Back to Boston, Part 2

Seven months later I was back in Boston, this time with Dayne on our way to his Andover reunion. Since we've both been multiple times, we were mainly just in to check out some restaurants and bars before heading to Cape Cod for a week. This post should be titled, Booze & Food in Boston.

We decided to stay at the Kimpton Marlowe in Cambridge since we hadn't stayed in that area before. The hotel was very good and had great service, we'd absolutely stay again. They have kayaks and bike you can borrow when the weather is nice, and of course the Kimpton wine hour each evening.

 Our first stop was at the semi new Brick & Mortar to say hi to Misty who had since left Drink, and to have a fantastic cocktail which she is so good at making. The bar also has some very good food including chicken confit wings. Before we left Misty poured us shots of house bottled and chilled Diamondbacks. Now that is a shot I can get behind.

Next stop, Island Creek Oyster Bar. This is the sister restaurant and bar to Eastern Standard and was really fantastic with a great cocktail menu and raw bar. Seasonal, as well as innovative mains, like my fluke with spatzel and favas and Dayne's lobster roe noodles with braised beef and lobster tail were excellent.

We finished the evening with a nightcap at The Hawthorn Bar, connected to both the restaurant and The Commonwealth Hotel. We had been chatting with the restaurant manager and he offered to get us into the bar, past the line, with fantastic seats in the small bar. I'd like to go back and have a few more rounds here as well!



Sunday morning started at Eastern Standard for brunch. We found the drinks as good as when we originally visited 5 years ago but the food itself was just meh.

The rest of the day was spent shopping around Harvard Square as well as grabbing a quick salad and drink at the Russell, after finding the new location of the Brazilian restaurant Orinoco closed between the hours of 3 and 5pm.

We had happy hour at the recommended Green Street, a funky old bar and grill that made me feel like I was drinking at Paul Revere's house (small, low timbered ceilings...)

Our friend Joel happened to be in town on business from Seattle so the 3 of us met up for a wonderful dinner at Craigie on Main (which also has a really stellar cocktail menu). We opted for the 6 course $65 tasting menu which was awesome. This dish of squid ink pasta and clam followed a dish of three amuse, one of them being squid noodles. I loved the natural succession of the courses. 




Before leaving for Cape Cod (and then Andover) in the morning, we had a tip from Woodinville distributor Steve Williams to check out Grand Ten Distilling in South Boston. The tasting room is still under construction but the gin is bottled and ready to be purchased. It's a great American style gin, similar in flavor to our own San Juan's Spy Hop but it includes the local cranberry as the acid note. Additionally they are aging a gin, have their own apple brandy in barrels and are going to be bottling a Medford style rum soon. Check them out the next time you are there!




Heading south to Boston, from the reunion the next week, we checked out a few more places before flying home.

Just north of Cambridge we stopped in Somerville to taste our way through a nice bitters selection at The Boston Shaker. They have loads of fun stuff for drink geeks including bar ware, books and bitters/syrups/garnishes. Highly recommend a stop if you have the chance.

Back in Boston we had one more taste of the Cape at Summer Shack, a casual fun eatery in Back Bay. Oysters on the half shell, lobster rolls, clam rolls and house made chips. All delicious.

Then we spent some time exploring the New England Aquarium, home of Myrtle the 600 pound turtle, shark and ray touch tanks, jellies, penguins and seals before catching our flight back home.




All Boston photos here

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Boston, MA

Andover

At my 10-year high-school reunion, back in '97, Grosse Pointe Blank had just come out. Understandably, I think, I thought "Professional Killer" whenever some vaguely-remembered classmate asked me what I'd been doing since high school. For the 20-year -- wow it hurts to write that, since I was 17 when I graduated and thought I knew just about everything there was to know at the time -- there was no such shared cultural meme to either dull or distract from the inevitable smalltalk sessions.

Still, I wanted to go, and also knew that I had to drag Wendy with me; she wasn't necessarily enthusiastic, but almost always had a good attitude about the whole thing. [ She'd gone to the 15-year, and we weren't even married then; I couldn't let her get out of this one.]

Besides, Andover (or more properly, Phillips Academy) was worth visiting again regardless of who showed up or how the 2 days of the reunion were spent. It's a beautiful campus, matched or exceeded by few high schools or even colleges anywhere else in the country. And it gave us the excuse of hitting Boston first and taking a few days in Newport afterwards.

We lucked out in terms of weather, most of the time. We splurged a bit and rented a Mustang convertible in Boston, then drove north to campus on Friday afternoon. That evening was a large gathering of all the classes (each 5-year-increment was there ('02, '97, '92, '87, '82, '77, '72, etc., back to a few surviving alums from the early part of the 1900s). We were grouped by class for a fairly-bad meal, the split off for individual class gatherings/drinks later. Strangely -- or maybe not -- the people I most-enjoy seeing at these things are those who I usually knew only in passing while actually in school, but with whom I've found I get along a great deal in the intervening years. Still, the inevitable hours of small talk took their toll, and we didn't end up staying especially late.
We woke up Saturday to gray skies and a persistent rain. Since most of the Saturday activities consisted of outdoor gatherings, including a picnic and a class picture, we suddenly had a lot of time to kill. That did give us ample time to attend a presentation at the Addison, our campus art gallery (which also happens to be in the top tier of American-art galleries anywhere). They were having a William Wegman exhibit (Funny/Strange), which was primarily unique because it focused on his work that wasn't Weimeraners, but more interesting to both of us was the tour that the curator gave of the painting-storage facilities below ground level. It was just amazing what they have stashed away, and neither Wendy nor I had ever seen how museums kept their off-display work.

Not much else to tell. We had another class dinner and drink get-together Saturday evening, managed to miss breakfast the next day, and headed down the fortunately-more-dry road towards Newport, Rhode Island.