The Table at Season to Taste Review

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.

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.

Bergamot Review

Overall rating: 88

Food rating: 88

Bergamot: Very good restaurant and a nice value

Bergamot is on the Somerville/Cambridge border, and since first going there a few years ago, we've headed back pretty regularly. They serve locally sourced foods that they describe as "progressive American", and are in the same general ballpark in terms of cuisine as a place like Craigie on Main but are less meat-centric and less likely to serve odd cuts. The food is not as intermittently amazing as what you can get at Craigie, but is typically reliable and tasty. Mixed drinks and wines are quite good and reasonably priced.

The location can be a bit hard to spot, but they have a small parking lot attached to the building complex where you can usually find a spot, and there is also free on street parking available. The dining room is airy and welcoming, and generally the acoustics make it possible to talk and listen.

On a recent visit, I had short rib ravioli for an appetizer. This was tasty but perhaps a bit under-seasoned. For an entree, I had sea breem that was cooked perfectly: light and flaky and with a crispy skin. Dessert was a "caramelized banana Bavarian", which was a deconstructed dessert as is typical of Bergamot. It was served with Chantilly and peanuts and was quite good.

Bread served with the dinner was excellent as usual, and they always serve interesting flavored butters for the bread. Service was helpful but not intrusive.

Bergamot has a prix fixe (appetizer, entree, dessert) every night for $39, and this is definitely a draw. It is probably the least expensive high quality food that you can get in the Boston area on a Friday or Saturday night.

All this said, I don't want to imply that this is a cheap restaurant with mediocre food -- it's one of the better restaurants in the Boston area. Meals there are consistently enjoyable. However, not far from Bergamot are places like Oleana, TW, Hungry Mother, and Craigie, all of which are more likely to wow you, but at a higher price point. Although the menu at Bergamot isn't large, there's enough variety that almost anyone looking for good food can eat there and have an enjoyable meal at a very reasonable price.

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.