The Restaurantour: The Daily Catch

In Boston, there is a great, lovely aquarium right on the harbor. Inside, there is a penguin exhibit and a giant cylindrical tank where sharks and rays glide around and tiny little seahorses bob. There is almost always a line to get in, but even if you can't make it inside you can always walk by their outdoor exhibit of harbor seals, where you can watch them swim back and forth and learn all their names (I am particularly fond of Smoke). I don't go as often as I like, it being expensive and usually crowded on weekends, but a few years ago Dave, his sister, and I made the trip. We watched the penguins' feeding time and the shark's feeding time, learned about local shoreline birds, and held starfish in the touch tank. When we finally left and decided to get some dinner, we all sort of thought for a second where we should go before Dave said, "You know? I kind of have a craving for fish."

And as soon as he said it, we had to agree. Despite the bad lesson that we left with (fish are food, not friends?), I'm grateful for that excursion for introducing me to the best fish restaurant in the world--the absolutely incomparable Daily Catch.

I wish I could say I discovered the Daily Catch, but with many of my favorite Boston restaurants (oh how I still dream of Marche, Kebab n Kurry, and so many others...), I was tipped off by my brother, a Bostonian 7 years and running. I called and asked him for a good fish restaurant near the aquarium and he immediately had the answer. Just a few short blocks away, in Boston's famed North End, we found the tiny little restaurant, huddled between Italian sports bars and across the street from Mike's Pastries, one of the favorite places to pick up overpriced gelato and cannolis.

From outside, it doesn't look like much. Most of the tiny restaurant (I'd estimate it's maybe 15'-20' wide) is taken up by the stove, grill, and chef's area, giving you the feeling that you're sitting inside someone's kitchen. The fact that the restaurant is family run as well, with nieces and siblings stopping by to wait tables or just chat, only emphasizes this, as does the extremely limited seating (no reservations, and if you're seated at the window, you're likely to feel the hungry eyes of waiting diners on the sidewalk outside). The food, fish and seafood so fresh it was swimming in the harbor that morning, is absolutely fantastic. From your seat, you can watch the chef prepare your food and see the flames shoot up as it hits the grill.

No menus in this Sicilian restaurant. Instead, you order off a nearby chalkboard--not a problem as the place is so small it's always easy to read (also easy to read: the many, many reminders that the place only takes cash, no credit card. A nearby Bank of America ATM probably has a lot to thank them for). Most of the food is pan-fried or broiled and served directly in the pans in which they were cooked, meaning you don't lose a single bite of flavor or texture. My favorite is the pan-fried salmon, usually a special and not on the main menu, which comes drenched in butter and breadcrumbs. The best thing on the menu, however, and a unique dish to the restaurant, is their black pasta. Spaghetti pasta made with tinta de calamari comes out, yes, black. Although unusual-looking, it is perhaps the best pasta ever--high praise from a pastaphile like myself. The long, round, fat strands are silky and thick--you can literally taste the fresh flour and eggs and the homemade effort.

Although the Daily Catch is pricey (Appetizers: $3-$10 per person, Entres: $18-$23, with the show-stopping Lobster Fra Diavolo at $69 for two), it's worth every penny and could easily be worth more. If you want more of the standard amenities for your buck, the little North End eatery has a more upscale cousin on Boston's Harborwalk, where an expanded menu and wine list, as well as a larger setting (it also takes reservations) make a dressier setting.
Still, I am partial to the cramped and cozy space in the North End, where you can watch ancient Italian men debate the latest soccer match and chat with your chef about the best kinds of fish. Of course, if you really wanted to learn more about your dinner, the aquarium is still just minutes away.
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The Restaurantour: Pizza Suprema

I know I am perhaps guilty of leaning too strongly towards Boston and Cambridge, my home away from home, when giving critiques of the local eateries. Part of that is because I lived there for four years and part of it is because despite my 10 months (wow! I didn't realize it was that long!) in New York, I am too poor/cheap/lazy to eat out, and part of it is is because my favorite dining partner, who will eat my untouched salads and switch with me when I foolishly pick terrible foods (remember that lamb shank?), is a Cantab. But, whether by accident, device, or word of mouth, I have managed to discover a few gems in the great sandy mine of New York City. I've already discussed the much-touted and yuppie-beloved Shake Shack. Today: the greatest pizza in New York.

In a city with more than 20,000 places to eat, you run into "the greatest" a lot (or, of course, that other favorite, "world's best"). Everywhere is "the original," the "world-famous," the "best." While presumably this is meant to be a lure for cautious eaters, I've always been turned off by stuff like that. In my experience, the "best," "famous," and "original" are usually too busy hawking t-shirts and working up a shtick to pay attention to the food. My favorite restaurants are usually unsung heroes--tiny places with unassuming fronts that serve incredibly amazing food. Welcome, Pizza Suprema.

Pizza Suprema is a little place across the street from Madison Square Garden and the Post Office. It's also just across the street from the Megabus bus stop, which is how I discovered it in the first place. Rushing from work every Friday afternoon, I don't really have time for anything fancy--just a sandwich or a slice of pizza will do--and one day, missing my local sandwich place, I stopped in. Most pizza in New York is fairly predictable: large, thin crust slices with drippy cheese. It's hot, cheesy, and pretty cheap--fine, but nothing great. So I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Pizza Suprema serves slices that are hot, cheesy, pretty cheap, and absolutely delicious.

It's hard to pinpoint what's so great about the slices. The sauce, which most pizzerias foolishly ignore, is sweet and light--I could eat a slice with nothing on it but the sauce. The crust is the perfect thin crust, crispy, straight out of oven. I love their fresh ingredients, especially the tomato-basil slice, with large basil leaves that taste right from the garden. I've tried their pepperoni and sausage as well--delicious, with the delicate saltiness of the meat mixing brilliantly with the smooth cheese and sweet sauce. There's simply not a better slice of pizza to be had in New York--or at least not one that you could get for their incredibly decent prices.

What's more, the place looks like any other pizza joint in New York. You walk in, pick out your slice from behind plexiglass, they pop it in the oven, and you take a seat at one of their many booths. No "famous" nothing, although they do proudly display their intimidatingly positive reviews on Yelp. The guys that work there are friendly, fast, and efficient--and devoted to good food. When I had to run to my bus and told them not to worry about heating up the slice, the guy moved fast to stick it in the oven anyway while he rung me up, assuring me, "It'll taste better, and you'll catch your bus." Check and check.

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The Restaurantour: Hi Rise

Now that Dave has been accepted to grad school(s) outside of the Boston area, I'm finally starting to come to terms with the fact that I too will be saying goodbye to some of my very favorite places and restaurants. Soon, the Border Cafe*, the Daily Catch, 'Noch's, Felipe's, Punjabi Dhaba, Christopher's, Herrel's (et al) will be no more than fragrant memories I revisit to escape the blandness of New York dining (sure there are more restaurants per capita than any other city in the world, but does it have an ice cream parlor inside a bank vault? a roadside Indian cafe? probably, but whatevs...). In response to this crushing prospect, I've started visiting my favorite places when I come up to see Dave on the weekends, to say goodbye and cling to the last desperate moments of epicurean bliss. Last time I was in Boston, I visited one of my favorite places to eat, and one of the best epitomes of Cambridge yuppiness you could find: Hi Rise.


In short, Hi Rise is a bakery. I know of two locations--one in Harvard Square (behind the old blacksmith's house) and one a block from Dave's apartment--but I really only started going there when I'd be hungry at Dave's house and need a fixin'. It's a cozy community bakery that serves fresh-baked bread, sandwiches, and desserts, and despite the astronomical prices they demand for items that are little more than flour, yeast, and sugar, I love it. With no parking and sitting inside one of Cambridge's nicest neighborhoods, it's always full of parents with strollers, patient dogs sitting tied up outside. Inside, hand-drawn signs cheerfully remind you that this is a cell-phone free environment. No Wi-fi either--this is a place for sitting with the newspaper, a cup of tea, and some cookies. Bottles of wine line the walls, with tiny labels listing the foods they go best with (some of them, adorably, mention neighboring restaurants, like Armando's, the pizza place next door).

One of the best things about Hi Rise, and something that you can really only experience in person, is how lovely the whole place smells. Most bakeries are like the olfactory equivalent of a hug, and Hi Rise is no exception. In the Huron Village locale, half of the place is given over to the large and airy kitchen, where you can watch hippie bakers divide and fold giant pillows of dough. It's like being inside a really, really nice kitchen inside a cozy country house. It's nice.

Being a Cambridge restaurant, though, it is crazy expensive, so I don't usually go there unless there's some special occasion (I guess I am not white enough to buy fancy sandwiches). Some of their desserts can be disappointing--their homemade chocolate cream sandwich cookies were smoky and dry--but their breads are absolutely the best in the city. On sunny spring days, I like to buy a loaf of their Daily Bread--just a basic, crunchy-crust, round bread--and head up to the balcony outside Dave's apartment. There is nothing quite as wonderful as fresh-baked bread, dipped in a little olive oil with lemon juice, salt, and pepper, some slightly warm and refreshing apple cider, sunshine, and a good book. Definition of pleasant.


Very beautiful photos taken by browncoffee

*Last weekend, while I was at my parents' house, Dave and I visited Jose Tejas, the New Jersey-version of the Border Cafe. We went in an attempt to find a replacement for Border if we needed a fix and Boston was too far away. Misssstake. The whole trip was a bad experience: we drove out to the middle of nowhere, finally spotting the restaurant in a sun-drenched strip mall next to the highway, parked between a Verizon Wireless store and La Quinta Inn. The place was filled with kids, which oddly disturbed me, since in my mind Border Cafe is less family fare than the place where high-strung law students come to unwind. Although the decor was familiar and the smells conjured up warm memories, the experience itself was a disappointment. The chips were soft and tasteless, the pastelitos missing their special punch of flavor (Dave and I noticed, for the first time ever, we were feeding each other our pastelitos rather than fighting over them. I guess we are only generous about things we don't like). Our waiter, who was 6'5" but spoke so quietly we could barely hear him, kept getting confused about our orders and even brought me the wrong rice with my chimichurri steak (which, to be fair, was ok). Dave said I was being too harsh, but when you have something so amazing that you would gladly eat it every night of your life, why would you stand for something not as good? While the food, locale, experience wasn't terrible, it was so far from a typical Border meal that I left cursing the place forever. My margarita was strong, though, and the bathroom was really pretty.

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The Restaurantour: The Shake Shack

When you get to a new city, people like to tell you where you can the best of everything. The best deep dish in Chicago, the best chowda in Boston, the best cheese in Wisconsin (Wisconsin is a city, right?). I just moved to New York, but I can tell you without a doubt that the best burgers in the entire city, maybe even the county (yeah I'm looking at you, In&Out), are from the Shake Shack.

The Shake Shack is one of those wonderful places the locals are crazy about and the tourists haven't yet discovered. It's also one of those wonderful places where the hype, pretty insane, to begin with, is entirely justified.


For those unawares, the Shake Shack has two Manhattan locales: the legendary shack on the corner of Madison Sq Park, and the relatively new restaurant on the Upper West Side. Aside from amazing burgers and decent fries (that's right In&Out, what!), the 'Shack has two other memorable features: heavenly shakes and hellish lines. Lines outside the Madison Sq Park locale are regularly an hour+ long, while table space (don't even think about indoors) is heavily coveted. People have even set up Shack Cams, which videotape the area outside the shack so hungry lunch-eaters can precisely time when to visit. This is the insanity which good food in New York City can breed.

Confession: I have never actually stood in a Shake Shack line, but I have indulged in their goodies three times in the last two months. How is this possible? Call me cheap, call me inauthentic, call me smart or just lucky, but I have only ever gone to the Upper West Side restaurant, a lovely little place (used to be the nearby Natural History Museum's restaurant) with indoor seating and virtually no lines.

I stumbled across it with Dave one night after we unsuccessfully tried to visit the museum, unawares that it closes early on weekdays. "Shake...Shack?" I thought, as we passed it. Somewhere in the depths of my memories I remembered reading something about the Shake Shack and the ridiculous lengths to which people went to get their food, and so I suggested we try it. I am delighted we did: the burgers, although small and expensive, are perfectly-grilled (they don't ask rare, medium, or well done though) and seasoned, almost sweet in their deliciousness. We also ordered a side of fries (the zigzaggy kind. very good for a place known mostly for their burgers), and one of their straw-collapsing shakes. They also serve custard, which we watched them prepare from our seats, but I think we were already vibrating from our sugar high, and turned it down.

Since then I've been very pleased with the Shack. The restaurant is bright and beautifully designed, impeccably clean, nice indie-hip music, and a very friendly and courteous staff. Scores high marks on all levels. Plus! I regularly have a desire to go there for dinner, and I live in Queens, and to get to the Shake Shack I have to transfer twice and it takes me almost an hour. This alone should be a high-five.

The Shake Shack is associated with hipster broke students/interns/gallery assistants and hipster wealthy moms and dads (Tina Fey said her perfect day ends at the Shake Shack. Dave immediately suggested we go again). I mean, they have stroller parking and sell onesies printed with the words "I had to wait nine months on line for this." Last time I was there, a group of private school teenagers were sharing fries next to a harried-looking mom and her toddler next to a older guy with a dusty backpack and scruffy beard reading Kant. It's a nice sort of amalgam of New York.
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The Restaurantour: Border Cafe

On weekends, I generally don't cook, in celebration of having successfully fed myself for a full week. So, I try to either surround myself in empty pizza boxes and candy, or I visit one of my several favorite restaurants, where I typically order the exact same thing. (Full Disclosure: I am not an adventerous eater. I had a brief period in my life where I went on a crazy Us Weekly diet that was so bland I overcompensated by devouring combinations of food in the kinds of flavors college frat boys dare each other to eat as hazing. Such craziness--diets, Us Weekly--has passed)

Since weekends are refreshingly recipe-free my weekend blog fare (aka "blgare") will focus on restaurants, those havens for the tired chef (so long as the chef is not working at the restaurant). Today's restaurant: let me take you south of the Border.


The Border Cafe is my favorite restaurant on Earth. It is high, high up on my list of favorite things ever on Earth, neck-in-neck with free thought and breathing. I had dinner there Friday and Saturday and I could have gotten lunch there on Sunday if it wasn't snowing and I didn't have a bus to catch.

It has several locations in Massachusetts, Delaware, and New Jersey (which I just found out! this blog is teaching me so much about life...), but my favorite is in Cambridge. When I was an undergraduate I went there at least once a month, which is significant when you consider I had free food every night courtesy the dining hall and, for half of my college life, no boyfriend with whom to go out. Sadly, I no longer live in Cambridge, but wonderfully, I have a boyfriend (hi puppy!) who does. Since I do like him very much I try to get up to Cambridge a few times a month, meaning I get to bask in the warm glow and 45-minute waits of Border (as we like to call it).

The Border Cafe is a Tex-Mex place with excellent margaritas and no system for taking reservations. That means you are almost always guaranteed to wait at least half an hour for a table, but the fact that the place is so packed they regularly require someone to herd people inside one-by-one per the firecode should be indication that it's worth the wait. Generally, Dave and I get one of those little buzzy things that tell us when our table is ready and head to the bookstore, where we invariably get separated, leaving the unfortanate half to run desperately through the bookstore searching for the other person and holding a flashing, buzzing, beeping device that chirps out "Your table is ready! Your table is ready!"

Inside, the decor is a mix of liquor ads and folk museum, with hand-painted murals of Annie Oakley and Dom Perignon (which they do sell). Border has several main tenets, among them: a long wait, endless chips and sodas, and extremely fast service. I've never had to wait more than 10 or 15 minutes for an appetizer (or an entre, for that matter), and the cheerful and friendly staff scoot around in crisp, white chef's coats.

I always order the exact same thing: a house margarita, blended with salt on the rim; pastelitos; and chimicurri steak (extra rice instead of beans). It is the best combination of sweet, spicy, tangy, and smooth, and my favorite meal ever. Their pastelitos, chicken in dough with chili verde, are amazing. Whenever we're out with someone who's never had them, we usually offer one on principal, leaving Dave and me to snarl over which one of us gets one less pastelito. I always, always get the chimichurri steak, a grilled steak covered in spicy chimichurri sauce. It's never let me down, and the mix of slightly blackened meat and peppery sauce is wonderful. Even their chips are great, straight-from-the-kitchen hot and gone in 10 minutes.

While I get the same thing, Dave, who generally accompanies me on my nights to Border, tends to mix it up a little, to the point where he's had most of the entire menu. His favorites? He likes the shrimp soup appetizer (which is fine by me as it leaves more pastelitos), but as far as I know he's not so gaga about anything as I am. The only thumbs-down was the blackened ribeye.

Oh Border. A weekend in Cambridge is not complete if it doesn't end with several downed margaritas happily mixing with delicious food and a healthy rotation of Johnny Cash music. I like to spend at least one night in Cambridge stumbling home, delirious on cheap tequila and the joy of a contented stomach.
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