Boston's Restaurant Week is a chance for those of us who could usually never afford to go to a fancy restaurant to get lost downtown and experience high scale portion control for a fraction of the price. That fraction is still large enough to be more than I want to pay for a meal again for the rest of the year, but the experience was worth it. I won't be eating another meal this fancy for quite some time, unless someone else offers to pay!
The restaurant I went to, with Molly and Kristen from school, is called Masa. It bills itself as "Southwest," both in cuisine and decor. While the food may loosely fit that description, the decor really doesn't. In fact, I would call the look of the place schitzophrenic--it doesn't know what region to emulate. The fake palm tree and tall grass separating the dining area from the bar really don't match the tables on the other side of the room (pictured below). It looked nice, I just wasn't sure what it was trying to be.
The menu being limited, the three of us ended up ordering almost the same thing for the entire meal. This included drinks. Flavor of choice was a raspberry mojito. It was good (read: tasted more like raspberry than alcohol). I seem to prefer drinks made with rum, and have apparently fallen into a pattern of having one once a year or so. We were already splurging tonight so I figured, why not.
The one piece of variety in our orders was my appetizer. While the other girls had fairly standard salads, I opted for the duck empanada with Mexican chocolate BBQ sauce and tangy watercress salad. I've never seen such presentation for something that ended up looking like a glorified pizza roll. It tasted good, but it looked ridiculous on that plate. Sadly, the sauce tasted only like BBQ, with the tiniest hint of vague "otherness" that didn't quite remind me of chocolate. It was really good, though. There really was duck (among other things) inside that pizza roll.
For the main course all three of us ordered the same thing: Southwestern style steak frites with chile dusted frites, chile lime arugula salad and Guajillo bourbon sauce. The only variety on the table at this point was the cooking of the steaks: meduim rare, medium, and medium well. Okay, so not actual variety there either. It was good, though. The sauce was quite tasty, and the meat was tender and juicy. Accustomed as I am to cafeteria food, it's been quite some time since I've had red meat of this quality. Enjoying a steak this good makes me feel sorry for vegetarians. That dejected-looking pile of greens next to it claimed to be a salad. the lime had a pleasant bite to it, but I didn't waste much time on the greens with a piece of meat this good! The fries were also tasty, though we couldn't figure out whether it would be more appropriate to eat them with forks or fingers. I opted for the fork, simply because it sounded like more fun.
Dessert was distressingly small. Reading the menu online, I had gotten very excited for the
chocolate molten cake with raspberry sauce and vanilla bean ice cream. Imagine my dismay when the plate was brought out and the cake proved to be the size of two oreos. Lovely presentation, but as a chocoholic, I wanted more. And the center wasn't really molten by the time it got to the table--just soft and fudgey. The raspberry sauce really classed it up, as well as using vanilla bean instead of just vanilla for the ice cream topper. I'm a huge fan of the bean.
One other thing about the night should be mentioned. We almost didn't make it to our dinner reservation. In fact, we were five minutes late, but I choose to blame the Metropolitan Boston Transit Authority. And whoever named the streets in South Boston. The restaurant is on Tremont St., which is only a short walk from the Boylston T stop (not Arlington, where MBTA told us to get off). What we didn't realize until it was too late is that there is not just one Tremont St. In fact, there are three. One of them is very short and intersects the other two. The first Tremont St. we took was not the right Tremont. We had to get to the 400 block, but after the 300 block, our Tremont turned into Shawmut. It didn't even turn, just crossed the Mass Turnpike. At this point we consulted a giant tourist map on the corner and discovered what the problem was. The correct Tremont (at least, what we hoped was the correct one) was a block to the South. So we scampered back down the road, found the other Tremont and our restaurant. Walking back along the second Tremont, we found where the third Tremond intersects it. The intersection may not seem as surprising to my father and his siblings who grew up down the hill from the corner of Braemer and Braemer, but streets should not do this sort of thing:
In spite of the street confusion, it was a good night out. Maybe I'll even do it again next year.
-Kim
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