T.W. Food Review

Overall rating: 96

Food rating: 95

T.W. Food: One of the very best restaurants in the Boston area

T.W. Food is not only one of the best restaurants in the area, it's also probably the best restaurant that most people have never tried or even heard of. I'm not sure why it's relatively less known, but perhaps it has to do with the odd name (the chef's initials) or its location in Huron Village in Cambridge, around the corner from Formaggio Kitchen.

While the consensus (for example on Zagat's and TripAdvisor) is that T.W. is wonderful, I'm startled to see occasional negative or average reviews of the place. I do know that when I recommend it to people whom I don't know well, I worry they may not enjoy some of the odder concoctions. This is definitely a place for people who are serious about top quality food.

Generally food ranges at T.W. from great to spectacular. The soups are particularly amazing, as is the bread, but I've never had a meal at T.W. where there wasn't some component that just blew me away.

The tasting menu is fairly expensive for Boston but is a great way to experience things you might not normally order (sweetbreads, foie gras creme brulee), though we're always a bit overstuffed when done.

The Kitchen Improv later on Wednesday evenings is a much lower price and really fantastic if you are willing to just eat whatever the chef prepares. This works really well for a group of four, since typically everyone at the table is getting different dishes and you can share and/or trade.

The wine pairings on Tuesdays may be among the best price-performance meals anywhere: four courses of great food paired with four glasses of wine (three full glasses plus a dessert wine glass) for $55.

Sunday brunch has the chef playing jazz  with a couple of other people. Among other dishes, they serve the best French toast I've ever eaten.

The restaurant is quite small, and achieves a simultaneous feeling of being casual and formal. People are there dressed anywhere from suits to jeans. Most of the waitstaff have been incredibly knowledgeable and able to describe the preparation of an ingredient down to cooking temperature and time in case you want to try to replicate something at home. Knowledgeable or not, they are friendly and take great care of guests. It's a perfect restaurant for a date or romantic night out. Because of the Huron Village location, there's always free on-street parking even for non-residents of Cambridge.

We only first went to T.W. a couple of years ago and couldn't figure out how we had failed to find it for so long. It's just a wonderful place to sit, and talk, and eat great food. I love this restaurant.

Farmstead Table Review

Overall rating: 78

Food rating: 79

Farmstead Table: A nice addition to Newton restaurants

We've eaten at Farmstead Table several times since they've opened. The food is consistently well-prepared and good, and the prices are reasonable. The space is a bit cramped, but has a nice friendly atmosphere that is complemented by the attitudes of the waitstaff.

I've ordered the "braise of the day" twice. Both times the description sounded amazing. The actual dishes were good, but nothing spectacular. In contrast, the fish of the day meals have been remarkably good. I've heard rumors that their hamburgers are excellent but haven't had the chance to try one yet. The day I was planning to do so, they had a lamb-burger special that was amazingly good -- one of the best burgers I've had anywhere.

Soups, salads, and appetizers have been fresh and nice but nothing memorable.

They have some good house cocktails that we've had and enjoyed. Desserts have been good as well.

Overall, this is a nice new restaurant for Newton and unlike any other existing Newton restaurant that I've been to. It's a relaxed, easy place for dinner with good, fresh, local food and prices that aren't exorbitant. We plan to keep eating there.

Lumiere Review

Overall rating: 80

Food rating: 80

Lumiere: I keep wanting to love this place...

I live close by Lumiere, and its ratings on TripAdvisor and on Zagat routinely place it among the best restaurants in the Boston area. So I would love to love the food here. I've only been a few times over many years, and each time the food is good but never great, and never as good as what I can get elsewhere for the price.

We went recently for the first time in several years. The bread was very good, and the drinks were fine. Both of us had the scallops appetizer, which was also fine, but nothing special. The carrot puree was a bit too sweet for the scallops. For an entree, I got the striped bass, which was excellent; my wife got the chicken, which was not. It was cooked a bit tough, and was served with a za'atar/yogurt sauce that I've had much better versions of elsewhere.

For dessert, we had a special: an apple tart with sour cream sorbet. The tart was very tasty and the sorbet was really interesting. We also had a chocolate souffle cake that was overly sweet and a bit mushy in texture.

Overall, this was a perfectly nice meal, but not consistently great as you might be hoping for given the many superb reviews of Lumiere.

Oleana Review

Overall rating: 91

Food rating: 94

Oleana: Excellent food in Inman Square

We ate at Oleana back in February, 2013 and again in April. It takes weeks to get Saturday night reservations there.

This is clearly one of the top restaurants in Cambridge, and probably the best one serving non-American/non-European food. The cuisine is mostly Turkish, with wonderful spiced dishes and aromas.

The space is nice but tightly packed. On our first visit, I was seated facing toward a wall that was long enough that really there was nothing to see other than the wall without swiveling my head. Other tables were close, but the noise level was low enough that it was possible to talk and be heard, yet loud enough that conversation across the table felt reasonably private. Not so on our second visit. We were so close to other tables that conversation couldn't really be private, and it was impossible for the woman sitting at the table next to us to leave without risking her rear-end brushing the food on our table.

Our server was great on the first visit. We asked for recommendations and he was happy to make suggestions, all of which were excellent. We also had a number of questions about the food that he got answers to after checking with the kitchen. The server the second visit wasn't as helpful with recommendations, but was very good about not rushing us.

Each time, we were given three kinds of bread (including some near cubes of bread that I did not recognize but were very good and much softer than they looked), served with olive oil.

On the first visit, for appetizers, we had quail kebab which was very good, and tamarind-glazed beef and eggplant that was wonderful. On the second visit, we had beef kibbeh nayyeh (I think) which was very nice, asparagus fatteh with chick peas and pine nuts that was interesting and tasty, and sfela cheese saganaki with sesame and figs that was and incredibly interesting blend of flavors. My wife really loved this last dish; I liked it a lot.

For main dishes on the first visit, we had scallops with a butternut squash crispy pie that was also wonderful, and a striped bass special that was very good except that the fishy taste of the bass didn't work all that well with the spices. On the second visit, we had the scallops again (again wonderful), and tamarack tunic lamb with Turkish spices which was excellent but had a lot of similar flavors to the kibbeh nayyeh; I wouldn't really want to have both in the same meal.

There was a comment on TripAdvisor that the food was too salty to eat, and this had me concerned before our first visit as I've felt like a lot of restaurants are oversalting things lately. However, while there were many spices and tastes mixed together, I did not find things to be overly salty and thought the level of spice was exactly right.

For dessert the first visit, we had Turkish-style profiteroles that are served with warm salep, a drink made from orchid root (one of our questions for our server was about this). You sip the salep along with the profiteroles. This was different and all very tasty. We also got the tangerine caramel parfait with a chocolate tart and Aleppo honeycomb (the Aleppo chili was another question). This was very good, but not as exciting as it sounded. The second visit, we got the chocolate pave, the best part of which was a wonderful labneh sorbet with kumquats, and the baked Alaska, which was really good.

Overall, both times were really great meals. They were also quite expensive meals with glasses of wine at $13 each and all the dishes several dollars more than you might see at comparably good restaurants in the area. The biggest downside to Oleana is how tightly packed everyone is. There is apparently outdoor seating once the weather gets good, and I look forward to trying this down the road.

Rationale for another blog reviewing restaurants in the Boston area

I've been writing fairly detailed reviews of restaurants on other sites, and figured it made more sense to create my own blog to hold them. I haven't loved the lack of flexibility of those other sites, though obviously the traffic is higher than I'm likely to achieve here....

With that in mind, I figured I'd give the rationale/philosophy behind this blog. We tend to eat out at fairly expensive restaurants and these will comprise the majority of the reviews here. Of course, price doesn't equate to quality or value, and I'll try to comment on all three in my reviews while giving a sense of places as a whole, how they fit into the restaurant scene around Boston, and to provide an overall food rating for everyplace I review. At times, though, I'll review restaurants that are less expensive and/or in areas far from Boston.

Once I get the hang of working with this blog by getting this post up and visible, I'll be copying (with minor modifications) some reviews I wrote for other sites.