I’m still marveling over the food with the friend I’ve shared it with, as well as the couple at the table to my right. I’m still excited when that 14th course - a wee pot of salted chocolate mousse - hits the table. Multicourse tasting menus often leave me feeling physically terrible, my taste buds blown out and my curiosity deadened: I just want to go home and go to sleep. The staff is informal and informative we’re all hanging out, appreciating food together. Caruso previously worked at Fox & the Knife, and like the South Boston restaurant, Nightshade Noodle Bar features a strong amaro program. Throughout, there are well-paired things to drink: the Saigon Cigar Club, a cocktail of bourbon, black cardamom, and Thai banana I have to order every time I visit the 2021 Brooks “Amycas” from the Willamette Valley, a blend of white grapes that seems made for this food. There is crunch and acid, warm spice and heat. The rich and unctuous alternate with the crisp and vegetal. Kabocha bot chien - rice cakes with cider-braised squash, crisp, juicy confit duck tongues, scrambled duck egg, fermented green chile sauce, and pickled vegetables. It’s insane, overwhelming, and weird, but I really love it.” “I had no intention of coming out here and opening an expensive tasting-menu restaurant,” Miller says by phone. Besides, their customers naturally gravitate toward the tasting menus. Finding experienced kitchen staff is difficult, and dividing their already stretched attention between a la carte dishes and tasting menus unworkable. Miller and her partner, service and beverage director Alexandra Caruso, also work as line cooks, in addition to making the baguette sandwiches and other prepared foods for their adjacent Sin City Superette, opened in July and selling everything from Campbell’s soup to caviar. Diners can request up to two dishes from the menu be included the rest is decided by the bare-bones kitchen staff. Walker/Globe StaffĬircumstances have transformed the restaurant, which now serves tasting menus and nothing but - of seven, nine, 12, and 14 courses, with a five-course option available on Thursdays. Owner Rachel Miller and her partner, service and beverage director Alexandra Caruso, also work as line cooks at Nightshade Noodle Bar, in addition to making the sandwiches and other prepared foods for their adjacent Sin City Superette. On any given night, a diner might discover chilled percebes, goose barnacles from Portugal that look like baby dragon toes, to be twisted messily from their skins and dipped in lime-pepper sauce lobster glace, like a savory seafood cappuccino, aromatic with butter and vanilla grilled coconut sticky rice with caramelized clay-pot foie gras and Amarena cherries. When a small coffee shop became available in downtown Lynn, she took it over, transforming it into an intimate, atmospheric, plant-filled gem with a menu inspired by Vietnamese and French cuisine. The name is so perfectly evocative: something that blooms, something nocturnal, something a little bit occult. After years working in high-end kitchens around Boston - Bondir, Clio - in 2017 she started a pop-up called Nightshade. Rachel Miller is the chef and owner, vision-haver and chief bottle-washer. Nightshade Noodle Bar is the product of a vision so personal and specific it could belong to no one else. But they cannot compromise on vision, because that is them. What I am sure of is this: Some chefs are artists. Is food art? We can debate that till the grass-fed cows come home. It is a salute to the region’s culinary excellence it also tells a story about what excellence means in 2022. Second in a five-part series: Paused during the pandemic, restaurant reviews return with a celebration - five consecutive 5-star reviews, the highest possible ranking. More 5 star reviews: Sarma, the universal favorite
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