The Table at Season to Taste: Wonderful addition to Cambridge restaurants
Overall rating: 90
Food rating: 92
Season to Taste is a catering company in Cambridge, and two months ago they opened a small restaurant at their location called The Table. The chef is Carl Dooley, who was chef de cuisine at Craigie on Main and is apparently well known by people who watched this season of Top Chef (I wasn't one of them, so we went in with expectations based only on a number of recent good reviews).
The space is small but pleasant. There are seats at tables for 16 people, and another four seats at a bar looking into the open kitchen (this part is similar to the setup at Momofuku Ko) where we were seated. There is also room for a few people to stand and eat "snacks" and drink wine, beer, or cider; they do not have a full bar selection.
The space is a little loud (mostly by choice -- they have music playing loudly) but it was possible to talk without much problem. There were six people working there, three on food and three on everything else, all of whom were very friendly. These included Carl Dooley, another chef, and a cook.
We arrived a few minutes early for our reservation, and they seemed to be trying to coordinate our service with the other two people at the bar seating, who arrived a bit later. As a result, although we got wine, we did not receive any food or bread for more than 35 minutes. Seems like the sort of problem, though, that will get sorted out over time by this new restaurant.
The wine selection is fairly small, and we got wines by the glass that were okay but overpriced. This and the initial wait were really the only disappointing aspects of the meal.
The Table offers only a $65 prix fixe four course meal with two choices for each course. There were two of us, so we ordered to get eight different dishes and shared each course.
The amuse bouche was a bass sashimi with some kimchi that had a great aroma and was wonderful. At the same time the amuse came, we got bread (toasted semolina bread) that was good, with "house-cured butter", which turned out to be butter which they had cured with cheese rinds that gave it a sweet, cheesy taste that was very interesting.
The first course had a salad of grilled squid in citrus with pistachios and mint. It was aromatic and perfectly prepared. I'm not a big fan of squid, but this was great. The other first course plate was a terrine of foie gras with prunes, mustard and duck breast served with toast. This, also, was delicious.
The second course had a plate of roasted sweet potato with an oxtail ragu. This was good, but not great; the flavors weren't that well balanced. The other plate was a mussel and fregola stew that was incredibly good -- probably the best of the dishes along with the amuse.
Sitting at the bar, we watched an error with our own plates for the third course. The couple siting next to us had both ordered hake, while we got one hake and one chicken dish. The cook prepped as if the other couple had also split their orders, and they were served before us. They pointed out the error, which meant one of them had the correct dish and one a chicken instead of the hake. So the chef took the hake that would have been served to us, and swapped it for the chicken. This left them with two chicken dishes and no ability to serve us until a hake dish was prepared. So the chef sent one chicken dish to the back (presumably to be eaten by the staff later?), and unplated one chicken and put it in the oven to hold it warm. A hake dish was prepared in about 4 minutes, and then the chicken was replated, the hake was plated, and we were served both. As this went on we wondered whether it would lead to overcooked chicken, but the chicken was perfect.
The chicken dish was chicken thigh with grated green apple and cabbage and was delicious. It included cockscomb, which I was thinking/hoping was a name for some vegetable, and which, on the plate, my wife interpreted as an oddly textured mushroom, but was in fact from a chicken and was perfectly tasty. The hake was in a butternut squash curry with raisins and almonds. The hake was perfectly cooked, but the curry overwhelmed the flavors of the fish, so this, like the sweet potato plate, was a bit unbalanced.
The desserts had a citrus pavlova with lemon curd and grapefruit-Campari sorbet that was both beautiful (a perfectly smooth meringue with whipped cream inside it) and delicious. There was also a dark chocolate marquise that was very good with some excellent coffee ice cream.
Overall, this enters the scene as one of the best restaurants in Boston. I don't know of a similar place in the area where you are so intimate with the chefs, so it's also a unique dining experience for Boston. Carl Dooley seems friendly and approachable compared to some of the other chefs I've encountered at comparable restaurants in the area, and though he was clearly irritated with the error I described above, he held his cool and kept a pleasant atmosphere for the kitchen and the guests.
The price of $65 per person is reasonable for what you get. The wines made the overall cost of dinner seem a bit high. Either a lower price for those wines or better wine for the same price would have made the entire meal appropriately priced.
I'm a bit concerned what it will be like trying to get reservations down the road, but once it's possible to get in we will certainly be back.
