Gimme More Grafton Street – Cambridge

When it comes to restaurants, Grafton Street is one of the most adequately named. A less-known corner of a well-known street, Grafton tries to stay true to your neighborhood pub despite being a little upscale…AND despite the fact that Harvard Square is, let’s face it, everyone’s neighborhood. Reservations aside, it’s really Grafton Street that captures the true essence of this lively neighborhood and all the spirit of VeRiTas it comes with.

Like any well-rounded Ivy idol, Grafton Street’s menu is always well-balanced. The entrees are a date-night splurge for an undergrad with an anniversary, but the sandwiches make for an affordable catch-up meal with any chum. The bar area is good for drinks but not so obviously alcoholic that you can’t order water if you’re too young to drink.  

Harvard may be deep-rooted in its seat of tradition and prestige. Harvard may feel as old as time, but Harvard Square itself is never without a freshman breath of air. The buzz of aspiring scholars, the rudimentary relics of budding artists, and the constant swishing flow of ideas from those destined to change the world fills the soul almost as much as the Grafton Street’s homey fare fill the belly.

Grafton Street’s menu teems with tradition including cultural classics like bouillabaisse, burgers, and a good ole Yankee pot roast, but this little “pub” still keeps it fresh. The classic pot roast is made with short rib, the latest cut in fine dining, and my New England Bouillabaisse, a French seafood stew as old as elitism itself was lightened by a selection of shellfish in a rich and filling yet not-too-dense broth. The slice of toast dripping with a refreshing alioli-like topping just doubles the fun. The unbelievably well-made hake is yet another unstuffy addition to the dish that embodies Harvard’s effortless elite.

The Grafton Burger glows with all the sweet simplicity of the wide-eyed kids far from home. The patty is juicy with all the flavor of their promise, and the caramelized onion completes the whole package of Ivy League ideals. This burger is almost as intoxicating as the beer half the patrons are too young to (legally) drink.

The underlying spirit of Harvard Square is the depth and warmth of the friendships formed by those who learn and grow together. It was only appropriate that I ate there with Valerie, my friend of exactly ten years. Valerie and I met at a gifted-and-talent camp when we were wide-eyed Southern girls, finally free from the oppressive den of the tiger mom. Over the years, our friendship has become just the right amount of sweet with a few layers of complexity, much like the White Chocolate Cheesecake. Our friendship is a recipe honed over the years, and like this cheesecake, we’ve got it right. And like my friendship with Valerie, my friendship with Grafton Street is only beginning. 

Carry On Cascabel Taqueria – NYC

Confession #1: Last night I watched an episode of a show that I thought wild horses couldn’t drag me into. Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, a reality TV show about the lives of a 6 year-old pageant girl and her family. I want to tell you that someone forced me. I want to tell you that I lost a bet, the full painful terms of which I’d rather not divulge. But no, there was nothing driving me but my own curiosity. After suffering through an entire season of The Bachelor, you’d think a girl would learn…

Confession #2: Maybe you should sip on one of Cascabel’s bottomless brunch drinks which only cost a mere $12 to dampen your shock. Start with the El Capitan, a curiously strong concoction of cava and passionfruit that glows with all the radioactive promise of a blazing BAL (blood alcohol level) that you can’t actually taste.

Back to confession #2: I liked it. Dumb and drab at first glance, Honey Boo Boo and her family manage to have an endearing quality underneath all that trash. And Cascabel Taqueria became my Honey Boo Boo in NYC. The diner-style exterior allows for a wrap-around of outside dining tables, reminiscent of the wraparound porches that are more the norm than the exception in the Honey Boo Boo hometown of McIntyre, Georgia. The shape of the restaurant and its nondescript décor somehow remind me of the inside of a metal diner, and the bottomless drinks weren’t helping.

But all mockery aside, the one thing I did see when I watched this show is that Honey Boo Boo’s family is truly a family. Their devotion to each other is clear, and when she sasses her way across the stage, they cheer together. Even her sisters know her dance routines. So as much as this family will shock and appall you, they are very much like Cascabel’s Huevos Benedict, a usually traditional brunch dish that marches to the beat of its own drum. A spin-off of a run-of-the-mill midday meal, this cornbread and chorizo variation really pulls it together…like a mobile home in a trailer park with a drizzle of chipotle hollandaise sauce. The cornbread is mealy but sweet, the chorizo is fatty but sharp, and this show is a real taste of just how fun a variation of your average American family can be.

Family aside, Honey Boo Boo herself is an adorably active 6 year-old who may or may not suffer from ADHD. But she makes me laugh. Her little belly is as round as the eggs yolks on the Chilaquiles, and she flaunts it with a comical pride that makes me melt. There is something comforting about the fried tortillas that soak up all the flavor of the shredded chicken and gooey egg yolk…even though it’s served in a metal tray. Like this fun little girl, this Cascabel…tray…“always brings her A-game” as she breaks into her feisty Elvis routine. Rock on, Honey Boo Boo, rock on.

There is something deeper that makes this reality show more real. It’s raunchy and revealing and it’s ridiculous but the underlying tone is genuine. The wholesome homey comfort of a real American family isn’t lost. They love and they laugh and though we often laugh at them, sometimes we laugh with them too. As mother June Shannon reminds us, “kids don’t come with instruction manuals”, and neither should brunch. Casacabel’s food reminds us that even when the restaurant’s a little different, we can still feel that same homey, ordinary comfort with dense, flavorful Mexican classics that warm your round little belly from the inside out. 

Bashing Basho Japanese Brasserie – Boston

You’ve seen this girl, you know her well. She struts with all her swagger and she always struts her stuff. And boy does she have a lot of stuff. For the subtle swipe of a small square of plastic, she flounders the fortune she didn’t earn and accrues at least one asset from every designer with a fortune that’s hers to burn.  We covet her closet, we aspire to the array of Armani, gaze at the gaggle of Gucci, and venerate the vestibule of Vuitton.

We love her and we hate her as she flaunts her fabulous fashions. But leer all you want at the labels, you’ll soon see that nothing breathes beneath. Purchased for the pricetag, casually cast aside for the newer line, her closet accrues and accumulates and dazzles, devoid of any meaning. She has no LBD (little black dress, guys…and girls not from NYC), she lacks a pair of go-to jeans, and she craves the comfort of cozy crops.  

You’ve seen this girl, you know her well. She rocks reality TV and she sees through the mascara-laden eyes of every single character on Gossip Girl…especially now that Blair Waldorf’s iconic wardrobe is being ravaged by a stylist who is either a distant cousin of Ronald McDonald...or blind.

If you’re looking for this girl in Boston, I just found her in Basho. An imposingly large space in fun Fenway, Basho is beautiful at first glance. The paneling is modern, the floor shines, and you wonder how the food couldn’t do the same. But take a bite of the Lobster Tempura Roll and you’ll see why Basho is the first stop for sushi disaster tourism. The roll tasted more like shake n’ bake chicken than lobster thanks to the almost-burnt breading…wasn’t worth the chipped teeth. The Snow Mountain Roll was better but not by much. Snow crab makes a tasty topper, but the filling of shrimp tempura drowned out the sweet crab, making this one blander than Sperry’s boat shoes. The Amaebi Mango Roll was even more bland and a disaster comparable to the faulty fashion we call the clog.

The Soft Shell Crab Tempura was about as fresh as Ugg boots in southern California. Not terrible, but about as impractical as it is idiotic.

We could barely tell the Water Eel Tempura from regular fish, but the eel was tender and made for a tasty tidbit. About as memorable as last season’s Tori Burch…come on girls, how different can flats really be year after year?

When you get to Basho, it won’t take many bites to understand what garnishes our girl. Her glitz and glamour are grounded in a pile of expensive possessions, most of which are utterly unremarkable or utterly ugly…or both. I’m not that girl. I’m far from a fashionista, and I’m far from a master foodista. But I am a foodie, and though I may not bash you for having believed in Basho, I will berate you belligerently if you ever go back.

Casual Creperie on Newbury – Boston

Anything Bostonian with Newbury in its name begs to be avoided. Newbury Street is Boston’s Times Square – a flocking of full-fledged tourists, small-strided sidewalk stoppers, mindless of the New York minute. But all snarky sightseer satire aside, Newbury Street is a delightful distraction for those taking in their first blustery Boston afternoon, and the Creperie is just another stop along the journey to crawl the mall. As a jaded local, I generally avoid Newbury restaurants, but after Dore’s untimely demise, Boston creperies have been about as common as people who keep their eyes on the ground in Times Square.

For starters, unlike pretty much everything on Newbury, the Creperie is reasonably priced. If you bought the groupon like I did, make sure to bring a friend. If you have no friends, I recommend fasting for a couple days.

The list of savory crepes looks quite catchy, but we were craving the sweet so we only tried the Provencale. I expected a heavily creamy goat-cheese-loaded luxury, but the red pepper, fresh tomato, and dash of olive added a surprising lightness. Not a bad stop along the shopping trail – if you’re trying to exercise your cardswipe arm before and after you eat, crepes like this one allow you to saunter down the sidewalk afterward, rather than rolling.

The Provencale may have been surprisingly well-executed, but the Crepe Suzette was a disaster. They remembered every last cup of Grand Marnier but they forgot the flambé. Setting it on fire burns off the alcohol, but this one tasted more like a bottle of peroxide.

The Crepe Au Sucre was a standard sandwich of sweetness, props for making the crepe as paperthin as it should be.

La Tropicale is a fun fest of citrus, and coconut sorbet is an awesome topper for anything. Unfortunately, like many things on Newbury, the canned fruit tasted a little too much like touristic license with a scoop of sellout.

The Au Fruits Savages was far better, boasting a berry blaze.

The thing that annoyed me even more than Newbury’s demographics was that the temperature of my food was about as frigid as a New England frost. With the kitchen a mere ten feet from my table, my crepes should have been gooey-hot enough to burn my tongue on the first bite, but they were lukewarm at best. Despite the fridge-tastic food, I remain quite fond of the Creperie on Newbury. Though the crepes are nothing special, this Creperie caters as an ideal a shopping stopover…if you can’t stop on another street. 

Positing on Post 390 – Boston

When I saw the Bloomspot deal for dinner for two, I was stricken with POST traumatic stress disorder. After all, I almost drowned in the watery dishes at Columbus Café (which has closed, thank god…quit while you’re…behind?). I choked on a mouthful of sand that Tremont 647 had the nerve to call food, and Chez Henri got two-thumbs-up…for those who like a good fusion fail. Fondue at Wine Cellar was decent, but if we’re going along those lines of logic, I should POSTpone the groupon and cook the food myself. But then I remembered the pleasantries of Park Restaurant and Bar and a nice nosh at Noche so I gave Post 390 a chance.

I really started regretting that chance after walking through the revolving POSTern (i.e. fancy door) when I realized that it was for the “Farm to Post” menu featuring Brambly Farm. When I hear the term “farm fresh”, the first thing I do is POSTulate the different ways this great idea could go wrong. I’m not knocking the value of fantastic farm-grown fare, but I’ve just seen too many hippie attempts turn to comPOST.

The sheer amount of salt in the Crab –Egg Drop Soup put me into a POSTictal confusion. My tastebuds had never been slammed so hard with such seizure-inducing crystals. We sent the soup back and received an acceptably-salty soup and an apology. Well there’s no use crying over spilt…salt? Props to the staff for throwing it over their shoulders and delivering a much improved product in so short a time.

The Country Pate was eaten POST-haste. Not because it was it was good but because it was too bland to bother lingering on the flavor.

The bed of succotash under the Bacon Wrapped Scallops provide a taste of POSTerity, a recipe passed down by generations of kettle-over-the-hearth Norman-Rockwellian families of unintentional chefs. I usually POSTure against bacon-wrapped scallops as they are usually the POSTer-child for the pitfalls of excess as bacon tends to suppress the more delicate scallops. This was the first bacon-wrapped scallops dish I actually liked as the maple-rosemary bacon highlighted the tender sea scallops, and the succotash was probably the tastiest thing I’ve had in months.

Like many of my blogPOSTs, my view of the Brochette of Berkshire Pork may seem a bit POST-modernist. But a dish with so many interesting elements clearly deserves to be deconstructed. The skewers consist of tender, juicy squares the size of a POSTage stamp, the international kind. There’s a fruity theme with a light hint of pear, and the sweet plum-ginger sauce foils the dark kale. Unfortunately, the pulled pork fritter just didn’t do it for me. Too bland, too fried. And thus concludes the dissection of the dish.

We all love pretty faces, but some of us place more emphasis on the POSTerior. At Post 390, the POSTprandial Zucchini Bread exemplifies that the back end can be just as delightful as the front. While I hardly pretend to be an aPOSTle, I can safely say that the sweet, dense bread, paired with chocolate cream and topped with an amazing confit orange slice is nothing short of heavenly.

The Apple Pie is as much an American classic as the POST-it note. Like post-its, pies come in all shapes and sizes and all sorts of colors, but everyone who likes pie agrees on one thing: It is just so much better with this creamy vanilla ice cream and dash of cinnamon sauce.

POST Scriptum (P.S. in Latin…duh…): I have no idea what Post 390 is named for. Post is a word that means after, most often inserted or hyphenated in front of a noun to explain a questionable behavior or excusable action. “Let her eat the entire pint of Ben & Jerry’s – she’s POST break-up.” Or “I’m sure that surgeon you’re dating didn’t fall asleep because you’re boring. He was probably just POST-call.” Again, I don’t pretend to be an aPOSTle, but my message is clear. When it comes to quality, Post 390 needs no excuses. The food is tasty, and the “Farm to Post” menu makes me feel status POST a visit to grandma’s quaint country farm with hearty servings straight from the kettle. I’ll end my review on this high note as I feel if I POST just one more line, the publication of this review may be POSThumous.