Red, white and...blah

It's always bothered me that American "cuisine" is either deep fat-fried, stolen in part from some other country (I'm looking at you TexMex) or just plain boring. Why did we get stuck with fried fucking Oreos as the pinnacle of our culinary offerings when Thailand gets to parade around sticking Kaffir lime leaves into their coconut curries, Mexico pimps mind blowing sauces like mole and China has jellyfish salad? Don't even get me started on French food because although they are white-flag wavin' little bitches, they know how to cook. Given my general dislike of American food, it baffles me as to why I thought my experience would be different at Joe's American Bar and Grill.

Joe's is a chain and there are a bunch of different locations but Tommy and I plus his third-wheelin' best friend Taggart chose the one on Newbury street. It's right across from Stephanie's on Newbury, which is delicious, and I had a strong urge to make a U-turn and head straight into the waiting arms of some truly beautifully braised lamb shank that I knew was waiting for me in Stephanie's.

I should have made the U-turn. Joe's is a fine place to eat under four circumstances:
A. you are close to starvation or

B. you don't know any better or
C. you have no expectations
D. Yelp gave it 4 stars and you fell for it

Tommy and I were consequences of circumstance D.

Here's the basic rundown if you don't feel like reading the rest of this:
Our waitress rushed us along, the food was greasy and unimpressive, the bathroom was dirty, it was unbelievably noisy and I wouldn't go back unless it was the only restaurant left standing post-nuclear Armageddon.

Taggart was displeased to find out that the lemonade was by the glass...when we got the bill. Sneaky motherfuckers.

We ordered a nachos grande appetizer and it was, in true American fashion, grande. The calorie count on the thing could have fed all of Somalia. It wasn't bad, but I am a snob and found the ice-cream shaped globs of sour cream and guacamole on top of the nacho  mountain unappetizing.

Taggart got a sirloin and mashed potatoes, Tommy got fish and chips and I ordered a chicken Caesar salad. When our meals got to the table, it was immediately clear that plating was not something they covered in training the line cooks. I actually laughed when our waitress set down Tag's plate:







They also don't know what medium-rare looks like; Taggart said his steak was reasonably overdone, if not well seasoned. He said the mashed potatoes were good though.

Tommy's fish and chips were equally unimpressive. Though he ate most of them, he said the breading-to-fish ratio was lacking, and he prefers a thicker coating of breadcrumbs on his fish and chips.

My salad was laughable, but maybe I deserved what I got. It was a head of iceberg lettuce, chopped and drowned in bottled Caesar dressing. The grilled chicken was fine, but I could have made better at home and I'm a terrible griller so that's saying something.

I'm always a lot more picky than Tommy but I think the issue with Joe's is really that what we call "American" is really just other country's food done poorly. Fish and chips is British, nachos are (ostensibly) Latin, Caesar salad was Italian long ago. And no one country can really claim 'steak' as a native food. Beyond the bad cooking, the rushed feeling of the meal, the dirty paper towels all over the floor of the bathroom, it was inauthentic. If you're going to serve burgers and fries, do it well. If you're going to serve TexMex or quasi-Italian, do it well. It would also be nice if I could find a truly American restaurant serving native American cuisine. Now that is a culinary adventure I look forward to.

Rating:
2 stars

http://www.joesamerican.com/index.cfm/page/Home

It's not easy being nice

Ed. note: If you're looking for my typical snarky opinions in this review of The Paramount, stop looking. I actually have good things to say. Let me say here and now how painful it is for me to be nice and let that reflect upon the quality of the restaurant.

In Boston's upscale Beacon Hill neighborhood on a cobblestone street lined with stores I can't even afford to walk into is The Paramount. A diner slash cafeteria with only maybe a dozen tables, The Paramount has been around since 1937 and is still going strong.

I've been to Paramount twice: the first time, the line was so far out the door I just kept walking. The second time was a few weekends ago, when Tommy and I went on a Friday morning to avoid the weekend hangover brunch rush. The line was still almost out the door, but apparently that's about as short as it gets.





To order your food at The Paramount, you wait in line until you get up to the long griddle behind the counter, above which is painted the menu. Shout your order to one of the grill guys, grab a tray and slide down the metal counter, receive and pay for your food, and get a table. Yes, table last. Very high school cafeteria-esque, except the food is so much better than anything a high school could ever hope to emulate.





 Though breakfast-y items take up a good portion of the menu, there's also a section for hefty sandwiches and burgers, some truly delicious sounding salads and a whole host of dinner classics like chicken Marsala and various teriyaki glazed meats. I wish I was going back up to Beantown anytime soon so I could get the crab cake BLT.

Let me repeat: CRAB CAKE BLT. HOLY SHIT.

Anyway, after a pretty extensive wait, Tommy and I finally got to order. I got the french toast with strawberries and bananas, he got the huevos rancheros. I was very nearly coerced into ordering the caramel banana french toast (so someone could eat 95% of it) but I held firm and I'm glad I did.

Our table was right across from the grill so we sort of had people all up in our business the whole time we were eating but it didn't matter. The food was that good.

The french toast, albeit a little greasy, was light and fluffy and they certainly did not skimp on the fresh fruit topping. I also got orange juice, only because it was freshly squeezed and not from concentrate or from a bottle like every other restaurant. So delicious. Like living inside a fresh Florida orange.

Tommy's huevos came with a couple slices of fresh avocado and some truly excellent salsa fresca -- the flavors were simple and perfect. Tomatoes, onion, cilantro and a little bit of heat. So good.

As usual, Tommy ate both of our meals and I was sorry I let him. I have since dreamed about that french toast, covered in syrup and hulled strawberries and huge chunks of bananas. Holy shit. I'm drooling all over my keyboard.

In short: it's worth the wait. The place isn't cheap, but it's well worth the price. Let the fact that my usual meanness was almost totally gone in this review speak for itself.

www.paramountboston.com

I know you can be overwhelmed, and I know you can be underwhelmed but can you ever just be like...whelmed?

...I think you can at Assaggio. This restaurant, set in Boston's version of Little Italy called the North End wasn't good or bad. Just forgettable.

Since my boyfriend and I started seeing each other, around this time last year, I have visited him in Boston six times and on each visit we go out to dinner in the North End and then to Mike's Pastry (a blissfully, deliciously orgasmic experience of cannoli). There have been very good and very bad and on this occasion, very forgettable.

Perhaps we should have been suspicious when we called to make a reservation for Saturday night the same afternoon and had no problem getting our requested time. Usually we have to eat at some absurdly late hour just to get a table. Not so at Assaggio.

The dining room was small, but not terribly cramped. We were seated promptly and service was pretty good throughout the night. The decor is mostly mural-based: think fat baby cherubs, Corinthian columns and astrological signs on the ceiling. My boyfriend found this questionable.

We started with an appetizer of calamari...which was $10. I'm sorry, but when did fried squid get so fucking expensive? Everywhere else I see calamari it's like, $8 tops. I think we were taken for a ride. They did give us a hefty serving of it but it was only warm and I prefer my food somewhere around 'lowest level of Hell' hot. Whatever, it was good enough.

Tommy, my boyfriend, (he will be referred to by name from now on, much to his displeasure I assume. Sorry babe.) ordered cheese ravioli like he always does. Seriously, it's not like the boy has a timid palate. He once ate unidentifiable seafood substance in a restaurant where we were the only native English speakers (another story) but he only orders cheese ravioli when we go out to dinner at an Italian place. Go figure. Anyway, he ordered that and I ordered grilled swordfish that was supposed to come with shallots, capers and a white wine butter sauce.

Anyone who knows me also knows that my stomach is evil and will not allow me to eat anything that tastes good. This means things with heavy cream, butter, oil, fried foods, the list goes on and on. Don't tell me how sorry you are for me and how badly my life sucks, I already know. So shut up. My waitress assured me that I could get the fish without the butter sauce and I was happy. I like capers. They taste like seawater and I find that appetizing.

We get our meals about 15 minutes after they take the calamari away which I thought was good. It wasn't so long that I was tempted to go all 'where the fuck is my food, garcon?' but not so quickly that I felt rushed. Tommy got five ravioli and I got a plain piece of grilled swordfish (no capers or shallots?!) with mashed potatoes and sauteed spinach.

Let me say here that five ravioli is not enough for Tommy. Aside from being a boy, he is also an athlete which means that he eats more than seven of me put together. My portion: huge. His portion: pitiful. We should have traded.

I tried a bite of his ravioli. They were fine, nothing to write home about, but the marinara sauce was pretty good. Nice and velvety. Then again, marinara sauce is hard to fuck up.

My dinner was fucking boring. I said no butter sauce, not no flavoring. The mashed potatoes (which I obviously couldn't eat being that the main ingredients are potatoes, butter and cream) were oddly runny which was unappealing. The sauteed spinach was tasty though and not drowned in oil as so many vegetables are nowadays. The piece of swordfish they gave me was a good one, and nicely cooked but that does not make up for the fact that there was just no flavor to it. That's crap.

Anyway, dinner after that point was unremarkable. Tommy finished most of the rest of my dinner (there were about two servings of fish and spinach on my plate) and we paid and left. It was moderately priced which was nice.

Final thoughts: it wasn't disappointing enough to be bad but it wasn't great enough to be good. It was just another Italian restaurant with astrological signs painted on the ceiling and reasonably good marinara sauce. One to forget.

3 (dim) stars

http://www.assaggioboston.com/