Forage, as many if you will surely know, occupies the original space of the late, lamented Craigie Street Bistro. I’ve eaten there in the past once or twice, with mixed feelings, and my wife many times (it’s a regular haunt of her astrophysical buddies from up Concord Ave) with warmer reactions. Lately we’ve taken out their Tuesday wine dinners.
I’ve mixed feelings about giving them a shout out (more on that lower in this thread), but let me start by posting without initial comment some of their recent menus. As they (should) say, “First, just the facts ma’am.”
The food, from the dinners we’ve had, has been excellent. The pork in our most recent was terrific: pink and perfect; the lemon sherbet in the dessert precisely poised between tart and sweet. An earlier dinner had fantastic hanger steak with a green that we could not identify. The menu said it was “lalu” a form of Egyptian spinach.
All the wine pairings have been excellent, with nuance, subtlety, and depth. I haven’t the time to elaborate on each, but these meals are great values at $160 for two takeout.
Yes, pricey, and not an every-Tuesday thing necessarily (although we, ourselves, are reaching a point where we feel, to paraphrase Virginia Woolf, that we cannot think well or love well unless we’ve eaten well).
For those of you who love caveats, not to worry, they follow.
Next, the great stuff: what range in their menus and their wines, what variety, what ambition! They deserve support just for that, but, in addition, their execution is excellent.
Really, where else in Boston or its 'burbs will you find that?
But, you carpers, were you waiting for caveats? They follow …
So is there anything wrong with the glowing picture I paint? Not in a big way, but I have minor ones:
They can sometimes sub without explanation one dish for another on the announced Tuesday menu. Tofu for calamari one occasion because “the market didn’t have good calamari” – excellently marintead tofu, I might add, with a depth of flavour for tofu that you don’t normally associate with it – but, still, it would have been nice to have been told. A bigger transgression was the subbing of “house made soda bread” with Iggy’s. Now, I’m as big a fan of Iggy’s as any of you out there, and I’ll duel you who disagree with stale crusts at dawn (@GretchenS? @digga? @tomatotomato? @Amandarama@uni? @Kennyz?), but as a sub for soda bread without explanation? Did they think I would not notice?
They are a little cagey about showing you the wines in their pairings. That’s all I’ll say about that. But everything tastes superb.
Great report, @fooddabbler! Just stopping by to say hi as I’m taking a break. But the idea of a showdown with stale crusts at dawn coaxed me out of the shadows for a minute.
Absolutely. But there are various ways to make it, and I enjoy sampling the variation. In my book, the best I’ve had in the Greater Boston area is the one the Hi Rise has for a few weeks every March. I was curious how Forage would interpret this classic.
This is not a report on an official wine dinner, but on a recent dinner at Forage that was accompanied by excellent wine. We were four, one a teenager, the food wowed us all. We had terrific smoked potatoes (w/sauerkraut) and razor clams to start, then we each got a main. I had grilled arctic char, with lovely, crisp skin and charred, meltingly tender sweet potatoes. My wife had steak (with a little gristle down one side), brussels sprouts, on a bed of risotto-ish grain, our teenage guest had pasta, and her host-father some steamed fish. I didn’t taste our friends’ dishes, but they seemed happy. To add to our dessert they comped us a few of their homemade ices: chai-brownie (too heavy on the chai), watermelon granite (perfect) and a beet (very good).
I stuck to Negronis, but my wife’s peppery Cabernet Franc matched her steak beautifully – there I did sample – and our friend seemed happy with his orange wines, new to him.
It’s a very good restaurant, with creative plate compositions and excellent wine, and it should get a lot more attention than it does.
