Initial impressions [Boston area restaurants]

Regional Dining Discussions Boston, New England
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ii[quote=“digga, post:14, topic:18097”]
how about Pagu
[/quote]

Had a few business dinners there and it was OK but not something I would choose for a family dinner - it felt more like food to not offend somebody and that’s not why we go to restaurants. (And even the company felt the same after a while and business dinners are now often at Catalyst and Commonwealth (and unfortunately a few times at Glassdoor)

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I’ve only eaten there once and liked it a lot. I will return when the weather is nicer and dine outside with my very own pagu. (Pug in Japanese)

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Thanks @digga. I’ve eaten at Pagu, but it’s fallen off my radar. Everything we has was decent enough, but I come away feeling that the food read better than it tasted. Still, worth trying again. I like Mary Chung, too, but as you say it’s not exactly festive (or it is, but in its own way). Don’t know if they take reservations, either, my reason to not have 5 spices on my list.

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Returning this thread to “initial impressions”, I’ve had lunch at Base Crave the restaurant that has taken over the old Full Moon space at 344 Huron Ave in Cambridge. There’s a curious back story, but here I just want to talk about the food.

Initial impression, and all that, but I thought it quite good. We had the following:

  1. Gundruk soup with mustard leaves and tomatoes, and finely chopped tofu that gave it the texture of a loose chili. I it was satisfyingly sour and spicy and I’d go back just for that. ($8 for decently-sized bowl.)

soup

  1. Lamb momos. These were very juicy, and, as the menu helpfully suggests, are best “hot and whole.” They come with a chili sauce of moderate heat, but were tasty in their own. The menu also has buffalo and wild boar momos that I’d like to try. ($11 for 8 momos.)

momos

  1. Shrimp bhuteko. This was shrimp panfried with onions and chilies, and was my least-favorite dish. The shrimp weren’t the most pristine, and the overall dish was oily. The puffed rice (an accompaniment in other Nepali dishes as well) provided a nice contrast. ($15.)

chilishrimp

  1. Salad with tofu, ordered by my daughter and not shared with me. She wolfed it down, if that’s an indicator of how tasty it was. It’s an oddly priced dish, though. The base salad is ten bucks but the add-ons are slightly pricey: $7 for either tofu or chicken, $12 for shrimp.

saldtofu
saldtofu.jpg700×756 140 KB

They’ve kept much of the Full Moon look (the room has always been light, airy and pleasant), except for a wall hanging here or there, and a mirror on one wall.

room

They also use nice dishes and nice bottles for water.

water

There’s a lot I’d like to return there to try. The menu for now is here.

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Wait, is that a +$7 for chicken or tofu on top of the $10 base salad?! That better be a BIG salad (apologies to Seinfeld). That is majorly pricey IMO, unless they are giving you a whole quarter of a chicken at least.

The momos look fantastic though, and buffalo and wild boar sound intriguing.

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There’s a picture of the salad above with a tofu topping. As you can see, it’s not huge. And, yes, the price for the topping is, so to speak, on top of the base price, so that salad did indeed cost an expensive $17.

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yikes! that is madness.

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Yes. That was why I quoted all the prices in my initial impression above. The prices of the soup and momos were reasonable. This one was weird.