Dinner at Le Madeline [Quincy, MA]

Regional Dining Discussions Boston, New England
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Had an enjoyable dinner at Le Madeline Friday night. We had reservations at 6:15, and the place already had a few seated tables. The place was packed quickly.

A quick rundown of food (and apologies, as I can’t remember the Viet names for most of these dishes)

Duck salad - nice, light… duck was well cooked.

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Crawfish garlic noodles with grilled pork (shared)
Garlic noodles were nice, but the version in this shared entree has a differrent ingredients than the standalone entree. This version has Vietnamese ham tossed in; the entree is more seafood. Garlic noodles maybe not as good as what I’ve had in San Francisco, but still nice. Pork portion was huge!

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Oxtail pho - this broth was so unctuous and yummy! Oxtail was fall off the bone tender. They brought us little bowls to share this

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Bone Marrow bahn mi. Similar to a lot of popular roasted bone marrow apps, but this was a lot of fun. All the accoutrements essentially replicated the classic flavors in your banh mi sandwich. My complaint about this dish everywhere is, I always need more bread.

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Raw oysters with cilantro peanut sauce and makrut lime vinaigrette. Needed more of the vinaigrette - flavor was lost in the sauce. You can have this grilled or raw, and I think this sauce would be better with it grilled.

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Grilled shrimp in a kabocha squash puree. Really lovely smokey charred taste to the shrimp, and the kabocha puree was really good. The sweetness was a nice contrast to the charred shrimp.

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All in all a really nice meal. The flavors are familiar to anyone who’s eaten a lot of Vietnamese food, and there wasn’t perhaps a lot of new ground broken, but the flavors were certainly deeper and richer than the neighborhood pho place. Menu isn’t huge, and they have a bar that was busy all night. We got comped two desserts because it was a birthday dinner for one of my DCs. I believe they are not made in house so I didn’t show them, but they tasted fine.

Current menu (sorry for the glare). I hope they do mix it up and change the menu every so often.

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I’ll just add this as a follow up post. Service was fine but busy. We lost our waitress a few times during the night. Not sure if this was due to how busy they were, or if it’s getting used to the new menu. It felt like they needed another person in there to really manage the flow a bit better.

For example the garlic noodles with the pork chop they said would take 30 mins, and encouraged us to order that early. We put that in first and then ordered a bunch of the non shared dishes. We got our duck salad and then the noodles right after. It wasn’t 30 minutes. It would have been nice to get all the other dishes first and then the big plate of noodles last. Service wasn’t bad, but it’s not what you might expect for the concept they are going for. It’s half way between a nice dinner time service and the get that food out there fast so we can turn that table over feel.

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Great report! I’ve had my eye on this place. Funny about the South Shore-North Shore divide (although in Arlington, we’re just southwest of the North Shore and technically in Metro West, I think). Every time I suggest doing something on the South Shore, B responds, “but it’s so far!” :upside_down_face:

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We live in East Somerville (2 blocks from the Boston neighborhood of Charlestown) , east of Arlington and more so if you are Arlington west. Our trip on a Tuesday starting late morning to Providence recently to visit the Lovecraft bookstore was brutal for traffic. And same for returning. South Shore for us is a lot further in terms of travel time than North Shore. Usually.

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I’d love to give it a try! The Oxtail pho, Duck Salad, ready to wade into that menu ! We’ve eaten there for dinner prior to this new concept. Was good but still preferred Pho Le in Dorchester. Thank you for sharing your experience.

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And mine is that I need more bone marrow!

Thanks for the report — I will have to remember this for my next trip. Bit bummed it’s dinner only, but also nice that they’re keeping the day incarnation.

Pomelo salad, bone marrow, mussels, lobster roll, I could eat my way down the menu :yum:

https://www.lemadeline.com/dinner-menu

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The pomelo salad was one of the items that we kept hemming and hawing about, but decided against it after we already had so many dishes. I definitely want to try that dish at some point - big pomelo fan.

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I’ve only ever had it as a Viet or Thai salad, would you believe! (When I see it at the Asian markets, I’m always tempted, but I have yet to take the plunge and bring the fruit home.)

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The fruit is amazing! I personally love the smell of the peel and the rind. If you give it a try, make sure to remove the thin membrane that holds the segments together. It’s much thicker than in an orange or lemon, and actually is bitter. Take the plunge; they are one of my favorite fruits!

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