Sunday Afternoon at the Pour Judgement Bar and Grill in Newport, RI

A review of the Pour Judgement Bar and Grill , a restaurant and bar in Newport, RI.
>> Related categories: Newport restaurants | Rhode Island restaurants

All hail Lord Hobo

The closing of the popular B-Side Lounge, the Cambridge A-list destination dive, was bemoaned by the Hub dining...

Bartolotta @ the Wynn: Freshest Fish in Vegas

While in Vegas last weekend, we were lucky enough to dine at Bartolotta- a AAA Four Diamond restaurant at the Wynn. Thadd selected Bartolotta partially because we were staying in the adjacent Encore, but mainly because of an article he read about in Wired magazine. The advanced seafood supply chain...

EVOO Kendall Square - Restaurant Review

EVOO Kendall Square Restaurant Review – EVOO (which stands for “extra-virgin olive oil”) features bold and daring American cuisine. A Somerville fixture for years, chef Peter McCarthy has moved the eatery to sparkling new digs in Kendall Square. McCarthy, a pilot and a sailor, brings his adventurous nature to the menu which infuses American standards with influences from around the world. Only the freshest local ingredients are used, including produce from Eva's Garden and livestock from Lovejoy Brook Farm. All of these delights are served in an ultra-modern space with large pine sliding doors, a mix of steel and beautiful woods, and a sleek open-ceiling industrial feel. The location, which is also shared with McCarthy’s farm-fresh pizza restaurant Za, also has a comfy private dining room complete with a small book library. For appetizers, try the Cornmeal Fried Oysters with goat cheese fondue and apple-bacon salsa; or the Brook Farm's Veal with caramelized onion empanadas. Delicious entrees include the “Duck, Duck, Goose” – duck foie gras & confit with goose breast in ginger sauce. Also excellent is the Knoll Farm's Chicken Breast with corn waffle, jalapeno coleslaw and fried pickle chips. Don’t forget to save room for their fresh Banana Bread Pudding with warm buttermilk caramel. For Cambridge’s most creative American cuisine – in the area’s newest location – take a trip to EVOO.
EVOO Restaurant, Kendall Square, 350 Third Street, Cambridge, 617-661-3866.
http://evoorestaurant.com/

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Guest Post: The Happiness in Health

Happy Sunday from wine country! I hope you are having a great weekend. Today’s post is from Jessie from The Happiness in Health, and it looks delicious! I love peanut sauce but always have trouble getting a good consistency. I can’t wait to try this recipe out!   Hi everyone, Jessie here! As someone who adores Meghan’s [...]

Munch Madness: Round 1 recap

The biggest story: the incredibly close race between No. 9 Park and Redbones.

Earthy Delights

There is something singularly satisfying about black bean soup. It’s easy, earthy, nourishing, and versatile. Using my basic Black Bean Soup recipe as a starting point, you can easily create a tropical variation by adding orange juice, fruity habanero peppers, and fresh mango. Likewise, the soup can swing Southern with the addition of bacon, bourbon, and sweet potatoes, Southwestern with ...

A Chef’s-Eye View

At Chowder, we do a lot of the talking (and eating, but hey—it’s our job). So we thought we’d hand over the mic back over to Boston uber-chef and guest blogger Ken Oringer for a moment. Following the successful launch of Coppa in December—a collaboration with chef Jamie Bissonnette—Oringer found time for a little culinary [...]

27 Really Terrible Boston Restaurant Names

Choosing a restaurant name has to be one of the most difficult and significant decisions a new restaurateur has to make. A lot is riding on it: the name represents the only opportunity many potential customers ever get to decide if the restaurant appeals to them in terms of its concept, atmosphere, price, and the other intangible qualities it may connote. So I'm always amazed when a restaurant chooses a really terrible name.

I'm not just talking about the widespread misapplication of bistro and trattoria, though that annoys the deuce out of me. Properly used, those terms denote rather specific forms of relatively humble restaurants in France and Italy, but in the USA, they're abused to mean practically anything. In Boston, they mostly get slapped on places that are too fancy and expensive to fit the traditional usage, and the offenders on that score are too numerous to mention. Rather, I'm here to cite the garden-variety-stupid, the what-the-hell-were-you-thinking, the where-were-your-friends-when-you-picked-that kind of restaurant naming awfulness.

So, herewith are a few notably-bad Boston restaurant names from my personal Hall of Shame:

• Mooo... -- A romantic luxury steakhouse making a cutesy, lame joke at cows' expense? And WTF kind of omission does that ellipsis represent? Maybe, "Mooo..., despite the tee-hee name, is located in XV Beacon, a $500-a-night Beacon Hill boutique hotel, and is every bit as costly and pretentious as you therefore might expect.”

• Prose -- Actually a pretty good chef-owned small restaurant in Arlington, but the name leads you to expect the prosaic, not the lyrical, on the plate. This bit of self-sabotage is matched only by the chef's famously grumpy attitude toward customers.
  

• Blunch -- A terrific little South End breakfast/lunch place that sounds uncomfortably close to onomatopoeia for vomiting.

• KO Prime -- Winner for Most Ironic Name, as this expensive Downtown hotel steakhouse does not serve prime-grade beef, but the same choice-grade meat you can buy plastic-wrapped in Styrofoam trays at Johnnie's Foodmaster.

• BOKX 109 -- "I know, honey, let's go to that cheesy 'Vegas-style steakhouse' in Newton named after a slaughterhouse term for a carcass container." “Oooh, yum-o!”

• No Name -- The retirees on cut-rate package tours dining by the busload at this Waterfront tourist trap of a shore-food joint probably don't appreciate the dull irony of this moniker.

• Basta Pasta – You'd think a pasta specialist would want to signal its abundant portions. "Nope! We're just Enough Pasta!”

• Big Papi's Grille –Red Sox slugger David Ortiz is one of the most lovable sports personalities in Boston history, in no small part thanks to his epic contributions to ending the local nine's 86-year championship drought. But I think it was a mistake to telegraph his involvement in this place, as anyone with a lick of dining-out experience knows that restaurants owned by athletes usually underwhelm. Predictably, the reviews have been mediocre.

• Strip-T's – It's hard to bust on a modest indie restaurant in Watertown, the kind of place that serves good American food with nothing over $15, but that name makes me gnash my teeth. Nobody equates hoochie dancing with fine dining.
  

• Chung King Rick's Cafe -- A pitiable Billerica brown-sauce American-Chinese restaurant/townie bar, filled with customers who seem equally desperate for and hopeless of escape. "Of all the greasy-eggroll joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine."

• Boloco – This small local burrito chain didn't bother me until a fellow Chowhound pointed out that the name can be read as “bollock-o”. I'll wager that, despite the current rage in Boston for offal, the owners weren't trying to evoke the image of bull testicles. (The true etymology isn't much more appealing, an abbreviation of “Boston Local Company.” Bleh.)

• uBurger – Actually a not-bad pun in the making (the German “über”, indicating superiority, crossed with “burger”), but nobody pronounces it as anything but “you-burger”.

• Violators of my “dubious possessives in restaurant names” bugbear -- I documented this nagging peeve of mine on my blog entry, "But There Is No Mr. L'Espalier!". To quote that essay: “Is there really a Mr. Soya at Soya’s? Does a Ms. Zebra sit on the board of Zebra’s Bistro? I’d love to believe there’s a Pepper Sky running Pepper Sky’s Thai Sensation – she sounds like the star of a 1960s TV show about a secret agent who favors Mod fashions – but I suspect the truth is duller.” Add Harvard Square Spanish/South American/Central American whatsis Conga's to this shamefully growing list.

• Island Hopper – A pretty passable Back Bay restaurant with a fun pan-Asian menu, but I wonder whether its Indonesian owner is aware of the usage of "hopper" in some quarters as slang for “toilet”.

• Mamagoo's – Why call out a humble Fresh Pond sub shop? Because it used to be called “Mr. Magoo's”, presumably until it got a cease-and-desist letter from the lawyers at Columbia Pictures, which owns the old cartoon character. Change one letter, drop a period, and voila! You're no longer violating copyright law -- now you're “Mamagoo”. Um, ew.

• Smoken' Joe's – I haven't tried this Brighton barbecue joint yet, but I cringe at that misbegotten spelling. I have to assume that “Smokin'” was taken, but that alternative looks dumber than Snooki.
  

• Stork Club – I imagine this South End spot would like to attract the same multi-racial clientele that flocked to its predecessor, Bob's Southern Bistro. Guess it overlooked the fact that the original Stork Club, one of New York's most famous cafe-society nightclubs, was notoriously inhospitable to African-American celebrities. Oops. (Tip of the hat to esteemed fellow Boston Phoenix restaurant critic Robert Nadeau for spotting this unfortunate irony.)

• Thaitation – A fine little Thai storefront in the Fenway with a nearly nonsensical tongue-twister of a name. What does the “-tation” stand for? Citation? (Might make sense, given the nearby parking situation.) Mutation? (Not so appetizing.) A play on “titration”? (Ugh: not a chem lab term!) Puzzling.

• Pu Pu Hot Pot – A serviceable, very reasonably priced American-Chinese place in Central Square, but honestly, do we need to give twelve-year-olds another reason to snigger?

In the Stupid and Bygone category:

• T.J. Scallywaggle's -- Winner, Cognitive Dissonance Division. Sounded like the kind of hideous chain restaurant that serves Steak Quesadilla Towers and Shrimp Poppers, was actually a vegan pizzeria. Its also-a-vegan-pizzeria successor Peace o' Pie may have a groaner of a pun for a name, but at least it's consistent with the presumed leftie-activist sensibilities of its owners and customers.
  

• Apocrypha – As the name suggests, this extremely precious Needham restaurant has since been expunged from the canon of still-operating establishments.

• INQ -- An awful Newbury Street restaurant with an equally-awful name, though not as gobsmackingly imbecilic as its successor, Luigi and Roscoe's @ INQ (also mercifully closed.) The legacy of naming inanity in this location continues to this day with Cafeteria, which reflects the owners' mistaken impression that putting air quotes around the name of a would-be chic hangout serving $12 Pineapple Cosmos is ever-so-fascinatingly droll.

In the Not As Dumb As It Sounds category:

• Moby Dick – I'd originally guessed that this Persian kabob joint near Symphony Hall was a seafood place in its prior incarnation, and the owners simply were too cheap to get a new sign. Wrong: it turns out there's a famous restaurant in Tehran by this name, which also inspired the popular DC-area Moby Dick House of Kabobs chain.
  

• Bull McCabe's -- The name of this sweet little Irish pub in Union Square (Somerville) sounded to me like the kind of casual-dining hellhole that Anthony Bourdain would call "TGI McFunster's". This just proves I'm not so well-read: in fact, it refers to the protagonist of beloved Irish author John B. Keane's play The Field.
  

• Lord Hobo -- Several friends urged me to flay the name of this Cambridge beer-geek bar for verging on mocking the homeless, but I consider it a different animal. To me, it evokes a quaint, possibly rural British pub, echoing an ancient English tradition of consciously quirky public-house names. Further, I admire its marketing effectiveness: the name alone has engendered a lot of discussion, which I'll speculate was partly the owner's intent. In other words, deliberately vs. unintentionally unseemly is a non-trivial distinction.
  

At least Bostonians can take solace in the fact that, despite the howlers I've cited here, we have nothing as patently, crudely nudge-nudge-haw-haw as Crabby Dick's (a Delaware seafood shack), Phat Phuc Noodle Bar (a London Vietnamese restaurant which I'm certain was not named to honor its literal translation, “Happy Buddha”), or The Money Shot (a Chicago comfort food joint). As for my not making any more cheap jokes here, you're welcome.

Maximum Cupcake Satisfaction!

Boston's original cupcake Queen, vixen Sara Ross of the award-winning Kickass Cupcakes has expanded her reign to Wellesley, having recently opened a new limited-edition shop located at 180 Linden Street.



While Somerville is Kickass Cupcakes' home, they thought it would be adventurous to expand their bakery and check out a new neighborhood. The new limited-edition shop will feature everything you have come to love about Kickass Cupcakes in Somerville, just conveniently located to serve metro west sweet-toothed addicts!

Green Land Cafe to Open in Salem This Spring

A cafe-style restaurant that focuses on dishes made using local ingredients is coming to Salem. According to the restaurant's website, Green Land Cafe is opening this spring on Washington Street in the downtown area of this North Shore city, bringing to the area a breakfast, lunch, and dinner spot that will have a bar as well as an outdoor patio area for the warmer months.

The menu at Green Land Cafe will offer such items as croissants and muffins (breakfast); soups, salads, and sandwiches (lunch); and burgers, seafood, and tapas (dinner). The restaurant will also feature wine, local beers, and cocktails. New England cheeses, artisan breads, and flatbread pizza will be offered as well.

Hours for Green Land Cafe will be 7:00 AM to 12:00 AM Monday through Saturday, and 8:00 AM to 10:00 PM on Sundays.

The address for this soon-to-open restaurant in Salem will be: Green Land Cafe, 87 Washington Street, Salem, MA, 01970. The phone number will be (978) 744-7766. And the website can be found at: http://www.thegreenlandcafe.com/

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First Look at El Pelón, Serving Tacos and Tortas Tonight

As we mentioned yesterday, much beloved taqueria El Pelón is reopening tonight. El Pelon's original Fenway home was destroyed in 2009's Peterborough Street fire and, while owner Jim Hoben still plans to reopen in the same space once it's rebuilt, tonight, he's opening digs across from Boston College in Brighton. As Hoben bragged to Grub Street earlier this month, "we even managed to save some of the decor from the wreckage." Check out that salvage, along with so much more, in our slideshow.

Earlier: What to Eat at El Pelón
El Pelón Will Rise Again Next Month

Read more posts by Leila Cohan

Filed Under: slideshow, brighton, el pelon, openings

En Papilote and a few odds and ends

Well it seems that running a cooking school takes the life out of blogging but I felt it was time to stop by and update on my world in a nutshell.

The transition of the business continues to move along.  I'm hoping to have all the loose ends tied up before the easter bunny comes hopping through. It's all just a matter of paperwork and signatures and agreements. Lots of great things are happening though, classes are going well, new business ideas are taking seed, potential 3rd kitchens are being plotted, espresso machines are arriving, satellite radio continues to enthrall me daily with cheesy 1970's pop hits making 10 hour days far more enjoyable than one would think.

Cooking dinner has a become a challenge since getting home at 8:00 really doesn't leave much time to prepare a full blown meal, but I have rediscovered the joys of cooking en papillote, a fancy term for cooking in a pouch.  Just give me some foil or parchment a few ideas and 10 minutes in the morning and I can make something that just gets tossed into the oven when we get home and 25 - 30 minutes later we are sitting down to dinner. Lay a heavy duty piece of foil down, place the ingredients listed below on top.  Place another piece of foil on top.  Roll up the edges to make a pouch.  Heat the oven to 400F.

A few recent successes are:

Mediterranean: chicken boob, boneless, skinless.  Toss on some salt and pepper, a few capers, some black olives, sun dried tomatoes, thyme sprigs, Valbresso feta, Aleppo pepper flakes and a drizzle of olive oil. Bake the aforementioned 25 - 30 mins. Serve on some nice egg noodles with a touch of truffle butter.

Chicken Vesuvio: peel a russet, cut in oven fry shapes, sauté until brown in olive oil.  Remove.  Toss in 20 pieces of garlic, sauté until beginning to brown, pour in some white wine, sizzle, reduce by half. Pour over a boneless skinless chicken boob seasoned with garlic powder and oregano. Lay the potato slices on top, sprinkle with crushed red pepper flakes, pour in a bit of chicken stock. Bake. Serve with a side of peas.

Chicken and chorizo: Again, lather, rinse, repeat. 1 boneless skinless chicken boob, season with salt and pepper, toss some slices of chorizo on top.  Add some strips of roasted red pepper, a few cloves of garlic slivered. Mince up some red onion and sprinkle this on top with some crushed red pepper flakes.  Add some chicken stock and serve the whole lot over rice.

That is some fast, moist and delicious dinner with the easiest clean-up ever.

How busy is busy you ask?  That picture above of my birthday dinner in November is effectively the last food photo I have taken.  I really need to remedy that. 

Cookbooks

I've been perusing some new cookbooks lately that i think are worth a look.

The Italian Slow Cooker by Michele Scicolone - I made her pork ragu and served it over oven baked polenta for me and fresh rigatoni for him. I also made a big batch of Giant White Limas in the crockpot with sage and garlic.  Both worthy of a repeat.

I'm finally getting around to reading Simon Hopkinson's Roast Chicken and other Stories. Gorgeously written.  I've made his Cod and chips for my Englishman and the chicken liver terrine with my homemade lardo.

Washoku: Recipes from a Japanese Home Kitchen by Elizabeth Andoh

Back with some real cooking soon.

America’s Crab @ McCormick & Schmick’s

"This land is your land, this land is my land...."

Right now, McCormick & Schmick’s Seafood Restaurants are giving guests the opportunity to “Discover America’s Crab” with a special menu showcasing several varieties and preparation styles for crab. With everything from Regional Crab Cakes to King Crab Legs to Lobster Ravioli Topped with Blue Crab on the menu, there’s something to please every palate.


Many people wonder which crab dish to order when faced with a variety of mouthwatering choices. King Crab, Dungeness Crab, Blue Crab, Rock Crab – they all have their own unique attributes and taste profiles! Therefore, I prepared a handy "Crab 101" cheat sheet for the next time you are out to dinner (just cut on the dotted lines!)

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Dungeness Crab is a tender white meat, known for a delicate, sweet flavor. The estimated life span of the Dungeness crab is between eight and 13 years

King Crab is known for meaty claws and legs and a full, rich flavor. The size of a King crab can be up to six feet from toe to toe.

Blue Crab has a tender texture with a rich, buttery taste. Blue crabs walk sideways on their middle three pairs of legs.
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 Ok enough with the edumacation lession, onto the menu items!





Due to the overwhelmingly positive response from the Kiss a Stranger promotion I posted previously, McCormick and Schmick's wants to reward another financefoodie.com reader with a special gift. This time, they treating one lucky fan with lunch, dinner, or happy hour in the form of a $25 McCormick and Schmick's gift card!

There are FOUR ways to enter:
1. In my comments section, tell me what item on the above "Discover America's Crab" menu you are most excited to try (mine is the 1 pound King Crab Leg Dinner!)
2. Follow Finance Foodie on Twitter (leave separate comment telling me this)
3. Follow McCormick & Schmick's on Twitter (leave separate comment telling me this)
4. Reblog / Retweet this giveaway (leave separate comment telling me this)

Contest ends on March 25, 2010 at 5pm EST. Winners will be chosen via random integer generator on random.org announced on the financefoodie.com site shortly afterwards that night!