I foolishly ate a giant roast pork sandwich for lunch at HBS which negated my ability to eat a pastrami sandwich for dinner at Our Fathers but I can report that they make a killer Last Word cocktail and the gin selection is top notch.
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We gave Our Father’s a shot for brunch this weekend, and it’s permanently off the list. An extremely disappointing dining experience in every way.
Even though the dining room is fairly small and wasn’t full, they were apparently in the weeds. Our drink order got taken immediately. However, the drinks took a while to come and we got “be right back to take your order” twice. As for the drink it was one of the worst bloody mary’s I’ve had in recent memory. I only had a few sips, and my wife didn’t want it either. The consistency was so chunky as to clog the straw, and flavor was not balanced at all. Also, there didn’t seem to be any vodka in the drink. Hey though, they stuck a chunk of their pastrami on the toothpick so let’s all ooh and ahh.
Once we finally did order, the food took forever to come out. From the time we sat it was nearly an hour before any food hit the table. As for the food itself the beet and eggplant, small plates had good flavor and being our first bites, we weren’t yet fatigued by their one note strategy to dump zaatar spice on every dish. The dishes were very small, with the beet dish coming with 2 small beet chips for dipping.
After another 20-minute wait between the small dishes and next courses out came my wife’s pastrami Rachel, followed 5 minutes later by my toast with poached eggs (for which the fries would be right out). The “poached eggs” were the consistency of a well-done hard-boiled egg. I looked at the table next to ours as the woman next to me laughed as she showed me an identical egg. The waitress offered to bring us both another egg about 10 minutes later when she noticed the dishes untouched. One bite of the soggy toast confirmed that I had at least been blessed with yet more zaatar spice. As for the pastrami I warned my wife I had found it underwhelming when I tried it from their take-out shop. It was actually worse than I remembered, bone dry and largely flavorless. My wife actually took most of the meat off to get a sandwich with more moisture and flavor from the cheese, slaw and Russian dressing. The food writer who compared this pastrami to Katzs really should be ashamed. Anyway, those fries never did quite make out of the kitchen. We asked for the check with my dish left untouched and the sandwich half eaten, and beat it out of there never to return.
I have no idea what this place is trying to be, or perhaps they just don’t care and are content to drain the wallets of the tenants in the apartments above them. Anyway, it was awful food and service by and standard, but considering the price point even more shameful. We do seem to be getting more and more poor value restaurants like this. Maybe it is another sign the economy may be overheated and in need of a breather.
I hate to post this but it was well earned.
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What a bummer, so sorry to hear you had such an awful experience! Thanks for taking one for the team and letting us know.
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From a recent meal:
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Well-roasted chicken with a lovely, creamy nettle couscous base. The dish promised shitakes, but there were only a few of those. There did seem bits of black garlic, though. I’d get it again.
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“Brisket” with buckwheat noodles and kasha. The kasha was toasted and crunchy and offered a lovely counterpoint to the broad noodles and the wonderfully beefy sauce… But the meat was the driest, chewiest brisket we’ve ever had. After chewing on it grimly for a while, my wife observed “this is more jerky than brisket.” But, the next day we cut the left-over meat into thin slivers and the dish was very good that way (although the kasha granules had gone from crisp to chewy).
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Matzoh ball soup. Very tasty, and somewhat expensive ($8 for a fairly small bowl) with nice carrots and shreds of tender chicken. I am not sure what’s gained by calling the matzoh balls “floaters” though, particularly since they have something of a dark color.
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The hit of the night was a broth they call penicillin: a chicken broth with mint, lemon and a very, very hefty dash of tabasco. It does indeed clear your sinuses, and pretty much everything else.
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I got some of that matzoh ball soup to go from the deli part last weekend (agree; expensive!) and while the matzoh ball was very nice and the broth was tasty the pieces of chicken were inedibly tough and dry and had to be picked out. Glad yours was better and thanks for the report!
I messaged them a few months ago, asking if they sell the pastrami in bulk and they said the do. I haven’t followed through yet, but need to get some good rye bread and some sides and make sandwiches at home soon to avoid the steaming/soggy bread from the ride home.
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New England Soup Co is my go-to for mahtzoh ball soup
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Where will you get your rye bread? I’ve found that a tough proposition in the Boston area – some ryes are too dense, and many too lightweight. You need the right balance of heft for a pastrami sandwich: the bread must not be completely overwhelmed by the meat, but it must not dominate it either.
Excellent question, fooddabbler. Suggestions, fellow HO’s?
As you all know this discussion of rye continues elsewhere, but if you do not, here’s where:
Had another decent, if again inconsistent meal from here recently. The matzoh ball soup was tasty, again, but the chicken slightly chewy this time. It was cut into small enough pieces, though, that this was not a huge issue. Their version of a knish (filled with ground turkey) was more like a meat-filled pastry than a potato-forward knish, but very tasty. The sweet potato hummus was little too sweet for my tastes, but the markouk bread it came with was excellent. (This is a bread where the dough is rolled very thin and cooked on a convex pan – bulging up. Sofra used to make these in plain sight for a while, but I think they do not any more, although I may misremember this. The bread is called different things in different places. In India it’s called rumali roti and is stretched to its final thinness by a twirl in the air, rather like pizza.)
We also split a pastrami sandwich. It’s about 80% the price of a Katz’s sandwich, but only about 60% (as an estimate) the size. This time the meat was on the dry side, unfortunately.
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Forgot to say, we also had the house salad – a nice combination of cubes of sweet potato, feta, greens and crunchy quinoa.
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They (and Katz) should use double-backed rye for their pastrami sandwich like Langer’s which puts it in a completely different league
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What’s double-backed rye? I’m not familiar with that. Thanks!
He meant “double-baked” – a bread that’s parbaked, then “finished” later.
And to add to what I said, this practice of partially baking loaves then finishing the process later arose from wanting to serve freshly-baked bread all day, without having it take an inordinately long time. It was also useful when bread was baked at a large centralized location, but sold at smaller outlets elsewhere. A large number of loaves could be parbaked at the central location, and then smaller quantities finished on location at the outlets.
Having said that, it’s impossible to say whether a twice-baked bread is automatically superior to once-baked. A lot would also depend on the quality of the flour, the nature of the oven, etc.
And to complete the crisscrossing between parallel threads, here’s a link to what I said in the rye bread thread on Our fathers bread being in twice baked:
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I had brunch at Our Father’s today. I usually get the pastrami sandwich pictured above ( and it has never disappointed, luckily) but had been curious about the pastrami latke eggs Benedict with Aleppo hollandaise. The bartender said if I hadn’t had it yet I really should. Very well-executed: latkes were crispy and remained so throughout, eggs were perfectly poached and runny, pastrami and hollandaise were very good. Glad I tried it but for me, the sandwich is better: the mustard and accompanying pickles provide needed contrast to the fatty meat and if I am going to have a fried potato item I just prefer French fries. Also had the excellent grapefruit shrub and equally excellent coffee.
Photo of sandwich from February visit:
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Oh, thanks so much for posting this, Gretchen. I am a hollandaise freak and had been disappointed that Our Father’s didn’t have it on their menu. Obviously, that’s changed. The hollandaise looks beautifully emulsified, and, duh, their pastrami and latkes. I’ll head there soon. It does sound like a fat bomb, for sure. I’ll soldier on through, though, like a real trooper!
I forgot to post after we got bulk takeout (really pricey!) of both the corned beef and the pastrami a while back. All of us preferred the pastrami. With some good brown mustard it made an excellent sandwich despite the pathetic supermarket rye that we ended up with. The potato salad was in desperate need of salt, though. I’ll splurge again on the pastrami sometime when I get good bread.
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Yes, I had the corned beef once last year when they were inexplicably out of pastrami and found it forgettable. Brunch is very popular there (even when Harvard is gone) so make a rez or plan to sit at the bar.
