By Greg B. Sushi is a good and healthy dinner for my first night in Boston.  If you eat it often enough, you’ll begin to notice that you’ll brow hungry more quickly.  Why?  Well it is a rather lean dinner, even though one can be stuffed with fish and rice, your body will rapidly digest this and crave more.  At least, that’s how it is for me.  The entire morning I was at the conference, my stomach was rumbling, often at inappropriate times.  Show a picture of a temporal lobe lesion?  *rumble*.   But after a morning of a few interesting lectures, I left the convention center in search of lunch.  And, knowing that very close by was Bukowski’s, I decided to drop in for a quick bite and perhaps a pint.

Well, ‘perhaps a pint’ ended up being two pints, and I will make it back one of these evenings before I head back to Baltimore.  Bukowski’s is a cash only establishment (that’s my kinda place!), with a straight bar of about 30 ft.  But what’s more important is that along this bar and behind it, lurks a really nice beer list.  With 12 beers on tape, 1 cask ale on hand pump, and a small red book of the beers that are on ice behind the bar, Bukowski’s is the kind of place you’d want to go to hang out with your buddies for a night of good beer.  While I inspected the menu, I ordered an Ipswich Oatmeal stout.  I figured I’m already up in Boston, I may as well take the opportunity to drink whatever the locals drink.  The beer pours a dark, impenetrable black color, way darker than I thought it would have.  It also had a very dark khaki head with clung to the glass for dear life as it very slowly, almost imperceptibly slowly receded into the rest of the beer.  Aromas of milk chocolate and coffee stood out at first, and the first sip was very enlightening, as the aromas belied a different flavor character.  The beer was intensely creamy and while I at first suspected the milk chocolate aroma and very creamy mouthfeel to yield a sweeter beer, I was pleasantly surprised when it did not.  The beer has a very dark roasted malt flavor to it, and it ends with a very nice hoppy bite in terms of bitterness.  Usually a lot of stouts will use the dark malts to naturally supply the bitter component to a beer, but in this case, the bitters were definitely from the hops.  An excellent beer.

While I was enjoying the beer, I glanced over the menu.  Nothing too crazy, some usual pub food type stuff, but seeing as how the name was Bukowski’s, I thought it would be a travesty if I didn’t order a sausage of some sort.  So, I got a bratwurst and a side of fries.  The brat is pretty good, a little closer to a weisswurst in color and texture I felt (and in the texture of the sausage casing.  Weisswurst casings are more stretchy and have less ‘snap’, this one also had less ‘snap’ and was more stretchy/chewy).  But it was covered with both an excellent ground mustard and a ton of saurkraut, to which I generously added some mustard.  A good brat and a decent lunch.  However, with this brat I ordered a beer that was an absolute treat to drink.  Not necessarily the best food/beer pairing, but a great beer nonetheless.

So last winter I drank and reviewed an Allagash Black beer.  I didn’t think much of it, kind of watery, some characteristics of Belgian style but not really.  Well I asked the bartender what was on the hand pump, and he responded with the Allagash Black beer.  Alright I thought, it’s handpump, I’d like to see the mouthfeel differences between the bottle I bought in Maryland and the hand pump cask ale in Boston.  Well, there is a WORLD of difference.  The beer pours a beautiful chocolatey brown color with a light tan head.  The aroma is intense Belgian yeast and spices with hints of chocolate.  The mouthfeel is incredibly smooth and creamy, and the taste of the beer was amazing; a magnification of the aroma that you can smell before you drink, but multiply that 42 times.  A beautiful beer.  I don’t  know if they altered their recipe, but I doubt it.  Giving Belgian yeast free range to work in a cellar temp cask on this beer really showed a number of excellent characteristics that were not present in the bottle conditioned version.  If you can find this in cask, you have to try it.  Or, just head on over to Bukowski’s, since I know it’s there! (as of Dec 5th, 2009.  Prohibition repeal day too!)

So I hit the jackpot for lunch.  Dinner was about to also be an excellent revelation about Boston cuisine/dining.  I remembered that the younger sister of an old friend of mine had gone to college in Boston and was(is!) a big time foodie.  So I looked her up searching for recommendations on places in town to eat a nice meal.  Well, it just so happens that not only is she a foodie, but my sense of time is askew (grad school will do this to you) and she had long since graduated from college and moved on to bigger and better things.  These bigger and better things, however, involving managing an excellent restaurant. The Union Bar and Grill.

Despite the nasty weather (sleet/snowy and cold), the restaurant was packed, and I arrived just before the major onslaught of customers.  I chose to sit at the bar, so as to not have one person occupying a two person table on a busy Saturday night, but also to chat with the bartender to get an idea of more beer places around town.  Never just trust the internet, asking locals is probably a more accurate and better way to go about finding great watering holes… though choose wisely who you ask!  In this case, I asked for recommendations regarding the menu, and was informed that the risotto is one of their great appetizers, and the oysters were great as well (there were a few more recommendations, I have to say the food is probably top notch all around!).  So, I went with the sweet corn risotto, and a half dozen oysters.  Again, I’m in Boston .  A dinner without seafood is probably a waste of a dinner!  The beer selection is modest, but had a good amount of depth for a smaller list.  I opted for a pint of Cambridge brewery pumpkin ale.  It was a good, general pumpkin ale with some nutmeg and spice, mild pumpkin flavor and a nice clear light orangey color.  Possibly the nicest thing was that the beers (except for Chimay red) were served in chilled mugs.  While I may have been in a very classy restaurant, drinking from a frozen mug was very pleasing to whatever general and basic male section of the brain is involved in beer seeking/drinking behavior.  While I was enjoying the first pint of beer, I was served a small cast iron pan with cornbread inside.  The cornbread was excellent, not absurdly sweet like the Jiffy cornbread (that’s not to say I don’t enjoy it!), not simply a corn bread that lacks any sweetness like some of the more traditional cornbreads, but somewhere nicely in the middle.  And with the pumpkin ale, this cornbread and a little bit of butter was an excellent combo.  If you go to this restaurant for a diner, you should probably, before you do anything else, order some cornbread and a mug of pumpkin ale.  You’re day will immediately improve.

The first course to arrive was the half dozen oysters on the half shell.  One year ago, I was at Kooper’s tavern in Baltimore for the celebration of national repeal day, the day when Franklin D Roosevelt finally did something good for the country and repealed the prohibition act.  So, Clipper City had generously given a few casks, and Koopers was selling cask beer for the price of beer when Roosevelt passed his bill:  $0.05 a beer.  Awesome.  And outside, they were shucking oysters in preparation for their oyster festival the following day, but giving out samples.  I apparently was the only one brave enough to handle the cold temps for some free oysters (remember to always tip your oyster shucker well, they’re working hard!) and so with my 5 beers, paid in full with a US quarter (amazing.), I stood outside and enjoyed dozens of oysters and enjoyed cheap beer.  It was a great day. Well, one year hence, I found myself inside on a cold day, enjoying a nice beer and about to enjoy some more oysters as well, though in a noticeably swankier setting.  The oysters were great: fresh and quite briny.  Though a nice bit of horseradish cut this brine flavor and added a great salty/spicy combo.  Add a little lemon, and you’ve got everything you’d want from an oyster meal.  While I did try a few with some cocktail sauce, I’m more a fan of the straight up horseradish and lemon.  I think this really clears the nostrils and prepares the mouth to enjoy the flavor of the food you’re about to consume, and it worked nicely with the oysters.  I dont know that the pumpkin ale would have been a great choice for a pairing, but it was alright.

Next I was served a dish of sweet corn risotto. If you want to talk about a hearty appetizer in a generous portion, this option is for you.  One could easily make a simple meal of this appetizer, a beer or two, and maybe a seafood appetizer (the tuna tartare looked pretty good too… next time!) .  The corn was indeed sweet, and it added a very nice texture to an already texture-full dish of risotto.  Bits of chorizo dotted the risotto and added a delicious flavor with a little kick, while bits of diced, fire roasted peppers added an excellent depth of smokey flavor.  For a cold night, this is an excellent appetizer.

While I was almost convinced to order their maple duck entree, I was at the last moment swayed by Emily to try the lamb.  I was on the fence, but she did say the lamb at the Union was excellent, so I went for it.  Grilled lamb chops (three of them!) with a braised greens and mission fig jus, jerusalem artichokes and potato gratin.

Ok, so lamb is an interesting meat.  Cook it too little, and it has an intense gamey flavor that some people don’t like.  Cook it too much, and this flavor is magnified.  Cook it just right (medium rare) and it becomes a more subtle, nutty flavor with the delicious texture of the lamb.  And this lamb chop was phenomenal.  It was cooked perfectly to temperature and was as close to ‘melt in your mouth’ as any lamb I’ve ever had before.  Tender, juicy, packed full of flavor.. did I mention tender?  Enough resistance to let you know you were eating a prime piece of meat, but really incredibly tender.  Needless to say, I housed this meal.  The only downside is that the restaurant is pasted that upscale threshold where it may be appropriate to pick up the chops and gnaw on them for a while, just to get the remains of the lamb.  I didn’t do it, I have a food and wine blog imagine to uphold but I came very close to doing it! The lamb was so good that anyone sitting within earshot was told by me to order it for their entree.  Not really recommended, but told. The side dishes were great as well, but it would be hard for anything to compare with the lamb.  The celery salad was interesting, as I’ve never had that before but it seems to retain a good amount of texture.  The brown sauce was excellent (if you enjoy brown, fig sauces!).  Imagine some kind of brown mushroom gravy made from the 3rd best mushrooms you’ve ever had (Some fresh picked mushrooms in Germany are my number one… I’ll get around to posting on that in the future), and then reduce, reduce, reduce and reduce, until you have such a delicious concentrated mushroom/earth/brown flavor in a small amount of liquid.  That’s how good it was.  The potato gratin too was delicious, the white cheddar cheese adding a delicious element to the potatos, which were fully cooked yet retains enough texture to remain interesting.  For a pairing, I went with my old trusty lamb pairing of a bottle of Chimay Red.  I don’t know of a beer that pairs better with lamb than this one.  The nutty flavor of the beer and the nutty flavor of the lamb perfectly compliment each other, and with the more earthy mushroom sauce standing by to enhance the Belgian yeasty spicy aromas and flavors, this was an excellent pairing.

Well, by now I was stuffed.   I wasn’t sure how I was going to roll back home, and I knew what was coming next.  Even from years ago, Emily has been making world class desserts in her home and for her family and friends.  I remember coming inside from spending an afternoon fishing with her older sister, out on Cape Cod and she had prepared homemade ice cream that was excellent in both flavor and texture.  So you see my dread…. I knew she was coming and bringing with her a dessert menu.  And I would have to accept.  The question, however, was what would I eat?

I opted for an item from the specials menu.  A toffee pudding with vanilla date ice cream.  Who could pass it up?  And with a glass of Sam Smith’s oatmeal stout in a frosty much, my night was ending in style.  The dessert came out looking delicious and, for me at least, decadently sweet.  But I launched into it with gusto.  The ice cream was delicious, subtle with the vanilla though the date flavor stood out.  But with the toffee sauce and English ‘pudding’ or a small cake like dessert, the whole dessert came together.  Sweet, caramel (toffee) with a hint of dark fruits.  Excellent!  And to wash it down with a nice gulp of chilled oatmeal stout, the pairing was complete.  Perhaps, even better than any dessert I had consumed while in England.  And by ‘perhaps’, I mean ‘Certainly’.  I finished the dessert, and took a page from the Italians by ordering a double espresso to finish the evening.  Washing down any remaining flavors of sweet delicious dessert and preparing me to step back outside into the cold and snowy/sleeting Boston weather, an espresso just seemed appropriate.

I’m happy to see Emily working in (in fact, successfully managing!) such a good restaurant.  The staff were friendly and attentive, the bartender Adam was sociable and knowledgeable about beers and Boston and the food was excellent.  This is the kind of restaurant that you will want to take a nice date out for a good meal.  In 1950′s terms, take out your ‘best girl’.  Everything was top notch and if I get the chance, I’ll happily eat there again!