Boston is, actually, a very small city:  A compact 90 square miles that seem laid out by divining rod. Population is just 667,000. The city has only one area code. The smallest suspension bridge in the world is in the Boston Gardens.  You can walk the entire Freedom Trail in about an hour.
     I think it is that smallness that makes this richly historic city so easy to walk around (forget driving or mass transport!) and to find so many fascinating attractions, which include a very vibrant restaurant segment, from the 19th century Durgin-Park and the Union Oyster House to the Italian storefronts of the North End, to the stately hotel dining rooms and expanding ethnic eateries of the South End.
    I never tire going to Boston to seek out what’s new and to bask in what’s old.  Here are the results of my most recent visit, which included a dinner at the big, bustling Capo restaurant (right) in South Boston, where Chef Toni Susi prepared a superb meal for about 30 guests of dishes from my book How Italian Food Conquered the World, while still keeping the rest of the restaurant clientele very happy and well fed. I am very grateful and look forward to going back to try more of his cooking.

 

MARE OYSTER CRUDO
AND SEAFOOD BAR  
3 Mechanic Street
617-723-6273

    This is actually a new Mare location in the North End—Boston’s Little Italy—for owner Frank DePasquale, who also runs the always packed Bricco next door.  As the name says, there is a crudo bar and locally sourced oyster program, and Chef Nello Caccioppoli is very committed to sustainable seafood and has the contacts from which to get the best.
    Mare’s is a smart, uncluttered design, with white marble walls, floors and bars, while outdoors, with a retractable awning, features lounge seating and fire pits that allow guests to bask into early autumn.
            Among the appetizers I recommend are the lovely zucchini blossoms stuffed with ricotta and lobster, served with mixed greens and more lobster meat ($17.99), and the pristine, wonderfully seasoned kampachi tartare with spoonbill caviar ($18.99). 
    Skip the humdrum buffalo mozzarella with tomatoes and basil pesto ($17.99); instead opt for one of the excellent seafood pastas—lobster ravioli with fava beans, smoked bacon and a cream sauce ($24.99), risotto with perfectly cooked shrimp, scallops, calamari and Italian cherry tomatoes ($24.99) or tagliatelle with fresh lobster, shaved black truffles, tomato and lobster sauce ($29.99), all in portions ideal for two people to share.
              

    Prices at Mare are remarkably moderate for the abundance of food on the plate, like the silky Alaskan black cod pan-seared in olive oil and served with lobster-stuffed bell pepper and a butternut squash fondue ($28.99).  And if there seems to be a lot of lobster on the menu, who’s fool enough to complain?
    General Manager Rita D’Angelo is one of Boston’s beloved restaurant people, and a great deal of the success of Mare is owed directly to the enthusiasm and Italian brio of her personality and considerable charisma.  This woman wants you to eat well.  She’ll nudge you to try what just came in that day.  She wants you to drink good wine, have a wonderful time.  Toast life!  It is impossible not to give in.

Open nightly for dinner.

DORETTA TAVERNA & RAW BAR
79 Park Plaza
617-422-0008

    Doretta is veteran chef-restaurateur Michael Schlow’s homage to his wife Adrienne’s Greek background—she created and crafted the amazing, very beautiful, shimmering 60-foot wall in the dining room—and many of the recipes are from her family.  No man has ever paid better tribute to the woman and the women behind the woman he loves.
    At dinner you can arrange a “Greek Family Dinner” ($75), which will include the irresistible spreads and mezze ($7 each), which are so good that you could feast all night by just ordering an array—then maybe another array—of these brilliantly colored dishes of chickpeas fragrant with  rosemary and toasted cumin, or smoky roasted eggplant with walnuts, peppers and feta cheese.  There are crunchy zucchini chips with a cucumber yogurt ($12);  roasted carrots with onion, yogurt and spiced granola ($14); and succulent braised lamb with orzo pasta, spinach, cheese and Kalamata olive-spiced breadcrumbs ($16).
    The grilled, lightly charred octopus with onions, capers, parsley and Greek olive oil  ($18) is some of the best you’ll find in the city, and don’t miss the crispy lamb meatballs scented with cumin and lavished with brilliant red tomato sauce, creamy yogurt and nigella seed ($14).  Better order more than one portion of the warm shrimp (left) with lemon, dill, chili and bread crumbs ($14) because they will be fought over.
    There is, of course, a whole grilled fish of the day (MP), and as well as a house-made pasta with stewed rabbit, cinnamon, chili and kefalotiri goat’s milk cheese ($26).  Lamb shoulder is cooked very slowly--for 15 hours--so the meat falls from the bone, served with fava beans and quinoa tabouli ($32).
    For dessert it’s tough to decide among simple Greek yogurt with candied walnuts and thick Attic honey ($9), or the fragile baklava with a smoked apple gelato ($10), or Mimi’s Greek cookie plate ($9).
    I applaud the inclusion of three dozen Greek wines on the list at Doretta, along with scores more of Italian and French wines, though I wince at some of the markups, like 300 percent on a bottle like the Darydas Xinomavro ( $72).

Lunch Mon.-Fri., Dinner nightly.

PORTO
780 Boylston Street
Ring Road
617-536-1234

    Boston may have more great woman chef-restaurateurs than any city in America—Lydia Shire, Barbara Lynch, Ana Sortun, Marisa Iocco, Joanne Chang, among others—and one of the first was Jody Adams, who long ago set a high standard for Italian food at Rialto in Cambridge (now closed).  Now, with partner Sean Griffing and chef-partner Eric Papachristos, she has opened in Back Bay one of the sunniest, most evocative Mediterranean restaurants this side of Gibraltar.
     The whole room lies within expanses of glass, with an open kitchen, bare wood tables, pin lights tucked into delicate fishing nets, and bright blue and white Mediterranean colors throughout.  You won’t think you’re on the seafront at Thessaloniki (where Papachristos was raised), but when twilight comes on, Back Bay takes on a rosy-fingered glow.
    At lunch time Porto’s menu is fairly unremarkable—lobster roll, lamb burger, skirt steak—but at dinner everything shifts into the Mediterranean mode, although since I visited in early fall the menu now seems to skewer a bit more towards Italy than Greece.  There are several raw items, along with fried, curried oysters with a lemon aïoli ($13); tender clams rich with guanciale bacon, and the scent of fennel on grilled bread ($17); creamy salt cod brandade with sunchoke and parsley crostini ($14); and colorful squid ink bucatini with a bite of chorizo ($16).  I particularly loved the translucent raw scallops ($16) with chamomile, Niçoise olives and lemon balm (left).
    The main courses feature simply grilled seafood, as well as a fried whole fish with okra, fennel, radish and an aïoli ($30) and a fine, ruddy seafood stew teeming with hake, mussels, squid, and yellow-eyed beans ($28).
    For dessert ($9-$12) I recommend the Greek yogurt pannacotta with almond-pistachio and filo or the  ginger and pear galette with a crunch of sesame seeds.
   It would be nice to see more good Greek wines by the glass on a list that tilts, wisely, towards whites. 

Lunch and dinner Mon.-Sat. 

SMOKE SHOP
1 Kendall Square, Cambridge
617-577-7427
Photos by Ken Goodman

    I long ago gave up any notions that good barbecue cannot be made north of the Mason-Dixon Line or northeast of Texas, and Smoke Shop proves the point.  As well it should, given owner Andy Husbands’ rep for garnering the title of World Barbeque Champion Chef and a slew of regional championships.
    Twenty years experience has honed his craft, so Husbands calls his barbecue “a modern competition-style barbecue,” or “City Q,” drawing on styles from Memphis, Kansas City and Texas, with Asian influences and New England seasonality. To sweeten the message, Smoke Shop stocks more than a hundred American whiskeys.
    You just have to look at the accompanying photos to see that it is the real deal: pulled pork ($31) and pork rinds, with a bucket of cold Buds; perfectly charred ribs ($31) with nice touches of collards, white beans, watermelon and pickles.  Chicken wings are such a cliché, but Husbands adds his own spices and agave to give them a new twist ($18.95); he also does an excellent buttermilk brined fried chicken with ranch dressing ($18). There’s also burnt ends of beef ($20). And, although these prices are on the high side—this is Boston, not Brownsville, after all—two side dishes are included.  It almost seems a winking joke that they serve crispy tofu and Brussels sprouts with a farro salad ($19), which makes me recall the scene in the movie Son of Paleface when Harvard man Bob Hope sheepishly orders sarsaparilla in a rowdy western saloon, then snarls, “And put it in a dirty glass.”
    Smoke Shop is a big, wide open place, with outside tables in good weather, and manager Ian Grossman never seems to flag in his eagerness to please.  Located as it is in Kendall Square, you’ll be rubbing elbows with the techie nerds from M.I.T, but they’re too busy on their cell phones and laptops to get in your way of having a good time.  So bring your proud friend from North Carolina or your bragging Texan ‘cue expert.  They may have to eat some crow.

Open 11 a.m. to 1 a.m. Mon.-Sat. 

 

NEW YORK CORNER

By John Mariani
Photos by Samira Bouaou

LOI ESTIATORIO 
132 West 58th Street (near Seventh Avenue)
212-713-0015

    Loi Estiatorio without Maria Loi would not really be Loi. 
    Of course, one could say that about many restaurants whose owner’s name is on the awning, but in so few cases these days do those owners ever set foot in their own establishments.  When you enter Loi, you’ll always find Loi everywhere.
    She’s the vivacious Greek woman with the blond bob, the big glasses, the white chef’s coat and a ribboned medallion. She may be at the bar signing copies of her latest book, The Greek Diet (Harper Collins)—she’s written 35—or she may be posing for photos with her admiring guests.
    More than anything it is her infectious spirit—what the Greeks call efforia—that sets the ambiance at Loi, a slender room with seascape murals of Nafpakt
os, the town where Maria was born. The place seems just big enough to be her own home’s dining room, and everybody in the place seems to know her, or wants to know her.
    Maria arrived in New York a few years ago and fell in love with the city, and she was determined to bring her own spirit of Greek cookery to town, at first, in 2011, in a too-large restaurant on the Upper West Side.  The new, smaller quarters (60 seats) on West 58th Street, almost two years old, are a better fit all around.  I just wish they turned up the lighting a bit, which would add even more to the conviviality.  I am grateful, though, that the noise level in the room is wholly civilized. Thick white tablecloths help.
    Before emigrating to NYC, Maria Loi had been appointed the official Ambassador of Greek Gastronomy—twice—by the Chef’s Club of Greece; she had her own TV show on PBS, “Cooking with Loi,” and she cooked at the Obama White House for 250 guests, and last year was invited to be a panelist at the Mediterranean Diet Roundtable Conference in LA.  She even has her own Greek food line at Whole Foods Market, and keeps a namesake restaurant back home in Nafpaktos.
    The menu at Loi is in three parts: Classic Greek dishes, “Village Dishes” and Maria’s own specialties, so it’s good to order from each and to consult with the very helpful staff.  Maria points out that none of her food is fried, which is one of the things that distinguishes her restaurant from a taverna.
     The wine list is modest, with high mark-ups: A Dougos Assyrtikos that costs $16 in a wine shop, $62 here, and a Porto Carras red is $25 versus $88.
    Complimentary pougi is an amuse bouche of thick, housemade yogurt, feta, roasted cherry tomatoes, fresh herbs, Greek oregano, and olive oil, all baked in parchment paper and served warm tableside. (Incidentally, in her book Maria says she used to have food fights with her sister, throwing yogurt at each other, then using it to moisturize their faces.)
    With the yogurt comes a basket of both whole grain pitas and, unexpectedly, some delicious cornbread biscuits.  I was a bit surprised that this basket was not replenished throughout the evening, which is customary in Greek restaurants. 
    The appetizer portion of the menu toes a fairly predictable line, including grilled halloumi cheese with lemon, olive oil and fragrant Greek oregano ($17);  a salad of tomato, red onion, green pepper, cucumber, Kalamata olives, feta and olive oil ($16); and a savory spinach pie with dill, mint, feta and phyllo ($15).  Delightfully out of the ordinary was stuffed eggplant with zucchini, bell peppers, onion, tomato and rich Greek-style béchamel ($18), which was also layered into a Greek lasagna with slowly cooked spiced beef, tomato, house-made pasta and myrzithra cheese ($29).  Crispy octopus croquettes ($18) were new to me, little balls of ground, seasoned octopus, pleasant but a bit bland.  Another octopus dish was a signature special, hatapodaki stin schara, slowly cooked, then grilled, tossed in ladolemono lemon-olive oil emulsion and served over a bed of fava purée with capers, red-wine macerated onions and topped with micro chives ($21). 
    Lamb shank is a hearty, succulent dish, suffused with red wine and abundant with tomato, onion, and lamb jus and sided with orzo ($39).  Special one night were good-sized langoustines (MP) with fat bodies and sweet meat, simply graced with olive oil and lemon, much the same as the star dish of the evening—a lavraki (sea bass or branzino) whose flavor showed every sign of having been recently plucked from the Mediterranean rather than a fish farm. Served with arugula ($39), it was as simple and perfect as seafood from that part of the world gets.
    Don’t miss ordering some side dishes like the gigante beans braised in tomato with spinach ($11) or the cauliflower steeped in tomato ($12).   
     For dessert (all $10) you could be very happy with more of that wonderful yogurt, now lavished with Cretan honey and walnuts, or any of the phyllo-pastry items, one with custard and cinnamon, but I was most delighted by a very dense cake of very fine, light chocolate called sokolakopita made with olive oil.
    At meal’s end, as the room empties out, you may well want to stick around and sip strong Greek coffee and an after-dinner mastiha, a resinous Greek liqueur.  Leaving a room this warm and hospitable is not that easy, and Maria Loi is happy to have you linger.

Loi Estiatorio offers lunch Monday through Friday, and dinner daily.  There is a $44 prix fixe pre-theater dinner.

NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR

WHY THERE'LL ALWAYS
BE AN ENGLAND