The comfort of strangers

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.