Captivating Cold Cuts at Coppa UPDATE – Boston

Upon a repeat visit to Coppa, I am decisively awarding it the full four stars of my original visit. This is pretty much the only time Coppa doesn’t enhance my indecision, but I’m starting to enjoy the challenge.

For starters, Coppa’s cocktails are a challenge with a brave new world of liquors and a glass with such flavors in it. Both the Spring Break and Hawaiian Holiday channeled girly-sweet-n-sour, yet there was something not quite right about the sometimes-clashing, sometimes-contrasting, often-dueling citrus, and I couldn’t quite decide if I liked either drink. But something about these drinks made me want to take just one more sip, though each sip made it harder and harder to decide. If you’re in a philosophical or drunken-philosophical mood, taste the cocktails - they’ll make you think.

The first thing we ordered was the Duck Proscuitto. Just like last time, just like every time. These smoky little strips of duck covered with a melt-in-your-mouth strip of fat are too good to ever pass up, and congrats, duck prosciutto, you’ve just made it onto my decisive list of things to always order.

The Artichoke was salted by the blue cheese, but the cheese was stronger than I would like for something as neutral-tasting as artichoke. I couldn’t quite decide how much I liked this one - some of the tougher, not-quite-chewable outer leaves were left on the artichoke, and there was too much olive oil. Not surprising for Coppa, but my arteries would prefer a little lighter hand with the oil. I don’t think I’d order this again, but my love for artichoke hearts makes that impossible to say that with conviction.

Pizza had us heartbroken when we realized that, as joint detesters of celery, we couldn’t indulge in the one with bone marrow. We finally decided on the Pepe Bianco. The clams were diced so they snuck cunningly into each mouthful for a seafood surprise, and bacon is the friend that makes everything a little bit brighter just by being there. There was a also fried seafood-loaded pizza getting around, and from the looks of it, Coppa’s pizza is the best bang for your buck. Pun intended. Decisively.

The Paccheri con Agnello was seasonally-indecisive, with gamey lamb and dense fava beans turned refreshing with a deep breath of mint. Lamb and fava beans are usually my dead-of-winter comfort foods, but the large floppy tubes of al dente pasta add an airy quality, and the mint does wonders to lighten the load. Despite the ambiguous season, I loved this dish with no shades of gray, and I’ll eat it rain or shine.

I was too full for dessert, but sometimes more IS more. The Peach and Ricotta Gelato sounded too good to pass up and with a friend like Bo to indulge my whims, the delicate dish of frozen delight hit the table decisively. The texture was thick and rich from the ricotta with a hint of fragrant peach. This dessert was more savory than sweet, but the full notes of ricotta hit the spot with the peach.

The drinks and food at Coppa raise way more questions than they answer, but my four stars are a decisive answer for the creativity and quality of the food. The brilliant minds that created the food at Coppa are unmistakably omnipresent, and there is absolutely nothing that would make hesitate before deciding to dine at Coppa.

Cautious About Craigie on Main - Cambridge

I went into Craigie on Main prepared to love it. Not only was it my goodbye-for-now dinner with Josephine, it was one of her favorite restaurants. And considering the height of her standards combined with her breadth of food-savvy, I was predestined to click with Craigie as instantaneously as I clicked with her.  As it turns out, my attempt to love Craigie bore a much closer resemblance to my attempt to love swimming. I tried all the strokes, and I tried the 6-course chef's whims with the same enthusiasm, but I left not completely impressed and feeling like I wanted to swim with fins.

Fortunately, the fantastic service and overall quality of the food proved to be Craigie’s saving grace, much like how I find diving to be swimming's constant redemption. Swimming scares me, and I've suffered a lifetime of failure to float, but it seems that I have a talent for sinking. The quality of my experience at Craigie reflects its talent for staying comfortably afloat rather than sinking, and the well-made but not extraordinary food earns a redeeming 4 stars. Diving is the one reason I'm eager to return to the water, and the class at Craigie is the one reason I’m willing to revisit.

The Ardoise was an excellent starting cocktail, with cool sage as refreshing as a cool ocean dive under a smoldering summer sun.

The amuse bouche of Fried Sardine with lemon basil alioli was like a beautiful array of diving photos, just enough to whet my appetite for diving classes.

The Tuna Sashimi was amazingly fresh, and the toasted garlic topper was bright little clownfish highlighting the pretty pink coral; two little wonders combining into one breathtaking bite.

The Swordfish wrapped in bacon with chorizo and olive oil was as skillfully prepped. Swordfish can taste as bland as the instructional modules they teach you before you learn to dive, but an enthusiastic instructor like bacon and with a kick of spicy chorizo enthusiasm can make any lecture bearable.

The Potato and Green Onion Vichyssoise with oxtail pastrami is as green as sea glass of the Heineken-bottle variety. Before diving into the frosty-smooth depths of this soup, be sure it maintains neutral buoyancy as well as you do. Here the light, crisp green onion evenly balances the rich, heavy potato with no need to ditch the extra weight.

The Venison sausage, suckling pig confit, and grilled pork belly with cherry coulis was amazing. The sausage was a bit too rich and salty, but the gamey flavor of venison on any plate of mine is as welcome as an anti-emetic on a swaying dive boat. Grilled pork belly is guaranteed to be fantastic as long as it’s not cooked grievously poorly, but this one was perfectly seared. The fatty sweet-meats of the confit and belly fit my definition of umami as tightly as the O-ring of a good regulator seals the mouth of an air tank, and this kind of savory is as crucial to a meal as air to a diver.

I hated the Strawberry Sorbet palate cleanser almost as much as I hated the required diving skill of taking my mask off and putting it back on underwater. It’s something I only do when I absolutely must, and it gives me a massive wave of panic every time. The palate cleanser is also something I only have when I absolutely must, and I didn’t find it all that necessary between savory and sweet courses as both were rather bold , promising a rather easy transition. This palate cleanser gave my wallet a massive wave of panic as they had the nerve to count a one-inch ball of sorbet as a full course. When we complained, the manager handled it quickly and politely, thus the only deductions earned were applied to our check and not to my star rating of Craigie.

Dessert did end our tasting on a high note as we sampled each other’s desserts as well as our own. My Coconut Sorbet with pumpernickel, bing cherries, and chocolate crumbs was as delicious as the taste of my first successful dive, and Josephine’s Apricot Frangipane Torte with pistachios and amaretto ice cream proved as satisfying and refreshing as the long ascent from 18 meters down.

Sadly, all good things must come to an end. We must eventually surface from even the most beautiful dives, and my good times with Josephine in Boston must also come to an eventual end. I tearfully bid Craigie a premature, untimely goodbye, much like the one I bid Josephine at the conclusion of our meal. I will see Josephine again and I hope it will be soon, but I'm not sure I'll see Craigie again, even in the remote future. Thus, it is at this point that the extended analogy and the review end.

Awful Antico Forno – Boston

Tim Burton is a brilliant producer, and I love his movies. That’s why I loved Antico Forno. Antico Forno is the first restaurant I have gone to that has accurately captured a scene from The Corpse Bride. The staff here are as creepy as the bride and her friends, sporting the gloomy dark looks with the ancient peeling flesh and bug-eyed stares of the undead. The server resetting the adjacent table even slammed plates and silverware as loudly as rattling chains. We were initially ignored for ten minutes (yes, I timed it), and I was afraid that the dead would not rise, but rise they did. A server came to take our order with the charm of an undertaker and the humor of a corpse. I asked him what their specials were and he glared at me with smiting eyes and pointed to the specials menu, which read “risotto of the day”. Apparently, It is impolite to ask the undead what their daily specials are – maybe you just order them if you’d like to be surprised? Just make sure you don’t have food allergies or you just might join them.

So it turns out, our server probably wasn’t supposed to be our server because right after he went to put the order in, a lady who looked like she was covered in dirt walked up to our table with a notepad and glared at us like she was waiting for us to die from the poison in the water. She hovered there wordlessly for several minutes until we became so uncomfortable that the only thing I asked “Can we help you?” Awkward, yes, but no one taught me how to politely ask the undead why they are staring at me. Eventually, we informed her that our order was just taken, that we were happily alive and had no interest whatsoever in joining her subterranean world, and she moved on to the more lively targets at the next table.

The bread was consistent with the start of our movie-going experience at Antico Forno. It was dense and dry, and frankly, I think it was served because the undead would rather die again than eat it.

The Caprese appetizer was crude with thick chunks of irregularly-shaped mozzarella, interspersed with giant slices of tomato on steroids. The mozzarella is made in-house daily, and it’s tasty so it’s a pity that even the fresh greens accompanying this dish are bland and tasteless with a few drops of olive oil. At least the greens weren’t dead, but you’ll spend many years in purgatory for killing good mozzarella.

The Carciofi e Porcini Pizza had a crispy crust that most chefs spend a lifetime (and beyond?) trying to perfect. It may have been the only part of the meal that didn’t make me want to go to an early grave. Sadly, this pizza was doused in a liter of truffle oil, which was about as nauseating as decaying flesh.

I didn’t try a whole lot here, but I’ll never know what the other dishes are like. The undead never rejoin the living, and I will never rejoin the undead at Antico Forno. Antico forno may translate to “old oven”, but the deadly combination of food and service conjure the very flames of hell.

Enticing Eat Me – Bangkok

When I first sought the somewhat cryptic location of Eat Me thanks to a recommendation by a sagacious friend, my journey down its unlit side-street had me preemptively bidding goodbye to my wallet…and my right kidney.

Fortunately I lost neither and instead found myself in a palatable paradise. Upon entry, the downstairs décor conjures a twisting hedge maze in a quiet wooded garden in my mind’s eye. The lighting is dim but mysteriously enchanting, the stairs spiral upward like a winding tower, and the short ascent feels like climbing silvery strands of long blond hair. The upstairs finds a buzz of consistent contentment amongst the sweet stillness of a fairy tale’s happily ever.

I rarely order alcohol, but the Twisted and Bitter was candy in a cup, too good to pass up. The candy comes from the Johnny Walker, and the giant ice cube in the center melts slowly to maintain a calming cool serving temperature without watering down the drink. This smooth concoction makes for small silky sips with a hint of wake-me-up-from-this-beautiful-dream bitterness.

The Grilled Tiger Prawns are sweeter than the drink. The olive oil browns the innocent pink shrimp like a welcome bruise in a not-so-innocent white-flesh apple. The tom yum spice is wake-up kiss, abrupt and welcome, from a dashing prince.

My Tasmanian Salmon Gravlax is anchored by the espresso mustard emulsion and tempered by tangy fresh capers. The salmon tastes of purity and innocence, the pink of true bliss, sweet as Sleeping Beauty’s flitting fairies. The salmon is lighter-than-air, and the bitter emulsion brings it back to earth.

The Barramundi has skin seared to a crisp and the clean crunch stays despite the cradle of creamy coconut broth. Barramundi is a local Thai fish, making this dish a rarity in Western cuisine, a crying shame as tragic as finger-stick on a spindle. This flaky fish is my pauper-turned-prince, showing me a whole new world with a flying carpet and the rub of a lamp.

The Risotto is ripe with black truffle, as charming as an enchanted castle, illuminated by a talking candlestick of pecorino with none of the parmesean bitterness of the cynical clock. When Lumiere told Belle to try the gray stuff, it’s delicious, I think this was it.

The sheer volume of jokes spawned by this restaurant’s most commanding name is matched only by the depth and breadth of choices offered by its menu. I’m told that Eat Me will receive its first Michelin Star this year, and something tells me that much like this review, it’s long overdue. The food commands your attention, and the name gives you your marching orders. The infinite attention to detail is as refreshing as the minted water, the creativity is as ingenious as an idyllic ice cube, and the expansive menu carries a contradictory contrast to the unusual unity within each dish.

After a month-long journey, my travel blog concludes thus. Eat me allows me to exit with a bang and on a high note at that. After this, it will be back to critiquing instead of describing, back to the clean conciseness of Yelp and the sarcastic cynicism that defines my fascination with the fantastic and disdain for the down-and-out. I gladly return to my role, but if it’s the vacation blog you prefer, stay tuned for the next installment of Foodie Houser’s fantastic foreign feast. It may come when you least expect it.

 

Home Cooking – Jinzhou

Every foodie knows that the best meals are made at home.

There is no substitute for farm-raised Chicken delivered in a mule-drawn cart stewed with homegrown green beans and potatoes fresh out of grandma’s backyard garden. Truly. There’s no going back to tasteless grocery-store white meat after that.

Spareribs that fall off the bone are sprinkled and spattered with sugar and vinegar fulfill any meat craving.

Tomato and Egg is made with the same ingredients every time, but tastes as different as the people who make it. My grandmother’s has no equal, but my uncle comes pretty close.

I dub this dish Candied Sweet Potato, but expect none of the soggy hot mess you get from US restaurants and retirement homes at Thanksgiving. Each square of sweet potato is evenly coated with a layer of molten sugar, which hardens instantly upon dipping in cold water for a crunchy shell with a hot gooey center. The one pictured here wasn’t homemade, and my mother makes it better, but I live for this dish, and I just had to set you salivating.