Toro
1704 Washington St
Boston, MA 02118
617-536-4300
I read Michael Ruhlman’s The Soul of a Chef recently, and was astounded by the bit in which he reveals that on a particular night, Tom Keller and his kitchen at the French Laundry had produced a total of nearly seventy different dishes. At a restaurant where dishes are known to be diverse, innovative, and laborious to prepare, this feat is quite humbling. It is even more humbling when you figure that a significant number of those dishes were probably made up on the spot. It made me wonder just how well-oiled a machine the kitchen line can be when at its best, and gave me a newfound respect for restaurants that offer tasting menus, even multiple tasting menus – as the French Laundry does – or, otherwise, serve dishes tapas-style.
It was in this frame of mind, then, that I visited Toro – a Ken Oringer establishment in the South End of Boston’s Back Bay – that had been highly recommended by two dear friends. I had been instructed to “whatever you do, get the ceviche” by Reed, while Margaret had personally agreed to come along, but not before the requisite raving about the place. I roped in Allison – new to the area – and Jeffrey – who had lived in Cambridge for a year but was a self-confessed novice to the areas across the Charles. I was a little worried that they would not get along, but these fears were soon proved to be unfounded.
I got off work early – which always puts me in a good mood – and after some orchestration via cellphone, was soon on my way to meet Jeffrey and Allison for a pre-dinner coffee. The air was crisp with the smell of a newly-arrived fall, and the conversation flowed easily as we crowded around a small table top in a coffee place on Massachusetts Ave. There is a poignancy about the cusps of seasons – as if the world is flush with the hope of a new beginning, yet silently struggling to close the chapter on the old.
Margaret soon arrived to pick us all up, and we crowded excitedly into the car. She had evidently just taken a shower; for she smelled of flowers and minerals and her hair was wet and streaky. She looked lovely. We barreled forward to the restaurant, and Jeff filled the car with his chatter about the buildings on either side of us. He is doing a Masters in Urban Planning, and having seen and heard the way he talks and thinks about buildings and spaces and his whole conception of place, I am hard-pressed to think of anyone else doing anything so true to his or her calling.
Toro does not take reservations, so we stood by the bar to wait for a table of 4 to open up. It is housed in what used to be a meat market, and has dark sensuous walls of exposed brick. There is a fireplace in the back, behind the bread counter, and the semi-open kitchen next to it flows uninterrupted into an elegant bar area. Large mirrors adorn the walls, making the space appear bigger than it actually is, and there are two long communal tables in the center of the room for cafeteria-style dining. Jeff ordered some red wine sangria, which needed a little more sugar and a whole lot more wine, but was quite delicious nonetheless.
The wait extended far beyond the promised 20 minutes, which would have rankled more if not for the easy conversation. The hostess was also exceedingly pleasant and acceded to our request to start ordering. Once we had done so, however, the food arrived almost instantaneously. It was a curious phenomenon. We started with olives, cheese-stuffed dates wrapped in jamon serrano, a potato-onion omelette, and a dish of cuttlefish in squid ink. The latter was my favourite as it reminded me of a dish I used to have as a child, when we would go to my grandmother’s for dinner. For the longest time I always thought that she made it, so when I eventually found out that it was store-bought it marked a critical piece in my jigsaw of growing up.
When we were eventually seated it was near to the kitchen, and we immediately set about the business of ordering more food. The thing about tapas is that it is the perfect food for the indecisive; but leave four indecisive people with a menu of 30-something choices and ask them to whittle that down to 10 or 12, and we could have been there all night. There were some things we couldn’t do without: Reed’s recommendation of the octopus ceviche, the grilled corn with alioli and contija cheese which Margaret said was the restaurant’s signature, and the deep-fried salt-cod fritters that I had a fixing for. But the other choices were tough ones to make, and once the die had been cast and the orders placed I immediately felt a tinge or two of regret.
The tapas started arriving immediately, which suited our ravenous selves very well indeed. The ceviche was, as promised, out of this world. It was flavoured in a yellow pepper sauce, with plenty of cilantro and mint and had a tangy but not caustic aftertaste. That, and the corn, justified their recommendations; the corn being an explosion of buttery and milky flavor accentuated with lime. Other standouts were the Kobe sliders (not even remotely Spanish, but delicious nonetheless) and the smoked duck drumettes. There were a couple of misses too, though, including the wild mushroom sauté – which did not have a precise flavor profile and could also have stood being cooked a little longer – and the sweetbreads, which had been left out for too long and had become slightly soggy once it got to us. We had also ordered the seafood paella, which came in a huge pan that took up most of the precious real estate on the table. It was cooked well even though it could have used more saffron. Yet there was an abundance of clams and mussels to go around, and so we could not complain.
All through dinner the conversation flowed like wine, and I felt genuinely happy to be amongst friends who I had not seen in a while. I did not know how everyone else felt, for meeting new people is a challenge that is both scary and exciting, much less dining with them. But there was no awkwardness, and we each found and fell into a comfortable groove as the night wore on.
The very best dining experiences are predicated on the façade that everything in the here and now – the front of the house, the back of the house, the house itself, décor, ambience, music – is working harmoniously towards the complete enjoyment of the diner. The best restaurants keep up this façade: waitstaff never appear hurried or harried, tables never look like they are uncleaned, and the food is done right, done well, and done with pride.
At the end of the night, I realised why the wait for tables was so long, while the wait for the food was almost non-existent. The way I figure it, the kitchen and waitstaff would have no problem handling more tables and more turns, but because the restaurant is such a great place to linger and the whole concept of tapas encourages this behaviour, actually seating diners is a problem. Despite the wait time, Toro did a good job of keeping up the façade that night, and that only added a welcome gloss to what was a perfectly enjoyable evening.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
When the moon hits your eyes like a big pizza pie
La Stanza Diva Fiorentino
315 Main St
Woburn, MA 01801
781-935-3088
“Oh, but you must have some wine.” Her tone was one of grave concern, and the look on her face matched it perfectly. “I’ll see what I can find.”
The hostess at La Stanza Diva Fiorentino bustled away purposefully, and within minutes had returned with two magnum-sized bottles of red wine. “Which would you like?”
“Chianti.” I said, and she smiled as though I had given the right answer, as she filled my glass. Neither of my dining companions that night wanted any wine, and the hostess seemed disappointed. But she brightened almost immediately, and shot me a conspiratorial look. “I’ll just pour another one for you, then, just in case you want more.” It was as if she believed that you should never pour just one drink.
We were at La Stanza Diva Fiorentino, a home-style Italian restaurant nestled in the sleepy Boston suburb of Woburn, MA. The place was BYOB, and does not serve alcohol. I had been lucky that night: there had been a large group present as part of a wedding rehearsal that was winding down, and plenty of unfinished bottles of wine calling out to be drunk, as I was calling out to drink them.
La Stanza Diva is housed in an unassuming brick building, marked from the outside by only its green awning. But once you step inside, though, there is nothing in the restaurant that does not reach out to you. The interior of the restaurant is cavernous and poorly lit, but somehow comforting and welcoming. Home Goods decorations and all manner of baubles and knick-knacks adorn every corner, with no discernible theme – it is like the house of your middle school best friend with the crazy mother with the Zimbabwean horse sculpture thing at the door, where you used to hang out after school. It is kitschy, zany, cluttered, yet at the same time just plain fun.
The menu is made up of disparate photocopied handwritten sheets, stapled together and dog-eared at the corners, the dishes spelled out in a hand that is almost child-like. Yet it is so much fun thumbing through the many sheets – I doubt I have enjoyed myself as much looking through a menu anywhere else. There is all manner of foods available – the classic Italian staples, as well as more exotic game such as alligator and kangaroo and frogs’ legs. I am tempted to try these, but the whole reason for our going there was my craving for Italian, so I settle for a more conservative choice of veal scaloppini. We order calamari for the table to share, and settle back to take in the surroundings.
The restaurant seems a firm believer that one should never take oneself too seriously. In addition to the décor, it was also playing the soundtrack to the Godfather in the background. Whether or not that was done with a touch of irony, I shall never know. It was almost too much – without being so. Come to think of it, the few patrons that were scattered in pockets around the restaurant when we walked in had eyed us with a wary look of suspicion, almost Mafioso-like in its distrust. If there had been any way to be more conspicuous as out-of-towners, I did not know it.
But once the food arrived my edginess disappeared, and I began – as I am wont to do while eating – to become chattier. Perhaps it was the wine, but I like to think it was the enjoyment of simple, homestyle Italian done well. The calamari was lightly breaded and fried for just the right amount of time so that the squid was still juicy and springy when bit into. The marinara dipping sauce had milk in it, which balanced the acidity of the tomatoes perfectly and made for a sweet and tangy complement to the calamari. It was textbook Italian, and I was loving it.
I had balked a little earlier at the prices listed on the menu, but once the entrées arrived I understood completely. The portions were huge, almost enough for two meals, and were served with a side (!) of spaghetti and meatballs. This was Italian done in the good old days where everyone ate as if it were their last meal, and stayed at the table for hours on end, and nobody left the table anything but completely, utterly and absolutely stuffed. Indeed, there were at least two tables there that had looked as though they were finished with their meals when we sat down to eat, yet had not left when we got up to go.
My veal came done in a rich, brown sauce cooked down to a perfectly nappe consistency, with a hint of sherry. I felt it almost criminal to leave half of the food on the plate, but in my defence I also got further than any of the others at the table. The waitress smiled beatifically – at me, I like to think – when she came by at the end of our meal; I wondered if she was proud of our veritable showings in polishing off whatever had been put in front of us, or merely laughing inside at the pathetic futility of our efforts.
I am a fan of heavy dinners rather than heavy lunches, and I could feel my eyelids drooping in the car ride back to the hotel. I felt as if I had just intruded upon a well-hidden local neighbourhood secret, and yet been welcomed not as the stranger that I was, but as one of the famiglia – well-fed, well taken care of, and sent back on my way well-rested.
315 Main St
Woburn, MA 01801
781-935-3088
“Oh, but you must have some wine.” Her tone was one of grave concern, and the look on her face matched it perfectly. “I’ll see what I can find.”
The hostess at La Stanza Diva Fiorentino bustled away purposefully, and within minutes had returned with two magnum-sized bottles of red wine. “Which would you like?”
“Chianti.” I said, and she smiled as though I had given the right answer, as she filled my glass. Neither of my dining companions that night wanted any wine, and the hostess seemed disappointed. But she brightened almost immediately, and shot me a conspiratorial look. “I’ll just pour another one for you, then, just in case you want more.” It was as if she believed that you should never pour just one drink.
We were at La Stanza Diva Fiorentino, a home-style Italian restaurant nestled in the sleepy Boston suburb of Woburn, MA. The place was BYOB, and does not serve alcohol. I had been lucky that night: there had been a large group present as part of a wedding rehearsal that was winding down, and plenty of unfinished bottles of wine calling out to be drunk, as I was calling out to drink them.
La Stanza Diva is housed in an unassuming brick building, marked from the outside by only its green awning. But once you step inside, though, there is nothing in the restaurant that does not reach out to you. The interior of the restaurant is cavernous and poorly lit, but somehow comforting and welcoming. Home Goods decorations and all manner of baubles and knick-knacks adorn every corner, with no discernible theme – it is like the house of your middle school best friend with the crazy mother with the Zimbabwean horse sculpture thing at the door, where you used to hang out after school. It is kitschy, zany, cluttered, yet at the same time just plain fun.
The menu is made up of disparate photocopied handwritten sheets, stapled together and dog-eared at the corners, the dishes spelled out in a hand that is almost child-like. Yet it is so much fun thumbing through the many sheets – I doubt I have enjoyed myself as much looking through a menu anywhere else. There is all manner of foods available – the classic Italian staples, as well as more exotic game such as alligator and kangaroo and frogs’ legs. I am tempted to try these, but the whole reason for our going there was my craving for Italian, so I settle for a more conservative choice of veal scaloppini. We order calamari for the table to share, and settle back to take in the surroundings.
The restaurant seems a firm believer that one should never take oneself too seriously. In addition to the décor, it was also playing the soundtrack to the Godfather in the background. Whether or not that was done with a touch of irony, I shall never know. It was almost too much – without being so. Come to think of it, the few patrons that were scattered in pockets around the restaurant when we walked in had eyed us with a wary look of suspicion, almost Mafioso-like in its distrust. If there had been any way to be more conspicuous as out-of-towners, I did not know it.
But once the food arrived my edginess disappeared, and I began – as I am wont to do while eating – to become chattier. Perhaps it was the wine, but I like to think it was the enjoyment of simple, homestyle Italian done well. The calamari was lightly breaded and fried for just the right amount of time so that the squid was still juicy and springy when bit into. The marinara dipping sauce had milk in it, which balanced the acidity of the tomatoes perfectly and made for a sweet and tangy complement to the calamari. It was textbook Italian, and I was loving it.
I had balked a little earlier at the prices listed on the menu, but once the entrées arrived I understood completely. The portions were huge, almost enough for two meals, and were served with a side (!) of spaghetti and meatballs. This was Italian done in the good old days where everyone ate as if it were their last meal, and stayed at the table for hours on end, and nobody left the table anything but completely, utterly and absolutely stuffed. Indeed, there were at least two tables there that had looked as though they were finished with their meals when we sat down to eat, yet had not left when we got up to go.
My veal came done in a rich, brown sauce cooked down to a perfectly nappe consistency, with a hint of sherry. I felt it almost criminal to leave half of the food on the plate, but in my defence I also got further than any of the others at the table. The waitress smiled beatifically – at me, I like to think – when she came by at the end of our meal; I wondered if she was proud of our veritable showings in polishing off whatever had been put in front of us, or merely laughing inside at the pathetic futility of our efforts.
I am a fan of heavy dinners rather than heavy lunches, and I could feel my eyelids drooping in the car ride back to the hotel. I felt as if I had just intruded upon a well-hidden local neighbourhood secret, and yet been welcomed not as the stranger that I was, but as one of the famiglia – well-fed, well taken care of, and sent back on my way well-rested.
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