Neptune Oyster, What a Dissapointment

As mentioned the other day, I wanted to talk about my dining experience on Saturday night at Neptune in Boston's North End at 64 Salem st. I had heard many great things about the restaurant, particularly about their oyster selection. They are known for their seafood dishes as well and an eclectic wine selection.

The street front as you can see from the picture is interesting with a nice blue awning and a huge picture window. When walking by the restaurant you can see the entire inside and watch the oyster shucker at work. The restaurant easily could have been a diner or at least a lunch counter years ago but not with the marble and wood adornments. It had a nice feel to it, the marble counter/bar had a large mirrors behind it informing the guests of the day's oyster selection. The tables lining the opposite side of the dining room were marble topped and unadorned. Simplicity seemed to be the key for this room, evoking the feeling of walking in from the wharf to have one's fresh seafood. This theme played into the napkins as well which were what I call "side towels" but others would think of a kitchen towels, Jasper White does the same thing at the Summer Shack as does, Gaslight, B&G Oysters and others, so it is obviously a trend.

I sat myself down at the bar/counter. The server plopped a list for oysters down for me with a pencil to select what I like and a full menu as well. They carry a large variety of raw oysters as well as clams and shrimp cocktail. I ordered five different oysters, two each, and one shrimp cocktail. Those who know me, always know why I order the shrimp cocktail at a restaurant. If you can not cook one of the most expensive ingredients in your kitchen properly, the rest of the meal is going to be awful as most other ingredients do not cost as much as shrimp. The oysters were excellent, the shrimp on the other hand was not deveined and it was severely overcooked. When overcooked, shrimp is dry and tough as this was. Not a good way to begin the meal, but I had a nice glass of Sauvignon Blanc in hand and as others had suggested I try the place I figured I'd continue.

The menu reads well, some traditional fish house looking items on the appetizer list like clam chowder, oyster stew, crab louis salad, steamed mussels, fried clams. There were some other eclectic items like fried cauliflower with anchovies, bottarga, fresh mozzarella; lump crab scampi with with green garlic crepe, fingerling (potato) crema, spec ham; fried oysters with pickled beef tongue, cabbage, warm gruyere and Russian dressing. The people next to me got the fried oysters, they fried oysters were sitting on a bed of cabbage and were drowned under the dressing which seemed to have the tongue in it. I felt bad for the crispy oysters as they became soggy under the sauce.

I opted for a "Crudo" (as the menu stated for the Italian neighborhood feel) or salad as my appetizer, which was sea urchin with fried chickpeas, grilled eggplant, cucumber, torn mint and a "nero style" vinaigrette. I could have gone for the sea urchin along with the grilled eggplant, cucumber, mint and even the dressing and maybe a few of the chickpeas. What I got was this honking mass of leathery greens that had seen better days, mixed with everything else and this odd "crema" Ill say on the bottom as a few of the dishes have what they called a crema on them on their menu descriptions. There were enough stale fried chickpeas to feed the dining room for bar snacks on my plate. Our path toward entree isn't looking too strong at this point, luckily there was still the Sauvignon Blanc.

Entree time, the menu has nine options for entrees, seven of which are seafood items, the others were ribs and a steak. A trout dish that has in its description "multi-spring onion invasion". Well they must be invading, because it's late summer; a traditional looking Cioppino which is appropriate for an Italian neighborhood (if only I ordered that), salmon with a saute of crispy duck, sounds interesting; red snapper with sweetbread butter, mortadella, green bean artichoke lace (I'm confused); roast monkfish and clams, charred broccoli, olives, white cornmeal; and the two items I was torn between a marlin duet tartare with sweet pea crudo, mint yogurt, then flash grilled(?), carrot marscapone, chilies and pecorino; the other option is the one I went with was Columbia river sturgeon with a black current caviar "pearl" jam, plum/graham cracker panzanella and marrow crema.

I've had fresh sturgeon once before this, and telling the waitress this and that I disliked the overly dirt flavor you get from it (hence most sturgeon is smoked), she stated it was subdued and the sauce complimented the flavors of the fish. If there was more sauce I may have been able to cover up the flavor of the fish, I'll give the kitchen credit as the fish was perfectly cooked with a nice crust on it, but wow it was like eating properly cooked fleshy mud. The sauce was incredibly sweet, the "panzanella" was as such in name only. I understand trying something different, but all ti was was crumbled graham crackers with wedges of plum, truly a disappointment. Mind you also, this dish is $25.00, not inexpensive. I am willing to pay even higher for a good dish as I have many times, but this was not one of those cases in which I was pleased.

Would I go back? Maybe for oysters and to have some wine. I might even try one of the traditional dishes on the menu, but this visit literally left some bad tastes in my mouth. The service was pretty darn good I have to say, and she was very attentive and helpful as well. I also met a great couple who were out for the day in town that were really into food.

At the end of the meal I have to say I went back over to Marco to see the great people I had met a couple weeks prior and had some great traditional Italian food to recover from the experience at Neptune. I always tell people to make their own judgements on a place, so feel free to try out Neptune, but do so with caution with some of the menu items. Shrimp cocktail, I should have stuck to my rule-of-thumb

Appetizers: $10-$15.00

Entrees: $21-$34.00

Sandwiches: $12-$22.00

Sun-Wed 11:30am-11:00pm

Thu-Sat 11:30am-12am

Phone 617-742-3474

Walking tour of Boston's North End

Yesterday was a great day walking through the Northend in Boston. For those of you who do not know, the North End is Boston's version of "little Italy". I signed up for a tour through Boston University led by Christine Merlo. Other than a little rain, one couldn't ask for a better day. Luckily for me one of the couples on the tour allowed me to use one of their umbrellas as well, so the rain ended up not being a problem at all.

The tour was about three hours of walking and an about another hour spent having lunch. Our first stop on the tour was probably my favorite which was the Salumeria Italiana. Not only did they have high quality imported Italian dry goods, but they also had an awesome deli counter selling many different salumi and cheeses. I was particularly excited to find out that they bring in fresh boratta every Friday (fresh mozzarella with cream inside) from Italy and they carry bresaula (air-dried beef) two of my favorite Italian ingredients which are very hard to find.

Next we stopped by Polcari's Coffee, another specialty shop selling fresh coffee beans, many different bulk items as well as imported Italian dry-goods. Around the corner from there we tried some of the best fresh mozzarella I have ever had made from cow's milk at Fresh Cheese Shop. I was excited to find Neptune's while going to Fresh Cheese Shop as people had been telling me to go there for awhile, but I'll come back to that later.

Our next stop was to Ernesto's Pizzeria, hands down the best pizza I have had in Boston, probably the best I have had out of New York City. I will be getting pizza here again soon. Around the corner we stopped at Dairy Fresh Candies. They had a large variety of homemade candies as well as bulk bags of many of the popular "penny" candies (is the term penny candy even valid anymore?). I broke down and had to get some dark chocolate covered pretzels and some candied walnuts. We then stopped by The Wine Bottega which was a small boutique wine shop with many eclectic wines, we got to try a red from Sicily, but for the life of me I can't recall the grap.

We stopped by a couple pastry shops, Modern Pastry, where I picked up some incredible torrone. They also fill their canoli to order, which is a great thing. We also stopped by Mike's Pastry which also fills their canoli to order and they also had some beautiful marzipan.

For lunch we ended at Artu, where we had a family style lunch comprised of some vegetable antipasta which included grilled asparagus, peppers, green beas and some others. Then we had a plate of penne pomodoro (or penne with tomatoes) where I was inclined to go on about people speaking of eating locally and seasonally, when tomaotes are an integral part of the Italian cuisine, but were not mentioned in Italian cooking until the 18th century with Vincenzo Corrado's cookbook Il Cucoco Galante written in Naples in 1773 being the first to give a full thirteen recipes for the tomato in the Italian style. I think that's a topic for another day however. The entree was a chicken marsala, which was tasty, but sort of dissapointed me a bit as I was hoping for something a little "different" than a dish one gets at any American Italian restaurant.

The tour ended there, I met some great people and had a wonderful time with all of them and I hope to hear from a few of them soon and on a regular basis because they all had a great love for food. I then went off and wondered back to stores that I wanted to pick up some items from and decided to goto Neptune's for an early dinner after a few hours. I'll post more on that experience tommorow, let's just say I went back to Marco afterwards. I also found another cigar bar for me to hang out in in the Northend for when I get bored of the large crowds at Cigar Masters.

Touring Boston's North End and Meeting Morimoto

I just found out today that Iron Chef Morimoto will be coming to Boston University for a demonstration and book signing. I am pretty excited about him coming here as I had eaten at Nobu in NYC a few times while he was the chef there. I used to love watching him on the original Iron Chef as well and especially when he competed against Bobby Flay on the two specials. I am not all that sure I enjoy the Iron Chef American show all that much, but I don't watch the Food Network all that much these days.

In other news, I am going on a tour of Boston's North End on Saturday again through Boston University. I can't believe that I have lived here since January and I still haven't walked around that area. My only stop in the area has been to goto Marcos, which those of you who have read my journal the last few days would have read about. I'm pretty excited actually, because I love preaparing Italian cuisine and the only appropriate way to do so is with the proper ingredients which I am sure I will find on the tour. Maybe I'll pick up some pork products to cook with to make up for my posting a vegetarian recipe yesterday.

I'm hoping to get to do some non-class culinary things before I move in January. I spent 90% of my time last semester working on class work because I took so many credits. With the schedule I have this semester I should be able to enjoy the city more. If anyone knows of a non-tourist trap Irish pub in the city, I'd like to hear about it.

Dining at Marcos in Boston's North end

I dined at a restaurant in the North End yesterday called Marco, which is the sister restaurant to Pigalle both owned by Chef Marc Orfaly. The entrance can be a bit confusing as it is a glass door to the side of another restaurant which is below Marco, which is on the second floor. I went on a Wednesday night at 6:30pm and was able to make a reservation for one just a couple hours prior. If the reservation had not been made however, I don't think I'd of gotten a seat if I came in much later as the dining room is very small, but not in a bad way. The bar is nice and looks into the kitchen, while the dining room has a very comfortable feeling, with its fireplace (candles in it for the summer), weathered brick walls, wood floors and open windows that allow the diners to see the passerby below. The tables are unadorned, basic dark wood, with no formal white table cloth, the chairs were a bit odd however, and not completely comfortable. The room seemed capable of holding about 40 people, although they might be crammed in the small dining room, there is the bar as well as mentioned earlier.

I had read some reviews stating that the restaurant is very contemporary, and not traditional Italian. I would have to disagree with them slightly as the dishes I had, and the others I read on the menu seemed very traditional. Perhaps they meant not traditional Italian-American ie. everything covered in garlic and tomato sauce. The menu is broken up into the different traditional Italian meal structures. I opted to eat a lot of food, starting off with the in-house-made salumi which was excellent, a variety of four items including pepperoni, sopresatta, along with some cured olives, grilled foccacia, peperoncini and pecorino, $19. I then went for the Clams Oreganato, which were four stuffed clams, made very traditionally and cooked perfectly. For a salad I went with the Caprese salad made with heirloom tomatoes and buffalo mozzarella. The presentation of the salad sorta brought me back to the 80's stacking thing along with a lack of seasoning, tomatoes really scream for a liberal usage of seasoning, especially salt.

I went with my server's suggestion for the 1/2 portion of Pasta Bolognese as it was one of the two hand-made pastas that they serve. Pasta was excellent, so often you get in-house-made pasta and it is cut too thin, this was not. The sauce was good, maybe a bit heavy on the meat, but because this dish may be eaten as a main course, someone might desire the larger portion of meat in the sauce. I went for the Veal Saltimbocca which was a bone-in veal chop with the traditional sage/ prosciutto and cheese layered on-top. It was served with mushrooms inside of the beautiful accompanying sauce. The chop was cooked perfectly and the flavors were great. I'm not used to this sort of interpretation of the dish,but I enjoyed it nonetheless. I also ordered a side of sauteed broccoli rabe, which was braised perfectly and had great flavor. For dessert I had a few small canolis that were probably some of the best canoli I have had in my life, great texture with the pastry and wonderful flavor to the filling.

As for drinks, I started off with the house cocktail, which was a sort of pomegranate martini with proseco, very tasty but a little sweet for my taste, but I could see how others enjoy it. The wine list is great, probably 20 mines by-the-glass that are certainly not your run-of-the-mill Italian wines, which was no surprise. I opted for a white for earlier and an incredible Barbera to go with my pasta and veal. The espresso served is Illy, which has become very popular. I wonder if Ferran Adria has anything to do with that as he promotes them. I wanted a shot of Sambucca in the espresso, but they were out. I did however have a pleasant grappa which I never drink and I was happy I got that instead.

My service was impeccable, attentive, not rushed or slow. I had read on some reviews that service can be slow, and I do not agree with that at all. Especially in this type of restaurant, one does not want to be rushed, cuisine should be enjoyed, not engulfed. All of the front-of-the-house staff was passionate about their job and knowledgeable about the menu and wine. The uniforms were casual, and matches the feel of the experience. I was dressed a bit formal possibly for the location, but I like to wear a tie when I dine in a good restaurant, but here it is not necessary and a jacket is not needed, if worn one might be uncomfortable wearing it.

When all was said and done, my bill was a bit pricey, but that is only because I ordered so much food and drink. One could easily order a $20 pasta dish or $20-$30 entree and a glass of wine for $9 dollars, but why waste the chance to try some really great traditional Italian dishes in a great restaurant with wonderful staff.