Neptune Oyster

Address: 63 Salem Street, Boston, MA 02110. 617.742.3474.

Review: Boston conjures up so many thoughts: the Red Sox, the Patriots, the word "wicked," and, perhaps most prominently, lobster rolls. A lobster roll is an exceedingly simple concept. You put lots of lobster on a grilled roll and eat. In fact, the logic confirming a lobster roll's goodness is clearly demonstrated with the following syllogism. Lobster good; roll good; ergo lobster roll good.

I heard Neptune Oyster had one of the best lobster rolls in the city, so while seeing the historical sites, I dropped in. First thing I noticed was Neptune doesn't not sport many seats, so I waited outside for a while before gaining entrance. Once inside, I began with a buttermilk johnnycake topped with honey butter, smoked trout tartare, and sturgeon caviar. It looked a little sometin' like so. 

Honestly, the johnnycake was a this-sorts-interesting-so I-guess-I'll-try-it choice. So glad I took the chance. This was a damn johnnycake. the cake itself was moist, creamy and surprisingly light. The trout was beautifully smoked. The caviar was salty and tasted like the sea. And the combination of the smoke, salt, and honeybutter was magical. One of the best dishes I've experienced in a long time.

And then came the roll. Again, this is an exceedingly simple dish. the Maine lobster was cooked in butter and placed on a grilled roll. Oh, yeah, and there were fries, but who cares? (The fries were good,  not great but good, and the mayo accompanying them, which is not pictured, was quite good.)

So, no matter what's on a sandwich, every sandwich starts with the bread. The roll in this case was exceedingly white, toasty crunchy on the outside, and nicely dense and chewy on the inside. Good start. And while bread is always the starting point, and usually the most important component of any sandwich, lobster is the star here. And, thankfully, this lobster was as good as American lobster gets. Cooked to perfection in seafood's best friend (i.e., butter), it was succulent and luscious on the tongue. It also possessed that slight sweetness every lobster lover adores. I squeezed on a bit of lemon, which added a nice acidity and cut through the butter a bit. In the end, deliciousness found in utter simplicity: nothing could be better.

Beautiful meal in a beautiful city.

Rating: 8.5/10 (5/10 is average).

Korea House

Address: 1465 South State Street, Salt Lake City, Utah 84115. 801.487.3900.

Review: Korean cuisine represents the confluence of a food I know relatively little about, and tastes I dearly love. The heat, the sweet, the sour, the salt. So good.

My buddy Dan and I went in search of some good Korean, and the Korea House got the nod today. Upon entering, Gangam Style filled the restaurant and a boy was dancing that ridiculous horsey dance Psy popularized heaven only knows how. After Gangam Style ended, the child stopped galloping and nondescript Korean music ensued, as did the food. I ordered osam bulgogi (i.e., spicy Korean bacon and squid). Surf and turf, baby.

Our meal came with a number of sides, including the best kimchi I've ever tasted (more on this later).

The osam bulgogi was a beautifully savory dish. The Korean bacon is bacon like pancetta is bacon: sort of but not quite. It doesn't have the smokey quality of American bacon, but it is pork belly nonetheless, and pork belly can never be anything but money. The squid had that chewy-tender quality of well cooked squid (it could have been a little more tender, but nothing's perfect). The onions and garlic added a savory earthiness that did not overpower either the Korean bacon or the squid. The sauce was all chiles and luscious oil. Just an enjoyable dish. And, while there wasn't as much heat as I would have liked, there was enough to balance out the dish.

The sides. Oh, the sides. There was some seaweed, some broccoli, some yada, yada, yada, and then there was the above-referenced kimchi. Tender, salty, spicy, acidic, and yet amazingly fresh for a fermented dish. Best I've ever tasted, although my experience with kimchi is admittedly limited. 

Mmm, can't wait to go back and try more dishes.

Rating: 7.5/10 (5/10 is average).

High Note Thai Cuisine

Address: 8005 S 700 E, Sandy, UT 84070. 801.256.0209.

Review: Thai food is based on balance and juxtaposition of contrasting flavors. Sweet juxtaposes sour. Salty contrasts with sweet. Sour and bitter enter the mix. Capsaicin adds a beautiful heat that adds interest and aids in digestion. In order for Thai food to work, all these must be present and in the right amounts.

I'm going to be brutally honest, I'm watching Oregon take it to K State right now, so I will cut to the chase: High Note Thai Cuisine just didn't stack up. Well, okay, I'll elaborate a bit. I ordered the yam salad with beef and pork.  

The salad included sliced beef and pork, an an assortment of raw vegetables (i.e., tomatoes, carrots, onions, sweet peas, and a nicely acidic lime and herb sauce. It was served on a bed or romaine and only heaven knows why. The best part of this salad was the vegetables: crispy, tasty, refreshing. The meat was rather indistinguishable. I had no idea the pork was pork. It could have just as easily been chicken. Likewise, the nuts sprinkled atop (a combination of peanuts and cashews) all tasted like peanuts. The sauce was sweet and acidic. It would have worked well if there had been heat to balance out the sweet, but there was no heat at all, which is unforgivable since I specifically asked that the dish be made exceedingly spicy. Without the heat, the dish didn't really come together in any meaningful way.

And then there was the rice. White. Beautifully sticky. Great stuff.

Rating: 4.5/10 (5/10 is average).

Plum Alley

Address: 111 E 300 S, Salt Lake City, Utah 84111. 801.355.0543.

Review: Sometimes restaurants produce one particularly iconic dish that sets them apart. El Bulli had the spherified olive. San Domenico in Imola has the canard a la presse. And Plum Alley has the steamed pork belly bun. Let's start with the bun. Much like a good pizza or a good sandwich, the bread is key. Without good bread, the whole dish falls fails. Thankfully, the bun works. soft, somewhat damp (from the steaming, of course), mildly flavored. And then there's the pork belly with a cincalok glaze. Cincalok is a Malaccan paste made of fermented shrimp or krill. The glaze is tangy, sweet, viscous. It encapsulates a wonderful square of beautifully soft, fatty, unctuous, moist pork belly. This is among the best bites of pork I've ever experienced. So simple. So beautiful. And then there are the condiments (vinegared radishes, red onion, herbs). They are meant to add textural and flavor contrasts that add complexity to the dish and cut through the pork fat. Honestly, who on the river Styx next to Hades cares about adding textural and flavor complexity to this dish? This bun is an homage to all things caveman. Meat, bread, fat. Nothing else is necessary, and anything else simply muddles the flavor. Unadorned is the best policy with this bun. It is, in a word: dreamy.

Well, that was effusive. Indulging that streak makes reviewing Plum Alley's other dishes a difficult task because they pale in comparison (that's not to say they are bad; they just pale). The pickled vegetables (carrots, cucumbers, jalapenos, beats) were very nice. Crispy, vinegary, slightly salty. On the other hand, the steamed buns containing duck confited in pork fat with preserved orange was a complete mess. The pork fat masked the the taste of the duck so much I had no idea it was duck. The duck was also somewhat dry, which is hard to imagine since it was confited, but it was. The roasted cauliflower with aioli was okay. The cauliflower was unevenly roasted, but the aioli was quite good.

I'll be frequenting Plum Alley again and again. These future visits will always revolve around the steamed pork belly bun. And who knows, they might involve some other dishes as well. That is, if there's enough room in my belly.

Rating: (overall 7/10, pork belly 9.5/10)

Restaurant 7 Portes

Address: Passeig Isabel II, 14, 08003 Barcelona, Spain. 34 93 319 30 33 / 93 219 29 50.

Review: So, Barcelona is as close to the Mediterranean as Homer Simpson is dumb. Alright, alright, that comparison makes absolutely no sense, but it does contain one eternal truth: Barcelona is stinkin' close to the Mediterranean. And being right up on the sea shore, seafood is king, queen, and all the peons. Now, my wifey no likey seafood (because she plumb crazy), but she indulges me every so often, and tonight was one of those times.

Initially, we ordered jamon iberico with pan y tomates (Iberian ham with a Catalan staple, bread with tomatoes). Good quality ham, and pan y tomates is one of the better things you can eat. Then, the main event: 7 Portes Zarzuela with 1/2 spiny lobster. This is a seafood stew that came with: sole, hake, squid, mussels, the biggest frickin' prawn I've ever seen, and 1/2 of a spiny lobster.

Alright let's start going over this in systematic fashion:

1. Squid: Simple rounds, very tender which indicates it was cooked very well.

2. Mussels: Nothing particularly special, but juicy and good. (Note: I grew up in the middle-of-nowhere Alaska, and mussels were phenomenal there. Compared to those, these were okay.)

3. Sole: Great steaky texture. Perfectly cooked. Great stuff. One of my new favorite fishes.

4. Hake: Tender flaky white fish. Again, perfectly cooked.

5. Shrimp: Only one of these, unfortunately. Large, tender goodness. Didn't even bother taking off the shell to eat it, that's how tender and flavorful it was.

6. Prawn: My goodness, this prawn was huge. It was, literally, the size of a small lobster. The tail meat was mild and a bit without personality. On the other hand, the head portion was full of flavor thanks to the tomalley (alternative spellings seen: tumale, tamale). Of course, tomalley refers specifically to the digestive portions of a lobster found in its head, but it seems applicable to this massive prawn as well. In any case, it was intensely briny and tasted like the sea. It mixed with the little bits of meat found in the head made for wonderful eating.

7. Spiny lobster: First things first, spiny lobster is entirely different from Maine lobster. Spiny lobster has a much more assertive flavor, and assertive in a good way. And this lobster was, like everything else, juicy, juicy, juicy. Of course, lobster suffers from one serious problem: it just doesn't have as much flavor as crab. It's a wonderful crustacean, but it's just a little light on flavor. That noted, I ate every single inch of meat and tomalley this bad spiny boy had to offer.

Overall, the second best seafood dish I've ever had. (First is, without a doubt, freshly caught, killed, and steamed king crab drowned in butter. Could anything be better than that?)

Oh, and my wife ordered vegetable cannelloni.  

The dish can be summed up thusly: Spaniards do not make good Italian food. Stick with the seafood.

In the end, this picture sums up my experience at 7 Portes.

Rating: 8/10 (5/10 is average).

Rincon de Aragon

Address: Carrer del Carme 28, 08001 Barcelona, Spain. 34 93 302 67 89.

Review: So, we've been in Spain for a week, and we haven't tried a single tapa. After taking in a voice recital in a 16th century hospital turned library, we ducked into the rather unassuming Rincon de Aragon for, you guessed it, tapas. Rincon de Aragon means "corner of Aragon." I thought the name was a simple approximate rhyme, and therefore, a play on words of sorts. However, my wife informed me Aragon is a region of Spain directly to the west of Barcelona. Good thing one of us in this family is intelligent.


We began the meal with that Catalan staple: bread with tomato smeared on top.  

I was slightly worried because the bread was neither grilled nor crisped in any way. No matter. The bread was wonderful and light, just the way it should have been. In fact, our son ate about half the bread. Little punk.

And then came the tapas. I was looking forward to some snails and sweetbreads (i.e., thymus gland), but they were out, so we settled on the following: heavily spiced chorizo marinated in white wine; jamon iberico; and black pudding (forgot the picture of that one).

Let's start with the chorizo. Now, there is a scene in Rio in which the Blu (voiced by Jesse Eisenberg, of Social Network fame) confesses he thinks all sambas sound the same, and then he mimics the beat. So, yeah, that's pretty much how I feel about chorizo. It's good, don't get me wrong, but all the chorizo I've had thusfar tastes about the same. This noted, Rincon's version was certainly the best and highest quality.

Next, the jamon iberico. As an Italophile, my point of reference is prosciutto crudo. But prosciutto crudo and jamon are about as similar as Michael Jordan and Larry Bird. Both are professional basketball players. Both are hall-of-famers. Both are among the best the sport has ever seen. However, they are entirely different in temperament, style, and color (and I don't say color gratuitously; just follow along for a second). Likewise, prosciutto and jamon are both cured hams, but they are entirely different. Jamon is meatier, saltier, has a more assertive flavor, and is imminently fattier. Prosciutto is sweeter, more delicate in flavor and texture, and is slightly drier. It is also lighter in color. And from what I understand, jamon is aged longer than the average prosciutto, which might explain the more assertive flavor. In any case, the jamon served at Rincon was beautifully oily and tender (a byproduct of the aging process). Bread would have only diluted the taste, so we enjoyed this jamon with our mandibles.

Lastly, the black pudding. Black pudding is, essentially pig's blood with rice stuffed into a casing and cooked until the blood congeals. Aragon black pudding introduces pine nuts into the mix. We've had black pudding before in Ireland, but that had nothing on this stuff. This pudding was luscious and rich. The pine nuts added a nice earthiness. The casing was natural and crackly after being cooked. Great, just great.

Dessert: flan.

I'm only nominally into flan, to be honest. That is probably because my experiences have been with bad flan. (Except for one made by a Puerta Rican woman who knows her stuff; that flan was phenomenal.) this was very good flan. The flan itself had a wonderful natural custardy feel. Nowhere was that gelatin mouthfeel you get with lesser flans. The coagulant present here was simply egg proteins from low and slow cooking. The caramel was equally well done. Dark and rich and not too sweet. In fact, it was dark in that beautifully almost burned way that comes from cooking it right up to that point of over-caramelization, and then dialing things back. This creates all sorts of interesting compounds that adds depth to what would otherwise just be liquidy sugar. The combination of caramel and custard made this flan a raging success.

(Note: after the meal we inquired about the conchinillo (i.e., suckling pig). Suckling pig is the one item I wanted to try more than anything else on this trip. The waiter explained the cooking process in such detail and expertise that he totally sold me. Thus, suckling pig will be enjoyed very soon. Photos and review will follow.)

Rating: 8/10 (5/10 is average).  

Bar Restaurant Novecento

Address: Carrer Diputacio, 437, 081013 Barcelona, Spain. 93 246 13 94.

Review: Dem was at a new location today for school, and it was a bit outside my guidebook, so we were forced to employ our what-place-looks-good radar to find a good lunch spot. There is definitely a way to discern good, reasonably priced untouristy restaurants from the sell outs, which invariably serve crappy food at exorbitant prices. Here are a few ways to quickly identify the sell outs:

1. The menus are in English, or they have a tourist menu.

2. There are pictures in front of the restaurant explaining the menu.

3. Some guy is standing in front of the restaurant begging you like a puppy to come in.

4. There are flashing lights of bright colors in the advertisements.

5. You know every dish on the menu.

6. Lots of other patrons look like you.

Of course, there are many more sell out giveaways, but those are probably the six most prominent. (Oh, one more specific to gelato shops. If the gelato protrudes beyond the top of the display container, run like the wind. Not only will the gelato be of, at best, nominal quality, it will also be dry.)

Armed with these heuristics, we chose Bar Restaurant Novecento. After asking what was on the menu, it was written unabashedly in Spanish and Catalan, I began with the gazpacho.

 I almost hate to admit this, but this is my first gazpacho. I've had a number of other cold soups, but they were all French in origin. This gazpacho was as duly impressive as it was refreshing. The tomatoes were obviously the most prominent flavor, although there was a hit of garlic and cucumber. 

And then came the main course: hake steak cooked on a grate, served on a rake with my friend Drake. (Sorry, coulnd't resist.) No, but honestly, it's a hake steak cooked on the flat top accompanied by ratatouille. 

Hake is a light white-fleshed fish. Flaky but it keeps its texture when cooked. And this hake was cooked well. Nice and juicy on the inside with a nice crust. Lemon, as it so often is with seafood, was the perfect sauce. And now the ratatouille. Oh my good golly. Amazing, and I don't really like squash, and I can take it or leave it with eggplant. This ratatouille was so well cooked that it essentially melted in the mouth. The tomatoes was the perfect acidic offset (which also made it a great accompaniment for the hake as well). It's not often one experience can completely change your perception of a dish, but this was one of those experiences. All ratatouilles eaten from this time forth will be compared against this gold standard.

Dem ordered a grilled beefsteak for her entree. It was also served with the aforementioned, heaven-sent ratatouille. 

Good quality beef cooked simply, and pretty darn well to boot. I must say, portions were a beautiful medium rare, and then some thicker portions were rare in the middle. Either way works for me, but it really should have been evenly cooked throughout.

Oh, and Elliot liked the bread.

To finish the meal, we had pineapple and watermelon. I as hoping for a cooked dessert since the food had been so good throughout, but the fruit-only selection was great. The fruit was high-quality and unadorned. So satisfying on a hot summer day. (This is actually a great lesson for restaurants everywhere. If desserts are not in your wheelhouse, don't serve them. It's far better to do something yourself well than have desserts made out-of-house and trucked in.)

Rating: 8/10 on the strength of the ratatouille alone (5/10 is average).