Restaurant Week: Tremont 647 and Croma
Aug. 15th, 2006 10:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lillibetI met ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gilana for lunch at Tremont 647 yesterday. It was a lovely day, but a little bright for the sidewalk tables, so we sat inside--a decision that flummoxed the staff, but they quickly set up a table inside, where we were quickly joined by several other parties. G. was disappointed that the gazpacho was made with clam juice, leaving her to start with the Bibb Salad with plums, pickled onions, and red onion herb vinaigrette, of which she particularly enjoyed the plums. The gazpacho was very tasty, but different from any I'd previously had: rather than either the highly textured bread-crumb version, or the watery tomato juice with chunks approach, this was a very robust tomato broth with a few slices of pepper and carrot and a handful of pinenuts. Her main was an excellent grilled salmon with an apricot and barbecue spice glaze, served with coleslaw and cornbread. It sounded too sweet for my tastes, but she thought the flavors balanced nicely. I couldn't resist the crawfish macaroni and cheese with lobster Mornay sauce and a Ritz cracker crumb topping. That was delicious, although almost too salty even for me, and extremely filling, so Jason will get to have half of it for lunch today. For dessert we both chose the summer fruit cobbler with citrus crème anglaise and both found it unsatisfying--G. thought the fruit too bitter and I found the biscuit too dry. Overall, it was a nice lunch, but I wouldn't the effort to get down to the South End just to go there.
Our experience with Croma was much less pleasant. J. andhammercock arrived to pick up trowa_barton at rehearsal with the news that the restaurant had called around 8:30pm in reference to the 10pm reservation that I'd made a month earlier, to say that their kitchen would close at 10pm and if we weren't there by 9:45, they might not be willing to feed us. In retrospect we probably should have said "nevermind, then," and gone somewhere else, but instead we raced out of rehearsal--my apologies to the cast and to my incredible RA, who got stuck dealing with the locking-up because of my lameness--a mistake I hope never to repeat. We made it over to Newbury Street, found fairly convenient on-street parking, and got to the restaurant about five of ten. Despite the patio being full and at least a couple of other parties seated in the dining room, the hostess was nowhere in sight and we had to ask the bartender to find someone to help us. The hostess explained that we would have to order quickly, then seated us and walked away, at which point I realized that my seat was wet and the pipe overhead was dripping on my back. So we switched to another table, where our waitress greeted us with "yeah, that pipe leaks, hunh?" Our menus did not include the Restaurant Week prix fixe and when we asked for it, the hostess volunteered to write it down for us--a scrawl on the back of a piece of register tape. Limited choices at least makes it easy to choose! We had two of the fried dough balls with garlic aioli and tapenade and two of the arugula and parmesan salad. The former were tasty enough, although the portion seemed too large for one person. L. even liked the tapenade and she's not a huge olive fan. The top layer of the salad was fine, but since it hadn't been tossed, by the time we reached the bottom, it was just bare arugula. But that wasn't really a problem, since before we were halfway through our starters, here came the servers with our mains and a quick "sorry, kitchen's in a hurry." We made room on the table and dug into what proved to be adequate, but unspectacular dishes: grilled vegetable ravioli, pepper grilled tuna steak, and chicken with pasta. I heard nothing but good about the ravioli, but S. felt the sauce on the tuna would have been more suited to beef. My chicken was fine, but not spectacular. For dessert, L. took the chocolate decadence while the rest of us had the poached peaches with vanilla ice cream in a lovely cinnamon syrup, the best part of the meal for me. Unfortunately, the food just wasn't good enough to overcome the service issues and if I had to be on Newbury Street, I'd pick one of the many other places available.
gilana for lunch at Tremont 647 yesterday. It was a lovely day, but a little bright for the sidewalk tables, so we sat inside--a decision that flummoxed the staff, but they quickly set up a table inside, where we were quickly joined by several other parties. G. was disappointed that the gazpacho was made with clam juice, leaving her to start with the Bibb Salad with plums, pickled onions, and red onion herb vinaigrette, of which she particularly enjoyed the plums. The gazpacho was very tasty, but different from any I'd previously had: rather than either the highly textured bread-crumb version, or the watery tomato juice with chunks approach, this was a very robust tomato broth with a few slices of pepper and carrot and a handful of pinenuts. Her main was an excellent grilled salmon with an apricot and barbecue spice glaze, served with coleslaw and cornbread. It sounded too sweet for my tastes, but she thought the flavors balanced nicely. I couldn't resist the crawfish macaroni and cheese with lobster Mornay sauce and a Ritz cracker crumb topping. That was delicious, although almost too salty even for me, and extremely filling, so Jason will get to have half of it for lunch today. For dessert we both chose the summer fruit cobbler with citrus crème anglaise and both found it unsatisfying--G. thought the fruit too bitter and I found the biscuit too dry. Overall, it was a nice lunch, but I wouldn't the effort to get down to the South End just to go there.Our experience with Croma was much less pleasant. J. and
hammercock arrived to pick up trowa_barton at rehearsal with the news that the restaurant had called around 8:30pm in reference to the 10pm reservation that I'd made a month earlier, to say that their kitchen would close at 10pm and if we weren't there by 9:45, they might not be willing to feed us. In retrospect we probably should have said "nevermind, then," and gone somewhere else, but instead we raced out of rehearsal--my apologies to the cast and to my incredible RA, who got stuck dealing with the locking-up because of my lameness--a mistake I hope never to repeat. We made it over to Newbury Street, found fairly convenient on-street parking, and got to the restaurant about five of ten. Despite the patio being full and at least a couple of other parties seated in the dining room, the hostess was nowhere in sight and we had to ask the bartender to find someone to help us. The hostess explained that we would have to order quickly, then seated us and walked away, at which point I realized that my seat was wet and the pipe overhead was dripping on my back. So we switched to another table, where our waitress greeted us with "yeah, that pipe leaks, hunh?" Our menus did not include the Restaurant Week prix fixe and when we asked for it, the hostess volunteered to write it down for us--a scrawl on the back of a piece of register tape. Limited choices at least makes it easy to choose! We had two of the fried dough balls with garlic aioli and tapenade and two of the arugula and parmesan salad. The former were tasty enough, although the portion seemed too large for one person. L. even liked the tapenade and she's not a huge olive fan. The top layer of the salad was fine, but since it hadn't been tossed, by the time we reached the bottom, it was just bare arugula. But that wasn't really a problem, since before we were halfway through our starters, here came the servers with our mains and a quick "sorry, kitchen's in a hurry." We made room on the table and dug into what proved to be adequate, but unspectacular dishes: grilled vegetable ravioli, pepper grilled tuna steak, and chicken with pasta. I heard nothing but good about the ravioli, but S. felt the sauce on the tuna would have been more suited to beef. My chicken was fine, but not spectacular. For dessert, L. took the chocolate decadence while the rest of us had the poached peaches with vanilla ice cream in a lovely cinnamon syrup, the best part of the meal for me. Unfortunately, the food just wasn't good enough to overcome the service issues and if I had to be on Newbury Street, I'd pick one of the many other places available.
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restaurant week ponderings
Date: 2006-08-15 08:47 pm (UTC)I just had a restaurant week lunch at Harvest and it was good, but not
exactly showcasing anything really exciting either. I had never been to
Harvest, and while I might have tried to go at some random non-restaurant week time, now my reaction is "enh, I've been there, and it was pretty good, but not great." And I have skipped some restaurants entirely because their restaurant week menus are posted and just don't sound exciting. I think that a lot of restaurants are going to be inclined to do that good-but-not-great menu though because they try to cut a few corners to be able to hit the prix-fixe prices without losing money. And in fact, I'm pleasantly surprised by the variety of menus you got- I read a bunch of them on line and saw a lot of heirloom tomato salads, summer green salads, salmon-based mains, and berry-based desserts (and then decided to go to Harvest, which was doing that, because it was also convenient and on my list of places to try...)
Re: restaurant week ponderings
Date: 2006-08-15 09:54 pm (UTC)I also did a wrap-up of the places we tried during the Winter Restaurant Week here (http://lillibet.livejournal.com/173711.html) that includes places we'd go back to (a couple of which we actually have) and places where we wouldn't bother or would avoid.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-16 02:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-16 04:07 am (UTC)The snafu with the reservation, though, was really poor. Lame, lame, lame.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-16 12:44 pm (UTC)