The Red House (Cambridge, MA), Machu Picchu (Somerville, MA) and Farmer Brown's Farm Stand (Middleton, MA)

Oysters and 18yr Glenfiddich

As you have probably discerned by now, oysters are just about my favorite snack, so when I found out a few years ago that there is a restaurant in Cambridge that serves them, two for a dollar, from noon to 6:00pm, I was determined to go.  And now, I finally made it!

The Red House is located a short walk from my other Cambridge favorites, Charlie's Kitchen and Crema Cafe (where I also stopped afterwards for a coffee to help wash down the beer and Scotch I had just consumed), down narrow Winthrop St.  During the six hours after noon, your first dozen oysters per person cost just 50 cents a piece, and while that limit is not advertised, I suspect most people do not have more than a dozen by themselves.  No worries for those of you like me who only stop eating oysters after you run out of money or stomach space; they are only one dollar apiece after that first dozen.

The oysters are currently Island Creek's, out of Duxbury, MA, and while they are no Kumamotos or Damariscottas, they are pretty damn good.  Their failing in comparison to those two varietals, which are my favorites, is their lesser quality (and quantity) liquor, which is only a little briny in the Island Creeks.  That said, you could never get Damariscottas or Kumamotos for this cheap even in a good fish shop like Harbor Fish, much less in a restaurant. I paid $12 for the dozen and a half oysters I ate, a tremendous deal beaten only by J's Oyster's freebies, but for those you have to wait until the waiter comes to you with more on their timetable, instead of just ordering them up as you want.  They are served with some mild horseradish and a very ketchup-y cocktail sauce, along with a large slice of lemon and some mixed greens; not sure what the deal with the greens is, since they do not give you a fork.  Maybe they are supposed to be eating with the oysters, but I have never heard of such a thing.

I sat at the small bar, which has maybe eight or nine seats; there are also a small handful of tables for about another dozen people in the bar area, while the dining room seats another 65 according to their website.  The oyster deal is only available in the bar or on the patio (weather permitting, of course, which in New England means about four months out of the year), so do not go expecting to sit in the dining room and receive these prices.  You can start out at the bar and then migrate to the dining room though, or eat from the dining room menu at the bar if you want.  They have a solid list of draft beers available, including the ever more popular Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier from Bayerische Staatsbrauerei Weihenstephan, one of the highest rated beers on BeerAdvocate.  I went with a Founders Brewing Company Breakfast Stout, which has a perfect rating.  One of the best beers out there, it is strong, dark and heavy, without being overwhelming.  It has a definite sweetness and the malt flavors are huge, with some oatmeal flavors that are just plain delightful.  I do not taste quite as much coffee as some other people in it, but that could just be my palate.  They serve it a little too cold, so I let it warm up for a couple of minutes before drinking it; as it warmed the flavors opened up a great deal, and it became better and better as I took my time drinking it.

After finishing my beer, I moved on to Scotch, since they have ridiculously good prices; the 18 Year Glenfiddich I had was just $11, much, much cheaper than I have ever seen it.  Now, this is not the same as the 18 Year Ancient Reserve I reviewed at the beginning of January, but it is a very good, very smooth Scotch.  It lacked the character of the Ancient Reserve, and seemed not to have taken on a great deal of flavor from whatever wood it was aged in.  All in all, a good single malt, and worth trying, especially at such a reasonable price, but there are far better options out there, especially for those of us who like peaty, smoky whiskys, which this was certainly not.

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It is always a good sign when you show up at an ethnic restaurant to find a family who appears to be representative of the culture having a meal or event there; upon entering Machu Picchu in Somerville, MA, that was exactly what I saw, a giant table filled with what I deduced was several generations of a Peruvian descended family.  My expectations were immediately raised, and eventually well met.

I went with my best friend from high school, and we decided to split the Yaquitas a la Huancaina (fried yucca with a creamy, slightly spicy sauce) and the Palta Primavera (halved avocados filled/topped with a chicken and nixtamal, or hominy, salad).  Both were delicious, as the yucca was crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, not unlike very good steak fries, and the avocado was firm but creamy, with a simple chicken salad topping it.  My only complaint was the abundant use of mayonnaise in the salad, which was unnecessary.  The hominy was a great touch, and definitely needs to be used more.

For my entree, I had the Bisteck a lo Pobre (poor man's steak, essentially; a large steak served with white rice topped by a sunny side up egg, french fries, and a few pieces of sweet plantains), and it was just flat out awesome.  The steak was slightly more done than I like (which is basically not at all), but was a fine medium rare, incredibly tender, perfectly seasoned, with beautiful cross-hatched grill marks.  The rice was fine, nothing special, but once the egg yolk was broken into it it definitely got more interesting.  French fries are among my favorite things, but these were the only real miss for me, being rather limp and unseasoned; the platanos more than made up for that though, and they proved yet again why they are among my favorite things ever.

They have a few beers on the menu, including a couple from Peru, one of which I had, though I cannot remember its name; it was pretty good, but nothing super interesting, reminding me of a Czech pilsener.  They also had a pan flute band playing, which, once I got over my initial reaction of amusement (thanks to South Park's Pandemic episodes) was actually kind of nice.  All in all, this is a pretty great restaurant, and I look forward to going back in the future.

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I spent three days in Middleton, MA this past week as part of a training, and since it was close and cheap, I went to Farmer Brown's Farm Stand each day to pick up some lunch.  They offer a large salad bar that appears to be filled with fresh vegetables and lettuce, as well as nearly a dozen soups, which is what I decided to partake in.  Over the course of three days I had the Hungarian Mushroom, Cream of Broccoli with Aged Cheddar, and finally the Italian Wedding Soup.  That last is served every day, one of four such, while they rotate through a dozen or so others; all are homemade, and you can really tell.  The Italian Wedding Soup was my favorite, with delicious little meatballs in it, but all were great.  Prices were spectacular, as a bowl of soup and a roll (all the soups were also good for dipping bread) ran about six bucks.

They also have some specialty items, including olive oils, balsamic vinegar, and dried pasta from Italy; I picked up a bag of cavatelli that looks great.  Their deli is stocked with Boar's Head, which is about the peak of normal deli meats, and there was plenty of meat and fish portioned or marinated and ready for the grill or oven.  If I lived close to this place, I would probably be a lot poorer and a lot fatter (the soups were pretty fattening) but it made my training days a lot better.

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Boston Trip #3 (Cambridge, MA)

So I have been to Crema Cafe a couple times before, and wrote briefly about it back in March, but after going again at the end of September, I decided to add a quick post about my last trip there.  I was meeting a couple old friends in Boston, and had some time to kill so I figured a stop in Cambridge at my favorite little cafe was a good idea.  One cold brewed iced coffee and an English muffin with jam later, and I was happy as a pig in...well, you know.  The iced coffee was spectacular, even better than their regular iced coffee which is already better than most, and the English muffin was to die for.  I know what you're thinking, how good can an English muffin really be?  When made at Crema Cafe, pretty damn good.  Homemade, a little sweeter than a traditional (aka Thomas') variety, it was served warm with butter and raspberry jam that was delicious; I strongly considered ordering another, but decided that it would ruin my appetite.  It was a poor decision.

A quick walk to Charlie's Kitchen followed, where I had a couple beers and some appetizers, and introduced a friend to the glory that are their burgers.  Nothing crazy to report, just another plug for a great little bar.

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Singha

Dinner at Chilli Duck Thai followed a few hours later, after wandering around the area of the Park Plaza hotel netted no positive results and Yelp suggested it and my friend wanted to have Thai, Viet, or some other eastern Asian food.  I had the Panang Curry with chicken, and my friend had the Tom Yum Noodle Soup.  Mine was very tasty, subtly flavorful and just a little bit spicy.  The soup was apparently good as well, with just the right amount of spice.  I introduced my friend to Singha, which is one of my guilty pleasure beers; sort of like a Thai PBR, it has a little too much sweetness and not enough real beer flavor, but for some reason I just love drinking it nonetheless.  Sadly, I do not really remember much more about the meal, but it was quite tasty and not unreasonably priced.

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Warsteiner

The night concluded at Penguin Pizza in Brigham Circle, and while I cannot speak to the pizza (which looked pretty good), their beer list is insanely good.  Hundreds of beers, many of which I had never heard of, including a lot of foreign options, made decision making very difficult.  I ended up with a Warsteiner, which was a light Westphalian beer, similar to a Czech lager but with a little bit more body.  I had ordered something else, but they were out, so I told the waiter, a friendly Irishman with a thick brogue, to pick me something light and refreshing, and he brought this and something else that I do not recall.  I am glad that I went with this, and I really want to go back to this place to try their pizza and start making my way through their beer list.

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Boston Trip (Boston and Cambridge, MA)

Regina Pizzeria is, by all accounts, a Boston landmark, a restaurant famous enough to have its own page on Wikipedia, and a real icon in the predominately Italian North End neighborhood.  With 21 locations ranging throughout greater Boston, this is a still-growing business serving the same great pizza they have since 1926.

I met an old college friend at the restaurant for dinner a little after 8:00pm on Wednesday, having just started to recover my appetite from my trip to Tacos Lupita, and having done a fair bit of walking already that day (from Allston to Cambridge, then from Quincy Market, where I had a couple beers with another friend, to the North End), I was ready for some pizza.  My friend had a coupon for a couple different pizzas, which is good, because the place is not cheap; their "gourmet" pizzas, as they refer to them, are around $20 for a large.  We ended up going with the Classico, which consists of tomato sauce, pepperoni, artichoke hearts, fresh mushrooms, mozzarella and parmesan.  It was really good, with a crispy exterior and a thin crust in the middle, which could not hold the weight of the toppings.  The sauce was nothing particularly special, though it had a nice sweetness to it.  The pepperoni was mild, with almost no spice to it, but I wasn't expecting it to be the star; that honor fell to the artichoke hearts, which were delicious, but not quite what I expected.  When I think of being served artichoke hearts, I think of just the heart itself, that meaty, delicious chunk of buttery flesh in the center of all those leaves, but in this case, they left some of the more tender inner leaves attached.  This wasn't exactly a problem, but it wasn't what I expected, and it's certainly not how I would have gone about making it; then again, they're the ones who have been open for almost 90 years, so who am I to talk? 

Overall, the food was solid, though not as amazing as I expected, and it was a fun place to grab some pizza.  We had a few slices left over that my friend took home, and they were huge slices.  I would say it's a good place to go, but also that there are better options in the North End.

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Mr. Bartley's Gourmet Burgers identifies itself as being a Boston landmark as well, but that is just a flat out lie; after all, they're not even in Boston!  Located in the Harvard Square section of Cambridge, this is a really good place to get a burger, offering thirty cleverly named burgers, mostly political or sports related, that range from "The (Sexy) Rexy Ryan," a chicken burger with blue cheese, hot sauce and french fries, to "The Chara," listed as "'wicked good' w/ bbq sauce, bacon, jalapeno pineapple relish and grilled onions w/ baked beans."  I met another old friend from college there on Thursday for lunch, and it was pretty well packed still at almost 1:30pm, but we got squeezed in immediately.  The atmosphere is fun, with the waitresses screaming the orders to the cooks and a lively crowd of mostly college aged people eating there, though by no means was the crowd limited to twenty-somethings.

I went with "The Mark Zuckerberg," described as "(Richest geek in America) with boursin cheese, bacon, and sweet potato fries."  It was delicious.  Cooked perfectly rare (so hard to get people to do that these days!), it was a hefty patty, seemingly larger than the 7oz the website claims, on a delicious sesame bun with a mound of delicious, creamy boursin and a pile of super crispy bacon on top.  The fries were actually reasonably crispy (awesome!) and had that strong, sweet flavor indicative of fresh sweet potato, and they provided so many that even as hungry as I was, I ended up giving my friend the last two because I was unable to stuff them into my already overfilled gut.

Since I walked about 12 miles in two days, I felt it was completely acceptable for me to also get a root beer float, and I felt completely vindicated when it arrived; it was absolutely delicious, with good root beer and delicious vanilla ice cream.  This is just one of many specialty drinks, including lime rickeys, egg creams, and a number of frappes.   My friend went with "The Michelle Obama" burger, "(she's hot & spicy) blue cheese burger with cajun seasoning and french fries," and she swapped out the fries for sweet potato fries of her own.  She enjoyed it, and also her raspberry lime rickey.

I would definitely recommend this; the burgers are better than the nearby Charlie's Kitchen, with more variety and options.  Unless you are going for the booze, I would definitely say Mr. Bartley's is the better choice if you don't mind spending a few dollars more.  After tip, we were in the $40 range between the burgers and drinks, so it isn't cheap, but I really enjoyed it.

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I went to Crema Cafe twice in my two days in the Boston area, once on Wednesday to waste a little time before meeting for drinks at Quincy Market, and again on Thursday to waste some time after lunch.  Located just off Harvard Square, this is a moderately sized cafe, offering seating on the main level and also in a small loft section.  Offering gourmet coffee and a variety of food, this is a great, albeit expensive place to hang out and read a book, or just grab a coffee on the way to work.  I had iced coffee on Wednesday since it was beautiful out, though they were out of their cold brewed coffee unfortunately, and it was good, much better than some crappy Dunkin' Donuts or Starbucks (both of which are in the area) coffee.  Thursday was a bit chilly, so I ended up with a hot coffee, which was one of the best I'd ever had; it was strong, but not bitter, and after 16oz of it I didn't feel like I'd been bowled over with caffeine, nor did I feel like I needed more; rather, it was just right.  I also grabbed a couple macaroons with my hot coffee, and they were ridiculously good.  Light, moist, slightly but not too sweet, with a crisp exterior, they were as good as I've ever had, and I had to struggle to convince myself that I didn't need more than the original two.

Sandwiches, soups, salads and sundry other foods are also offered, so this is a really good option if you are looking to just hang out and grab lunch, and while I cannot speak to the quality of that food, if it is anything like what I had you will not be remotely disappointed.  My friend Joe goes there when he is not at the library at the Kennedy School, and he spoke highly of it as well.  This is definitely a highly recommended spot.

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