potatoes speckled with tasty wild mushrooms. This Russian-nesting-doll egg-ravioli saved the entire dish, turning it into a remote bright stop in my evening.

To give credit where it’s due, two of my tablemates insisted that the Alaskan king crab topping their Filet Mignon was incredible. They seemed to thoroughly enjoy it so if you’re lucky, the menu may have at least one good thing.

The dessert ended my night on a note as sour as the bottom of an old Petri dish. The chocolate mousse they advertised turned out to be more of a gooey indecision. Too moist to be a brownie, too dry to be a mousse. WTF Legal, WTF?

I feel some residual guilt writing a bad review since the hosts were so polite about our tardiness, but I imagine that even the most professional of scientists probably punch a pillow or something when their prized stem cell dies. I’m also betting it’s easier to be patient when only half the dining room is full at 7 PM on a Friday night.

As much as I liked the ritzy dining room, adored the drinks, and loved the company, it did precious little to convince me that Legal Harborside is anything more than Boston’s waterfront version of the Vegas strip - not much more than pretty lights trimming a hollow core.