Puritan & Company

Overall rating: 82

Food rating: 84

Puritan & Company: Good food in Inman Square

We've been to Puritan & Company twice now, and the food has been consistently good on both visits. Like most of the other restaurants we seem to end up at, it serves locally sourced modern American cuisine.

The restaurant is in Inman Square and the dining area has a fairly open floor plan, but is so dimly lit that I needed the light from my smartphone to read the menu. The noise level is quite high, but we were given seating at a table near the corner of a bench that allowed us to sit next to each other and this made for a reasonably intimate dining and conversation experience. However, at many other tables we'd have been across from each other and been raising our voices to be heard.

Our waiter was knowledgeable and helpful in selecting food and wine (they serve wine and beer, but not mixed drinks). I had ordered a white wine on his recommendation and he brought a second wine for me to compare, which I ended up choosing, though this was a bit of an unmentioned upsell as that wine was significantly more expensive (though worth it).

Excellent dinner rolls were served with butter. We ordered an appetizer of wild mushrooms served with an egg, arugula, garlic and a thin slice of smoked brioche. This was quite good.

For an entree, I ordered a special: sablefish, served over some greens and a lemony beurre blanc. This was tasty though the portion was fairly small. My wife ordered the other special: a rib eye steak that had been aged in-house and served with hen of the woods mushrooms and celery root. This was also quite good, though we were told it would come medium rare and it was actually very rare.

We didn't get dessert.

Overall it was a good meal at a fairly standard price. We know some people who are really high on Puritan & Company, but while we've enjoyed two meals there, we haven't loved them. Also in Inman Square, though a completely different style of food, Oleana is much better and more interesting at a similar price. A short drive from Puritan & Company and serving similar cuisine is Bergamot, which we think has better food, has larger portions, is somewhat less noisy, and, with their nightly prix fixe, is less expensive. However, Puritan & Company has its own styles and flavors and should be worth a visit.