It's a friend thing, friends are everywhere

Stella
1525 Washington St
Boston, MA 02118
617-247-7747

Worlds colliding is always a tricky thing, but I keep trying to orchestrate it because it is so hard to meet good people these days that it seems unjust not to try to bring said good people together. And so it was that I had dinner on Saturday night in Boston with Reed and Margaret and Sarah – each a wonderful friend from a different time in my life. Dinner was delightful: if there was any tension at the table I was most certainly oblivious to it – I am after all not the most sensitive of souls, and particularly not when there is good food to be eaten and good (enough) wine to be drunk.

I must confess that I was not initially impressed by Stella – I had a glass of very ordinary Tempranillo at the bar, and am also generally not a huge fan of the white-on-white, South Beach mod look with clean lines and back-lighting and lots of vertical space. Let’s just say that I have never eaten good food off of a Philippe Starck table. But the staff was charming and pleasant, and the bartender as cute as a button. I have somewhat of a thing for bartenders: for at the risk of sounding misogynistic I must ask, what manner of woman could be better than one who brings you alcohol? So I held off judgment on the place, and basked instead in the company of these dear friends from whom I have been separated not by choice but by circumstance.

As a primo I had linguini in an asparagus cream sauce infused with truffle and thyme, served with a poached egg. It was, to the chef’s credit, a very light dish – almost too light, for it left me craving a stronger hint of truffle. (Apparently Reed and Margaret – gourmet convenience cooks that they are – are exponents of the pasta-and-egg combination. I shudder to think what other atrocities have been served in the halls of 17 Pitman. Margaret has never cooked for me, but I have seen a picture of her making pasta – so she can and does cook, that much I know. I liked that picture because both Margaret and the pasta looked extremely delicious.)

But my secondo was fabulous – a spicy cioppino with mussels and shrimp and cod and potatoes, the latter being a very rustic Portuguese touch, I feel. It was almost the perfect consistency, with the various bits of seafood still maintaining their structure and texture – not cooked to death, as is the danger when making stews. To explain, cioppino is a fish stew with Mediterranean influences that apparently originated on the shores of California thanks to Genovese fishermen – much in the style of bouillabaisse, but earthier and cooked for a shorter period of time. Seafood is all so tasty that I can never make up my mind what to eat, and cioppino removes that dilemma altogether. This is also why I am a fan of other stew-type dishes like cassoulet and bouillabaisse and étouffée. I mean, the words themselves make my mouth water.

Reed got a pork Milanese that she took literally two bites of and then had packed to go. It looked mighty fine and had I been able to stuff anything else in my mouth I would certainly have tried to make a go of finishing it for her. I cannot eat like I used to anymore, and it pains me - for the one requisite for any serious gourmand is, of course, a healthy appetite.

So Stella was a nice surprise – a see-and-be-seen place with food that is surprisingly more than decent and prices that are more than reasonable. The various regional dishes do approximate quite admirably the Italian cuisines they are meant to evoke, and our waiter’s endearing earnestness was quite charming indeed. Curiously enough, his name according to the receipt was also Jason H, so we left him a good tip and went off to ply ourselves with more alcohol elsewhere.