A Casual New York Weekend

You may be wondering why a title like "Casual New York Weekend" is followed by a photo of the opulent grand ballroom at the historic Waldorf Astoria.

I guess it's a bit incongruous for me say any trip is "casual" when Bryan has to bring his tux and I have to find some pretty dress. But really, that was as fancy as it got. After all, the whole ballroom thing was the "required" part of the trip. You see, I was in New York for business, attending a work dinner in that huge ballroom at the Waldorf Astoria. That part is the same every year.

In the past, we often made it a habit to check out the fine dining that this city has to offer.

But this time was different.

Perhaps it was because I had just spent over a week eating (and cooking!) like crazy in Thailand. Or maybe I was still "recovering" from the extended tasting menus from my Las Vegas trip earlier. Whatever the reason, I really just didn't feel like eating any loooong tasting menus.*

So we went a different route. We sought out some more casual places. We had "home-cooked" dinner at a cousin's home. We even managed to squeeze in a few old favorites.

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80 Thoreau

"After you get off Route 2, run right on Walden Street, and then turn left on Thoreau."

We chuckled a bit as we listened to ourselves talk, but we weren't making this up. These are actual street names in Concord, Massachusetts, a town about 45 minutes north of Boston. In fact, the legendary Walden Pond where Henry David Thoreau penned his famous book Walden is just down street from our destination.

And yes, it's that Concord - the historic other half of "Lexington and Concord". 

I was in a car with three of my other female friends. We were going out solo - without the husbands - to celebrate my friend Liz's birthday. We wanted to go somewhere special, yet we also had to take into the major consideration that Liz was very very (we're talking close to nine months) pregnant (aka no fancy sushi or grand wine pairings).

Our choices were immediately limited severely by the fact that Liz's birthday just happened to land on the day of Boston University's graduation.

Uh oh. Every single reasonably nice restaurant in Boston was booked solid. A brief search through Opentable gave very unsatisfying results.

Thankfully, Liz decided to go outside the box (and the city) and found us a reservation at 80 Thoreau in Concord. Yes, we would have to drive out a bit, but the reviews for the place were stellar, and Liz had managed to book us the most exclusive and special seats in the house.

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Puritan & Co {SNAPSHOT}

This is a {Snapshot} of Puritan & Co. The original, detailed post about the restaurant as a whole is here.

Bryan and I stopped by Puritan & Co. for the first time this year. We'd visited it a few times last winter, but it somehow fell off our radars for the first half of this year. Even though Will Gilson wasn't in the house (he was at the Nantucket Wine Festival all weekend), the rest of the staff held down the fort admirably in his absence. Service was great, the food was all very good, and we walked away wondering, "why don't we come here more often?"

We started with the citrus marinated scallop (as an amuse bouche), and it was fantastic. The scallop was so sweet, and everything just came together very nicely in that tiny bite. I really was wishing I had actually ordered the appetizer portion of that dish.

Maybe next time.

We had a lovely starter soup that consisted of smoked pork belly, various beans, and a puree made out of . . . ramps perhaps? Alas, I cannot remember. I should have taken notes, but I did not. In any event, it was very, very good. We polished the whole thing off quite quickly. Of course, it was lovely to break that egg open and mix the yolk around with all the other flavorful elements of the dish.

We also tried a Crispy Pig's Head Torchon, which is made by mixing and rolling together various parts of a pig's head (organs are removed!) such as the cheeks, skin, etc. It was a tad rich for me, but Bryan enjoyed it quite a bit.
 Black Pepper Pasta ($17) with dandelion greens, guanciale, and spring garlic was absolutely fantastic. I loved the bitterness of the dandelion greens (my first time trying it!) and the pungent "bite" from the garlic. The freshly made pasta was lovely as well. I would most definitely order this dish again.
We were flabbergasted at how "rare" the lamb was cooked (a very, very good thing) in our entree, called Lamb Three Way. It consisted of lamb belly, lamb loin, and I can't remember the third one, maybe lamb tenderloin? The entire dish was incredibly tender and not too gamey at all. I'm going to hazard a guess that it's American lamb, which has a much milder taste than New Zealand or Australian lamb. Overall, the dish was excellent, with a lovely balance of flavors from fresh, seasonal spring vegetables.

If I go back, I definitely want to order more of that citrus cured scallop, as well as the pasta.

Gosh, I love spring ingredients.

Related Posts
Puritan & Co.
Garden at the Cellar
Cooking Class with Will Gilson
Tomato Vine Tasting Tour with Will Gilson

Puritan & Co.
1166 Cambridge St
Cambridge, MA

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Snapshots

What happens when your blog starts pushing six years old? (I know, hard to believe! Though I guess Tiny Urban Kitchen as an entity didn't start until 2009, but still!)

You start realizing that some of your posts, especially restaurant posts, are becoming more and more outdated. Restaurants often close, completely change their menus, switch up chefs, or go uphill (or downhill) in quality.

To sort of address this (and to avoid continually writing repeat posts about restaurants I've already featured), I've decided to start a new type of post on this blog, which I'll call "Snapshots."

Snapshots won't be like my typical restaurant write-ups, which are detailed and contain all sorts of important information about the chef, menu, history, space, and various other facts. Instead, Snapshots will usually be short, photo-driven posts about a restaurant I've already discussed at length in an earlier post.

I find it's a nice way of updating you on my thoughts regarding current, seasonal menus. It will allow me to share with you many more photos of gorgeous food that, in the past, would have just lived in my computer because I thought "No need to put it on the blog because I already wrote about this restaurant." You'll see more dishes from restaurants I tend to revisit.

I'll always label "Snapshots" as such so you'll know what kind of post to expect. And don't worry, I don't plan to stop writing and just post pictures from now on. I don't intend on Snapshots taking up a huge percentage of the blog. However, I do like having more ways to share information with you whenever I find something cool from a restaurant meal I've enjoyed lately.

I'll start with my first Snapshot this week, and will plan to add more whenever I think I have something that's share-worthy.

Hope you enjoy it, and feel free to give me feedback in anyway.

Jen

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Ramps Pesto

Perhaps I'm ignorant about food, or maybe the craze has just popped up recently, but I had never heard of ramps until about 2 years ago.

And it wasn't until last spring that I tasted ramps for the first time (at a restaurant) and proceeded to fall in love with that pungent, garlicky flavor.

And then it wasn't until this spring - just a couple weeks ago, in fact - that I finally saw them in the market. I pounced on my chance to pick up a few stalks so that I could finally, finally try cooking these gorgeous plants myself.

Ramps, also known as spring onions, wild garlic, or wild leeks, grow wild throughout the forests in Massachusetts and pretty much up and down the East Coast. These vegetables are one of the first things to pop up in the spring, and people go crazy when they appear for their short, short season.

Ramps are not really cultivated, so if you see ramps on the menu or the market, someone has gone out foraging for them. Some have expressed concern about the fanatacism surrounding ramps leading to over harvesting of the delicate plant.  In fact, Quebec has outlawed the sale of ramps since 1995, called it a "threatened" species.

I think ramps are still growing healthily in many parts of New England. However, I wouldn't be surprised if there are patches that have been picked in an unsustainable manner.

With this knowledge and understanding about ramps, I approached my first (and likely only encounter) with ramps this spring with a heightened level of appreciation and awareness.

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