DivGuy's Profile
A Whirlwind Tour of Manhattan's Best Taco Places
I was underwhelmed by the Tribeca taco truck. (That's the "Tri truck" you're referring to, right?) The flavors were flat - I tasted none of the brightness or the freshness that I expect from a quality taco.
For downtown tacos, I think Taqueria in the Lower East Side is probably the best of a not terribly impressive bunch. It's real LA-style Mexican fare, and it's quite good. Nothing I'd trek for, but good food and cheap.
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Tribeca Taco Truck
New York, New York, NY 10012
Taqueria Lower East Side
198 Orchard St, New York, NY 10002
Good Food at Interstate
I just had a very nice meal at Interstate Food & Liquor, Julieta Ballesteros' new place in the Lower East Side.
It's a casual Southern place, pretty much everything on the menu is under $15. I have a general rule that there's just no reason, in NYC, to spend $20-30 for entrees that are just good. You can get really good food at places like Interstate for so much less.
For drinks, they're doing free-poured highballs. The "Tequila Collins" with lemonade was refreshing, nothing terribly special. They have a good short beer list, too.
We started with fried pickles, which are one of the perfect foods in the world. They were properly executed, fried and vinegary and delicious. For entrees, we got the hot dog sampler and the "pork wings". The pork wings were the standout of the meal - small cuts of braised pork shanks with a cute little frenched presentation on the bone. They were cooked perfectly, fork-tender and with a little bit of a spicy barbecue sauce that added to the pork flavor rather than overpowering it. The hot dog sampler included parts of a hot dog dressed three ways - one with jalapeno slaw, one with mac'n'cheese, one with a chorizo sloppy joes. The jalapeno slaw complemented the local dog very well, definitely the best of the three. The mac'n'cheese dog was exactly equal to the sum of its parts - none of the elements complemented each other, exactly, but who hasn't wanted to eat a hot dog and mac and cheese at the same time? The sloppy joes overpowered the hot dog and seeped into the bun a bit, probably the least successful of the three. We shared a delicious maple pecan pie with vanilla ice cream for dessert.
It was just over $80 including tip for three drinks, an app, two entrees, and dessert. Great value for the food we had.
Oh, and very good service - the bartender was helpful, funny, and unobtrusive.
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Interstate Food & Liquor
74 Orchard St, New York, NY 10002
New(ish) restaurant on East Side below 23rd St?
I'm not sure how far below 23rd you're planning to travel, but the two places that spring to mind for me are Edi & the Wolf (Ave C near 7th) for Austrian small plates, and Fat Radish (Orchard St near Hester) for gastropub fare.
My favorite new restaurant on the east side below 23rd is definitely Zabb Elee, for astoundingly flavorful northern Thai, but while it's perfectly clean and the service is good, it doesn't have the kind of hip vibe of a Perbacco or Momofuku, and I think Edi and Fat Radish have that.
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Perbacco
234 East 4th Street, New York, NY 10009
Fat Radish
17 Orchard St, New York, NY 10002
Edi & the Wolf
102 Avenue C, New York, NY 10009
Zabb Elee
75 2nd Ave, New York, NY 10003
East Village 1st date drinks
I guess it depends on what kind of drinks you want, whether you want food as well, and when you're going.
If you're not going to be going out late, if you want beer and don't plan on food, d.b.a. has a great beer list and a really nice garden in the back which rarely gets loud before the end of the night. Burp Castle has very good Belgian beer, and never gets loud. The reason it never gets loud is that the bartenders "shhhh" the whole bar when conversation rises above a certain level. So you can decide if you want that.
The fancy cocktail bars of the world are usually good for a place to get a drink and not have too much noise, since they carefully limit the number of people seated. If you want cocktails and you want to be all cool going to a hidden bar, both Angel's Share and PDT have excellent cocktails and hidden entrances, and shouldn't be too hard to get seating at for two early in the evening (before 8). PDT also has delicious hot dogs. (If you haven't been to either, a web search will explain how to get in to both places.) Death and Co. has a normal entrance, and also has pretty good food and top-notch cocktails.
For restaurant bars to get a small plate and a good drink, I like Back Forty a lot - it's a welcoming space, not too loud, and the food is really fabulous. The bar at Redhead could work too. If it's a nice night, the outdoor tables at Mermaid Inn could be an option - and if you're going early, the happy hour specials at Mermaid Inn ($1 oysters, cheap bar snacks, cheap(er) drinks until 7 pm) are a favorite of mine.
For wine, i think Terroir gets way too loud and crowded for a first date, but a little bit into the LES Jadis would be a good option.
good luck!
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Mermaid Inn
96 2nd Avenue, New York, NY 10003
Back Forty
190 Avenue B, New York, NY 10009
Jadis
42 Rivington St, New York, NY 10002
Angel's Share
8 Stuyvesant St, New York, NY 10003
Please Don't Tell
113 St Marks Pl, New York, NY 10009
Terroir
413 E 12th St, New York, NY 10009
d.b.a.
41 1st Ave, New York, NY 10003
Burp Castle
41 E 7th St, New York, NY 10003
Trip Report, late July
First, i want to thank everyone on the BC/Vancouver board for all the useful posts and threads I searched through in preparation for the trip. And so: Thank you! Second, I'm better at writing about food I didn't love than about food I love, so the critical parts always come out longer than the good parts, so I should be clear that we had a really good time eating around Vancouver and feel that we ate good.
So, we were in BC for ten days, most of which were spent in the wild of Vancouver Island, camping and such, but we spent a few very nice days in Vancouver at the beginning and end of the trip. We live in New York, and it was lovely to spend a week in perfect weather while our city was crushed with a heat wave.
Day 1: This was not a well-planned day - we were coming off a long flight, is my excuse - and the food was disappointing in part because I didn't follow your advice as well as I should've.
lunch at Guu with Garlic. Clearly lunch wasn't the right call. Each lunch had one central but small dish and a collection of mostly flavorless sides (rice, eh pickles, thin miso). The bit of izakaya food that we got in these was quite good - fresh, delicious, perfectly fried prawns, and nicely braised tripe - but overall it was disappointing.
dinner at Alibi Bar Room. We were tired and not sure if we wanted a full meal, so we stopped in just for beer and decided while there to get sandwiches. The beer was fantastic - a lovely farmhouse ale, a fun, aggressively sour lambic, and a local "strong hefeweisen" called King Heffy which was truly delicious and I'm going to try to search out around the city. The sandwiches were ok . The burger was ordered mid-rare and came medium to medium well, but was seasoned properly and had a good sear. The pork belly sandwich was inexplicable. I mean, pork belly is delicious, but in part what makes pork belly the perfect food stuff is that with its rich, fatty, porkiness, it can elevate any number of flavors you pair it with. This sandwich was just fried pork belly, braised onions, and a bun. That's a wasted opportunity and a failure of composition, and the choice to fry the pork belly made it desperately fatty - the kind of fatty where what you taste is just fat.
Day 2: We overate on Day 2, but it was worth it.
Lunch at JapaDog. After a bike ride around Stanley Park, we wanted street food, and JapaDog was the most uniquely Vancouver offering, I thought. These were both excellent - the Oroshi was the brightest, freshest tasting sausage i've ever had - I want to grate daikon over all meat now. The kurobotu was completely different, rich and porky and perfectly seasoned. I'd love to try more of these dogs, as the two we got were fabulous and showed real variety in flavor.
Dinner at Vij's. Also good. The appetizers were probably the best part - spicy sauteed mangoes and fresh greens matched spicy, bitter, and sweet in a beautiful harmony, and the chickpea dish (components not fully remembered) was light and spicy and delicious. I wish I had a better trained palate or better knowledge of Indian cooking so I could describe them with any precision, but they reminded me very much of the best Indian food I've eaten in local places out in Queens in their freshness and clarity of flavor. The mains - lamb "popsicles" and spot prawns in curry - were also delicious. I wish I hadn't been so full at the end of it - I would have sopped up all the turmeric based sauce with the lamb with naan if I could have managed it. The lamb "popsicles" were unevenly cooked - the littlest ones were straight-up well done, while the fattest one was mid-rare. (And if I may - a lamb chop I guess kind of looks like a popsicle, but it's just a lamb chop. "Popsicle" made me think I'd be getting a preparation I'd never seen before, not a preparation that you see in every restaurant in the world.) The curry with the prawns was the least flavorful of the sauces, or the most muddled in flavor. just ok.
Day 3: We rented a car in the morning and traveled to Victoria via ferry, so this was an opportunity to eat regional Chinese outside the city center on the way to the ferry. We've been exploring Flushing Chinatown in Queens, and the best of Vancouver is right at that level.
Lunch at Richmond Public Market - I was excited about the Xi'an stall because I know how rare Xi'an food is in this hemisphere, and I love Xi'an Famous Foods here in NYC. The cold noodles were very similar to what I've had at XFF - hand-pulled noodles, cold, in a light spicy sauce, beautifully executed in both places. The steamed pork with rice buns was a new experience for me - a demonstration that, obviously, Xi'an cuisine is larger than just one restaurant - and the pork had a nutty sweetness that I couldn't quite identify and I've never tasted before. Wonderful food. We also got the lamb pancake with cumin at the Halal stall, which was very cool in the way the flavors were reminiscent of Xi'an, but with an earthy spice twist (sumac? probably not...) that made it entirely its own thing. The pancake was maybe a little thick and bready for the amount of meat and spice.
Dinner in Victoria at Red Fish, Blue Fish. We waited in line for an hour here, but it was worth it. The halibut fish and chips was a perfectly cooked piece of perfectly fresh seafood. Simple and, as I said, perfect. The salmon "tacone" was good, but that was entirely a function of the salmon, which was maybe the most flavorful piece of salmon I've ever had, simply grilled. The "tacone" itself tasted like a storebought thawed tortilla, and actively detracted from the dish. I eventually just took the salmon out and ate it by itself. The fish was great at RF,BF, the stabs at Mexican cooking were subpar.
Day 9: After returning from camping and hiking, we drove down to visit friends in Seattle, but had time for a stop-off for lunch in Richmond.
Lunch at Chen's Shanghai. I think this was my favorite meal of the trip. The XLB were better than any I've had in Boston or New York, and made me realize I need to do a better job of searching them out in Queens. The soup was so rich and flavorful that it was like an entirely new experience, though I've eaten quite a few XLB in my time. The dan dan noodles and rice cakes with pork and snow cabbage were both wonderful - the peanut and sesame mix in the noodles is a flavor I know pretty well, but they pulled it off with a clarity and richness that made it new. I'd never had rice cakes like this - I loved how they used the little pats of rice cake sort of like flat gnocchi, and the bitterness of the cabbage went perfectly with the lightly sweet sauce.
All in all, a very fun trip. Thanks again.
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Vij's Restaurant
1480 11th Ave W, Vancouver, BC V6H1L1, CA
Cheap Eats Itinerary for Review
It's new as of about two weeks ago. It's basically there all hours now.
Cheap Eats Itinerary for Review
I had a really terrible (first) experience at Snack Dragon recently.
Both the fish and carne asada tacos were terribly bland, and they load them up with piles of extra blandness - blah cheese, overcooked and underseasoned beans, and McDonald's quality shredded green things. I resolved never to go back.
The Tacos Morelos truck is a much better option for cheap tacos in the neighborhood, but it's not at the level that I'd recommend it to someone doing a "best cheap eats" tour of the city.
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Tacos Morelos
2nd Street and Avenue A, New York, NY 10009
dining near 53rd and Lex
Angelo Sosa's new fast food joint, Social Eatz, is quite affordable and its good dishes are good. The meal we had was spotty, but the hot dog was delicious, and the spring rolls and ribs were nice. (Avoid the bibimbap burger and the tacos.)
Oh, and also the yuzu cream puff dessert was excellent.
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Social Eatz
232 E 53rd St, New York, NY 10022
best authentic mexican downtown?
I'd go with Barrio Chino first, too - they make a very good mole.
Mercadito Cantina in the East Village as my favorite of the upscale-ish taquerias. The Tacos Morelos truck at 3rd and A is a good quick eat.
"Authentic" is one of those words I never know precisely what people are looking for. These places all serve tasty food with distinctly Mexican flavors. I've had better Mexican food in Sunset Park, which was probably also more "authentic", but the key issue is the quality for me, more than the "authenticity."
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Barrio Chino
253 Broome St, New York, NY 10002
Mercadito
179 Avenue B, New York, NY 10009
Tacos Morelos
2nd Street and Avenue A, New York, NY 10009
Burgers on the LES!?
Fat Radish. Their burger is delicious, perfectly cooked, with intelligent bun design that allows you to actually eat the thing like a burger without unhinging you jaw. It's technically in the LES, though the cross street is Canal. It's maybe a little hipstery / sceney, bu I liked it as a date place. They have Sixpoint on tap, so it's good for beer too.
For a less fancy place but equally good beer and burger, I could recommend to Black Iron Burger in the East Village. It's dive-y, so it may not be what you want for a "nice date night" (depending on the date), but the burger is as good as Royale's and the beer on tap is better.
Another option in the East Village would be Back Forty. More casual than Fat Radish, but still fully acceptable for a nice date, equally excellent burger, good beer list.
I would recommend against Spitzer's, though they have a very good beer list and are right in the heart of the LES. The burger is maddeningly inconsistent.
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Royale
157 Ave C, New York, NY 10009
Back Forty
190 Avenue B, New York, NY 10009
Black Iron Burger Shop
540 E 5th St, New York, NY 10009
Fat Radish
17 Orchard St, New York, NY 10002
Babbo tonight
I recently went to Babbo with my partner, and I'm very glad we didn't do the pasta tasting.
1) The most famous dishes on the menu (beef cheek ravioli, goose liver ravioli, mint love letters) are not available in the pasta tasting for reasons I do not understand.
2) The pasta tasting is a lot a lot of food. We shared one antipasto and three primis, and we were stuffed. I highly doubt I would have enjoyed the final dishes of the pasta tasting. We have, I'd say, average-ish appetites, so if you and your dining companions have quite large appetites this may not apply.
3) If you share pasta dishes a la carte, the staff and kitchen will serve them like a mini-tasting, bringing each dish out separately with a wait in between, and they even separate the single serving of pasta onto two plates if you're a party of two.
3) The tasting is more expensive. It's $65 per person, while one primi and three pastas is $35-40 per person.
Have a fun time. The three pastas we got (beef cheek ravioli, mint love letters, gnocchi with oxtail) were impeccable dishes, perfectly cooked with the most precise and yet outsized flavors. I can't wait to go back.
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Babbo
110 Waverly Pl, New York, NY 10011
What to order at Public?
I realize I'm replying too late now, but in my one (excellent) meal at Public, the mushroom ceviche was the standout dish.
Ten Tables, Craigie on Main, or Salts?
Craigie.
None of those restaurants is anything but very good, but Craigie is Boston's best restaurant. The chef's whim tasting there is still of my list of best meals ever.
Chicago Foodies In Town This Weekend Need Advice!
I haven't been to Lineage in a while, but my memory is that they do seasonal New American. That's Regal Beagle's thing too. Lineage is a bit fancier, and Regal Beagle has some Latin flavors mixed in, but I think of them as similar restaurants. I thought I got a similar, but superior meal at Regal Beagle at a lower cost.
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Regal Beagle
308 Harvard St, Brookline, MA 02446
Chicago Foodies In Town This Weekend Need Advice!
Regal Beagle in Brookline is also quite good - I'd recommend it over Lineage for a good meal out.
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Regal Beagle
308 Harvard St, Brookline, MA 02446
Cuban Sandwich/Vietnamese Sandwich
I agree with the general take that Chez Henri has the best Cubano, on their bar menu.
For banh mi, I am a huge fan of Pho Viet, in the food court of the Super 88 in Allston. Their roast pork banh mi is perfect. In Chinatown, there are a whole bunch of places, none of them bad, but my favorite is probably Mike's Banh Mi, inexplicably hidden in a multi-use storefront, for the "vietnamese cold cut".
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Chez Henri
1 Shepard Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
Pho Viet
1095 Commonwealth Ave, Boston, MA 02215
I love the Gallows
The Gallows - the new gastropub in the old Sage space on Washington St (South End) - opened this weekend. I saw the crowd there last night, thought the menu looked great, so we tried it out tonight. I loved it.
We weren't hungry enough to sample a huge selection of the menu, but everything we had was very good, and the best was simply brilliant.
-They have a selection of different poutines - one traditional, one veggie, one with foie, one rotating special. This is awesome. We ordered the traditional. They make their own curds, which were soft and delicious. They use a fabulous dark chicken gravy and cut their own fries. I went to Montreal this winter and sampled several poutines, and only Au Pied du Cochon's was superior. Highlight of the meal, immediately on my list of best foods in Boston. The presentation is the height of simplicity, just a pile of fries covered in curds, gravy, and a little scallion for color.
-They have a nice cheese list - all local, New England - and a selection of appetizers mostly of the cured meat / cured fish / cured other things variety. For sampling purposes, they have platters - one of meats and cheeses, one of vegetables, fruits, and cheeses, one of fish and cheeses. We had the "longshoreman's platter", including a bluefish terrine, a tuna pate, smoked scallops, horseradish cured beets, a potato salad, and a hard boiled egg. The bluefish terrine was a brilliant dish, showcasing the bluefish while mellowing it with butter and dill. It tasted of everything I love about New England. The tuna pate and smoked scallop were fine, but nothing special, the horseradish beets were perfectly balanced, still tasted of beet with a nice horseradish kick, and the potato salad was simple and well-seasoned. I don't understand hard-boiled eggs - I guess this one was fine, but eggs are better when they aren't hard-boiled.
-They have a bunch of different salads, we got the arugula salad with balsamic, fresh strawberries and blue cheese. It was very good.
-A couple things on the menu I mean to try later: the California-style flat patty burger, and the "New England Boiled Dinner" of corned beef, brisket, and short rib with seasonal vegetables.
-The beer list is good. I thought it was a bit short for an apparent gastropub, but it hit its marks with good American and Belgian offerings.
-I watched them make the cocktails, and they bartenders are measuring properly, no free pouring. My "corpse reviver" was a take on the Corpse Reviver #2, but I think they used simple syrup as the sweetening agent rather than Cointreau, and the absinthe didn't show up at all - it was more like a summery gin sling than a perfectly balanced corpse reviver. Nice enough, but I don't think messing with the classic got them anywhere.
-The service was amazing for a second night. Our server was incredibly helpful and well-informed on the menu, and there were no hitches at all in the service. I would never have guessed it was the second night if I didn't already know it.
The Gallows is precisely what the South End has been missing for years. Great place, I highly recommend it to all.
Trip Report 11/21-23
Thanks. I read over the report again and it sounds a bit whiny - I should be clear I enjoyed very much every place I went, but my usual way of talking about food is to find little things to critique, and only willie mae's and bar uncommon were really perfect experiences.
Trip Report 11/21-23
I had a conference in New Orleans last weekend, so I did what any right-thinking American would do and ran through all the important threads on the local chowhound board for my research. Thanks to all y'all, I had a great time on this weekend vacation from Boston. As did a number of my friends who were willing to put up with my food nerdery and get bused all over the city. When I travel, I prefer to go for local food specialties and not so much for exploring the best fine dining in the city. I'm a budding cocktail nerd.
Sat dinner- I had an original plan to hit the po'boy preservation fest on Sunday, but it overlapped with the jazz brunch at Commander's Palace, so I decided on po'boys Saturday - twe took a taxi out to Parkway. I found the roast beef po'boy (dressed) disappointing, the soggy beef destroyed the bread and the whole thing was underseasoned, pretty blah in flavor. The oyster po'boy was delicious, though, positively stuffed with fresh, lightly fried oysters. Also got an alligator po'boy mostly for novelty, it turned out to be sausage with bbq sauce, and was nice.
Sat night- drinks at Bar Uncommon. Place was mostly empty, which blew my mind - Chris McMillian is a genius, and he made a sazerac that was just categorically better than any I've had before. And a mint julep, damn. As the bar was closing, Chris came over himself to chat for a minute and thank us for coming in that night. all class. Drinks at French 75 to follow were not as good - figured I'd get a french 75, and they used orange juice, which produced a somewhat watery version of the drink. But perhaps they merely suffered from following directly after bar uncommon.
Sun brunch- jazz brunch at commander's palace. a very enjoyable experience, but the food was good, not great. The waiter was very pleased with my order (turtle soup and lacquered quail, then bread pudding souffle). I had never had turtle soup before, so perhaps this was a good version of the dish, but I found the broth not particularly flavorful, which meant the sherry dominated somewhat unpleasantly, and the meat was tough. Friend ordered gumbo, which was rich, dark, and delicious. My quail was good, and the skin was lovely, crispy and sweet and savory, but the meat was a bit overcooked. The dessert was the highlight of the meal, the lightness of the souffle matched perfectly with the strong whiskey sauce and rich bread pudding. At $50 per person (incl tip), it's a great deal for the quality of the food, for the new orleans experience, for the attentive service. I guess maybe my food hopes were a little too high going in.
Sun night drinks - 1:30 brunch was pretty much all the food we needed. With bar uncommon closed, took a short walk to sazerac bar, where our bartender (i forget her name) was friendly, fun, and and mixed a delicious pisco sour and a very good clover club cocktail.
Mon breakfast - walked over cafe du monde, had a good time. i now want all my coffee with chickory. and the beignets were hot and fried and good.
Mon lunch - taxi to willie mae's, which was very clearly the food highlight of the trip. the fried chicken was the best I have ever eaten and by a large amount. The chicken was uniformly perfectly cooked, tender and juicy, wonderfully seasoned, with crispy fried skin I could freakin' bathe in. deliciousness. can't wait to go back.
Thanks to all for your (perhaps unwitting) help, and I look forward to coming back. what would you say I missed?
Toronto Foodies coming to Boston - Recs please
Try breakfast (or lunch) at Mike and Patty's in Bay Village. Very tasty, latin-influenced dishes, and I think that Bay Village is a fun place to walk around - it's sort of the apotheosis of Boston's tiny neighborhood construction, a wholly contained neighborhood in about three city blocks. Small place, though, not so easy to get a seat.
Other places - Parish Cafe on Boylston has good sandwiches designed, apparently, by different Boston chefs. Someone else mentioned Chacarero for Chilean beef sandwiches, that's a hearty lunch. Charlie's Sandwich Shop in the South End is a classic Boston location serving very good basic breakfasts. Not too far away is Tremont 647 which has a fabulous weekend brunch, great scene, and a very nice croque madame. If you're looking for real-deal Boston accents and a good corned beef hash, Mike's City Diner in the south end is fun place.
One thing, not on the lunch/brunch side, but a fun thing I've done with friends is a meal of tapas split between Estragon and Toro, the two best Spanish restaurants in the city, which are only 4-5 blocks away from each other. Get the pringas at Estragon and the charcuterie at Toro.
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Toro
1704 Washington St, Boston, MA 02118
Tremont 647
647 Tremont Street, Boston, MA 02118
Mike's City Diner
1714 Washington St, Boston, MA 02118
Chacarero
101 Arch St, Boston, MA 02110
Happiness at JMP
I discovered the Super 88 food court thanks to CH, and I finally tried out JMP, the Indian place. I hadn't really seen much about it, but I knew it was going to be a good night when I asked for the tandoori chicken, and she said, "there will be a wait." Each serving is cooked to order, and it was some of the most beautifully roasted chicken I've ever had - perfectly juicy, wonderfully spiced with a little lime to finish it. I've never had tandoori chicken like it, nothing ever even close.
So, thanks to CH for the recommendation on the place, and I couldn't find anything on the board about the tandoori chicken at JMP, so this is my little contribution: y'all should eat it because it is good.
Teranga....has anyone been yet?
They were extra-thin, and there were three of them.
And, yeah, I'm rooting for them too, and I think they're going to do well - it was busy, and they're placed perfectly to snag a large perfectage of the folks who show up at Toro and hear the wait is two hours tonight.
two twentysomethings on a boston foodie adventure :)
Price point is *really* different. The omokase at O Ya is at least $100 per person (you can ask them for the price you want), and a meal for two with a bottle of wine at Neptune won't run much more than $100. The food at O Ya, though, is ridiculous - there are multiple dishes we had there that are just qualitatively different from anything I've had elsewhere (the shitake mushroom "sashimi", the oyster with squid ink foam, the urchin, the foie with chocolate). It's the best in Boston by pretty much universal acclamation.
Neptune is great, and there's something "authentic" about going to the best Italian seafood restaurant in Boston. Plus you can get a lobster roll there. I'm not sure I'd mark Neptune as precisely "romantic" - it's a small place, mostly a bar, with tables on the side, quite food focused. I love it as a date place, but it depends on your taste.
As a side point, one of the great things about Boston is how walkable it is, and there are a bunch of smaller, more affordable places walkable from the N End - the chilean beef sandwich at Chacarero in downtown crossing, the chow mein at King Fung in Chinatown, pho at Xinh Xinh in Chinatown, spanish sandwiches at Las Ventas in the S End.
I think Sister Sorrel in the S End might be a fun place to go out, it's a mostly late 20s early 30s crowd, the drinks are good, the donuts are great. Second the recommendation on Drink. If you like beer, you can take the Green Line C train out to Brookline and go to Publick House, which has the best beer list in the city by far. (Food is pretty mediocre, but the fish and chips are solid.) Wally's in the S End has no food, but cheap drinks and jazz every night.
Teranga....has anyone been yet?
Had dinner at Teranga last night - a good experience and good food, but have plus/minus comments. Generally, it's a cuisine we haven't had before, nothing was bad, the price point is very nice for the neighborhood and the quality. (They are going to get a ton of business on overflow from Toro, we realized.)
The olive sauce that comes with the bread is tasty, wonderfully peppery without overpowering the olives. DC got the Dibi, which was great. The lamb chops were grilled perfectly medium rare - I appreciate that they didn't ask, they just grill it up medium rare like it should be - and we loved the flavor (in a running theme, we couldn't place the spices.). They should have served it with a steak knife, though. The accara appetizer - fried ground chick pea - was perfectly ok, but tasted mostly of frying.
I got the Michoui, the lamb shank, which was disappointing. What I'm looking for with a lamb shank is meat extremely tender and falling off the bone when I stick my fork in, but it was pretty tough and I had to cut off chunks with my knife and fork. The sauce was savory and tasty (couldn't place the spices) and the couscous on the side went well with it. The side on the Dibi was a somewhat inexplicable pile of lettuce, and some fried yucca - a sauce or a dressing would have helped out here.
We looked for the Thiebou Djeun on the menu and couldn't find it - are we just blind?
The service. This isn't something that bothers us much at all, but if you're the sort of person who really expects attentive service, this might not be your place, or at least you might want to wait another month or two until they've worked things out a bit better. My amateur take is that they just don't have enough people in the front of the house - one poor guy appeared to be expediting, running, busing, and handling the bills for the entire restaurant. Bread didn't come until after apps, DC finished her beer before dinner and didn't get asked if she wanted another. But everyone was very friendly - especially impressive for how overstretched they were - and we had a good time. But, a warning.
