International (Food) Party

Ladies Executive Brunch

La Maison Goriupp

UDON noodle soup - l'umami

L’agneau

Speechlesssssssss

Legal Sea Foods

Legal Sea Foods, or how to crash a Japanese dinner party.

Little can be understood about Japanese people by observing their dinner habits. It’s just too difficult to understand what’s happening. The way things went down in the end: individual soups, dishes to share and oysters for whoever wanted them. One guy took the initiative to organize the ordering process.

New England Clam Chowder: First time I ever tried clam chowder. Can’t attest to the quality, but I kinda liked it. The oyster crackers are honestly a little bit too much, but everything else was delish. (Next challenge: make clam chowder. Stay tuned.)

So, the chowder arrives and I decide to wait and see what happens. I don’t want to be the rude outsider who digs into her food before anyone else. We sit, we wait. They bring the oysters and all of a sudden everyone is downing their soups and halfway done with them by the time I manage to even open my oyster crackers.

The mains/sharing dishes followed. Things were much more relaxed this time around.

Hot Lump Crab Dip with seafood chips. Not my favorite, but still kind of interesting. It was more like eating an undercooked crab cake than a crab dip, but what do I know.

Shrimp and Garlic: yes, I picked it and yes, it was my favorite. Who doesn’t like shrimp? Especially on top of well cooked tagliatelle.

Legal experience: raw tuna sashimi. Quite Japanese, quite nice.

Fish: After extensively going through the Legal Sea Foods menu for about 20 minutes, I am still unable to identify the fish we had. My notes say mustard swordfish, but they don’t seem to have that. But picture something along those lines. (without the actual pictures because the idea about this blog came right after that dinner) Yummy.

Everything accompanied by another favorite: a couple of glasses of Sauvignon Blanc from the Marlboro district of New Zealand.

In the end, the food-ordering guy organizes payment as well. Quite the efficient group those were. The most painless 8 person dinner I’ve had in awhile.

Ohh… and if you are still wondering how is that I ended up at a Japanese dinner party? Easy, for my middle name is “Le Party Crasher”.

Towne

Le crispy duck…. mmmm

Not much to say about this place: your standard, rather upscale stake house type of restaurant smack in the touristy area of Boston (not exactly sure what counts as touristy Boston, but the Prudential definitely makes my list). The wine list: long. The types of stakes: many.

And, of course, I decide to go for the one thing I’d never cook for myself: the duck! Because I love duck and I always forget when I see it on a menu that there are so many ways you can go wrong with duck. Yet, so many ways you can go right…

Towne went the right way: a crispy medium-cooked leg with a long row of thin raw slices of duck on a bed of berry sauce with some dried cherries here and there. Absolutely amazing! The crispy skin on the leg reminded me of that amazing southern restaurant right by La Tour de Montparnasse in Paris where they serve the best confit de canard I’ve ever had. Only two ways to remember the name of the restaurant: go there or go back home and dig out the branded box of matches they gave me 3 years ago when I went. I’d go with option one: Paris, je t’aime.

"Japanese" curry with rice... :-p