dining

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On the Cheap: Emilio's Homemade Italian Subs and Dinners

Portable, palatable pleasure in Watertown
A few weeks ago, my father surveyed our dinner table and mused, "I'm glad we have an Italian Christmas."
By LINDSAY CRUDELE | January 04, 2012

Review: Blue Nile Restaurant

Tasty new flavors from Ethiopia
Either this is the best Ethiopian food in Boston, or the whole scene has advanced greatly since the last time I got to review in this genre.
By ROBERT NADEAU | January 09, 2012

By | January 01, 0001

2011: The year in cheap eats

Twelve months of terrific budget-priced dining
We uncovered amazing value-priced restaurants in every corner of Greater Boston this year.
By MC SLIM JB | December 21, 2011

Celebrating 2011 in dining, all over the place

The year in restaurants
This past year was so simple. It was the year of the gastropub, and if you didn't paint the ceiling black and put the menu or the beer list on a blackboard, you were old school.
By ROBERT NADEAU | December 21, 2011

Review: The Brahmin

Gourmet bits in Back Bay, never mind the history
The Brahmin is a useful restaurant with a bad name.
By ROBERT NADEAU | November 16, 2011

On the Cheap: Veggie Galaxy

A down-home diner serving vegetarian food for the masses
In Harvard Square, sub-Passim, reside the health-nut pizzacrats at Veggie Planet. But take a kick down Mass Ave into Central and you'll find a chromed throwback joint sporting a similar moniker: Veggie Galaxy.
By STEVE MILLER | November 09, 2011

Review: Strip T's

A perfect family restaurant with a playful menu
Under any other circumstances, I would actually not speak this restaurant's cheeky name out loud.
By LINDSAY CRUDELE | November 07, 2011

Review: Temazcal Tequila Cantina

Terrific Mexican with a waterfront view
I admit, I'm a food nerd, and there are things that I miss because they aren't on the plate.
By ROBERT NADEAU | November 07, 2011

Review: Otto Pizza

Painting the palate in Harvard Square
Inside the cramped quarters of Otto, you'll find a jovial crew who seem to be enjoying the hell out of making pizza. The flaky-crusted pies rest on raised, outward-facing shelves behind the counter, displayed like portraits.
By STEVE MILLER | August 24, 2011

Review: Think Tank Bistrotheque

Southeast Asian treats among some head-scratchers
The owners have some very good ideas about food and drink — Southeast Asian treats are cool, and craft cocktails go better with them than wine does — but they have also produced some decisions that make the rest of us scratch our heads.
By ROBERT NADEAU | August 17, 2011

Review: Red Lantern

Nostalgic fusion with so much for so many
Red Lantern's menu (and the design of the giant room) hedges its bets — there's a decent sushi bar, a drinking bar with sports on the TVs, a flurry of hot-pot tables, and some serious steaks.
By ROBERT NADEAU | August 10, 2011

Review: Posto

Top-notch Italian that's under the radar no more
Some places, no matter how good, manage to fly under the radar. And the recent trend of restaurateurs opening a pizza place, establishing a reputation as a lower-priced, "On the Cheap" joint, and then upscaling into a full-tilt sit-down spot (see: Nebo), has made things even trickier.
By ROBERT NADEAU | August 04, 2011

Review: Floating Rock

Spicy Asian that rises above the rest
If summer brings an urge for spicy Asian food, this is a splendid place to get some, despite a few chili-pepper compromises.
By ROBERT NADEAU | July 27, 2011

Review: Fill Belly's

A JP comfort-food spot that's been around the block
As the wheels of the food truck turn, so does the cyclical nature of trends. Fill Belly's latest spin is a retro one: a brick-and-mortar storefront.
By LINDSAY CRUDELE | July 27, 2011

Review: Tamarind House

A gentle step down from our fiercest traditional Thai restaurants
Tamarind House perhaps shows too restrained a hand with its cuisine's boldest flavors, but it's a useful step up from the bowdlerized meekness of the suburban Thai run-of-the-mill.
By MC SLIM JB | July 20, 2011

An aspiring chef searches for her lost sense of smell

Scentless Apprentice
Six years ago, while jogging in Brookline, aspiring chef Molly Birnbaum was struck by an oncoming Ford. The impact broke her pelvis and shattered her skull. But worst of all, it mangled her olfactory nerves, destroying Birnbaum's sense of smell and her ability to taste all but the most overpowering of flavors.
By BY EUGENIA WILLIAMSON | July 20, 2011

Review: Trina's Starlite Lounge

Unorthodox goodness shining through the dark
Trina's Starlite Lounge is not so easy to describe. It's noir — as in dark (they only put in windows a couple months ago). It has craft cocktails, but not classics; draft beers, but only six taps; 17 bottled beers, but that's including Miller High Life, Bud Light, and Black Label.
By ROBERT NADEAU | July 06, 2011

Review: Aragosta Bar and Bistro

A robust Italian take on locavore cuisine
Sensing, the previous restaurant in this Battery Wharf hotel/condo development, was locavore and high-church French, but too subtle. Aragosta proposes to solve that problem with a more robust cuisine focused on the most local of all ingredients: seafood.
By ROBERT NADEAU | June 29, 2011

Review: Del Frisco's Double Eagle Steak House

A waterfront steakhouse worth the price
The good news — especially if someone else is paying — is that everything at Del Frisco's is pretty good, the view is incredible, and the service is relaxed.
By ROBERT NADEAU | June 22, 2011

Review: Annabelle's Restaurant

American food searching for a niche
Hyde Park is the kind of neighborhood where the idea of a Dorchester businessman coming in to set up a restaurant is big stuff.
By ROBERT NADEAU | June 15, 2011

2010 in Boston restaurants

It's not hard to name the restaurant trend of the year, which is gastro-pubs. Or rather, it is hard to name it, because that is such an unappetizing name for what has been a very revitalizing short-menu format.
By ROBERT NADEAU | December 22, 2010

Restaurant Review: Market

Chef Outhier's spiritual son misses the point
As the auteur of multiple restaurants on three continents, Jean-Georges Vongerichten has avoided many of the traps for unwary superstar chefs, such as overpriced pizza, videos of himself at the front of the restaurant, or a signature line of frozen entrées.
By ROBERT NADEAU | September 29, 2010

Pollos a la Brasa El Chalan

Peerless Peruvian charcoal rotisserie chicken in an easily overlooked spot
Sometimes having a great restaurant next door to yours is a good thing, sometimes it’s not.
By MC SLIM JB | September 16, 2010

Restaurant Review: East by Northeast

Modern, minimalist Chinese cuisine
There are a lot of ways to look at Chef Phillip Tang’s mod variations on the Taiwanese-American food of his youth — Chinese tapas, small plates, locovore noodles and dumplings, tea-house nouvelle, dim sum gone upscale and gone wild.
By ROBERT NADEAU | September 16, 2010

Review: Scallops and lamb soar at Havana South

Hitting the high points
If you visit the Web site of Havana South, a new restaurant in the Old Port, you will find a photo of Barack and Michelle Obama looking handsome and happy.
By BRIAN DUFF | September 01, 2010

''Holy war'' holes

Letters to the Boston editor, August 13, 2010
I’m as liberal as the next guy, and I’ve been bothered for years by the distorted values and activities of the religious right in their pursuit of enforced conformity.
By BOSTON PHOENIX LETTERS | August 11, 2010

Sichuan Gourmet

A tale of two dinners
I thought I knew all about Sichuan food, back from when Joyce Chen and Peking on Mystic introduced what was then called "Mandarin-Szechwan" food to the United States via greater Boston.
By ROBERT NADEAU | August 12, 2010

By | January 01, 0001

Looking ahead to 2010

Some New Year's resolutions for budget-minded diners
Reviewing a new budget-priced restaurant every week gives me scant time for reflection. (I'd call it a treadmill, but that sounds both dreary and healthy — the opposite of the reality.) Year-end is an exception, so I pause to offer a few resolutions on behalf of Boston budget diners.
By MC SLIM JB | December 30, 2009