I realize that I wrote an entire post about Toronto, and am using this single post to represent Boston and New York. But I would like to set the record straight and say that there were just as many note worthy food, and maybe more accurately beer adventures in Boston and New York however, having been sidetracked in searching out the latter, I failed to capture many pics of the food we did eat or beer that we drank, and was far too 'over-served' to write up anything meaningful anyway. Here is how I recount the more sober moments.
I should point out that while my poison of choice these days is wine or bourbon, the micro-brew scene in Bean-town, as well as how well they pour a Guinness would probably be enough to sway me back to brewskies.
Boston
The first night we got into Boston, my best bud took us to a local pub called the Druid.
I'm not sure what I was expecting or what I should have expected, but this pub was the first experience that felt like Boston to me. And it was a wicked awesome one.
Besides the fiddling we could hear outside the pub, nothing was out of the ordinary. In fact it looked like a pretty quiet scene and I expected there to be just a few locals posted up at the bar. NOPE.
As soon as the door swung open, we heard the full volume of the place. I've been to 'Irish pubs' before where everyone is dressed up like leprechauns, there's green Molson Canadian on tap and you can order Shepherd's pie. These pubs are what you might get in a St. Paddies' Spongebob episode. This pub was the real thing.
A couple dozen Irish-Boston people with accents to match, were packed into the back of this place, with a half dozen musicians all sitting in a booth (ya, not a stage, but a booth) at the front playing music that mirrored the mood of the place.
Two good Irish lads were behind the counter pouring the nicest Guinness I've ever had. Probably something to be said for atmosphere adding to the beer drinking experience, but it was the nicest none the less.
About 2 pints in, the bouncer, who looked like he was straight out of The Departed (in fact, everyone there did), shushed the rowdy crowd, successfully, as the the place went dead. A humble looking lad in the front cleared his throat, strummed his guitar and sang a beautiful Irish ballad. The room was on his every word and I think I saw a tear roll down the bouncer's cheek.
The song ended, the crowd picked up and I sat there with a big grin on my face, Guinness stuck to my beard and happily drank the dark stuff into a pretty solid drunk with good company. I had been in Boston a few hours and it was already more than I wanted to get out of the trip.
Onto the food.
The next day I found Grilled Cheese Nation in Harvard (I have an obsession with food trucks on Eat St.).
I had the Boston Common with Bacon.
It was good, and not too expensive at 8 bones, but it was basic and I think I could have grilled up the same thing and had enough for a pint of the dark stuff on the side. Take notice however that I'm 30 years old and have been around the block enough to know how to properly cook bacon and slap it on a grilled cheese with tomato. I'm sure as a fresh faced university kid, I would have gladly forked over 8 bucks for this sandwich.
Later that day, we decided to partake in a plan that we drafted up the night before at the Druid. A pub crawl on the Freedom Trail. A lot of history involved on this one so click the link for a read, but for the sake of this blog, just know its about 2.5 miles through downtown Boston, marked by red brick and paint on the road. Probably the same red brick by the way, that is used to build the older buildings that make up Boston.
First place we hit was the home of the Boston Cream Pie. We opted for beers instead.
Next stop on the crawl was the Black Rose. A cheaper option to Cheers which was a block away. We all felt the itch to check out the famous bar from the tv show, but it was more resembling of a tourist trap than a bar at this point, and this walk was about beerdom, I mean freedom, so we passed.
At the Black Rose, I had a Guinness and a pretty good little New England Clam Chowder with soda biscuits.
We took a little detour down to the water which ended up being a great idea because it resulted in one of the cooler food related experiences on the trip. As we tried to find our way back to the trail,
we stumbled on The Cheese Shop In The North End.
Cool little cheese shop in little Italy that also had a great selection of assorted antipasto, dry cured meats (including a salami and 22-month prosciutto that we filled our bags with) and of course cheese. It also seemed to have three generations of a family (and stereotypes) running the place.
Here's a pic of the girls (3rd generation I'm guessing) who served us up as much dried meat, cheese, olive oils, bread, and chili paste as they could convince us to eat.
The sales associate (sweet talker and 2nd generation I'm guessing) of the place had a track suite on and the owner, who was a charmer and a winker, escorted us away from the "crap" jarred olives to a big keg full of "the real deal". Nice, giant, green olives that had a texture that was foreign to my non-authentic tastes but preferable to the soggy olives I'm used to. They had a suspicious grapa flavour to them as well. Delicious.
On our way out, the sweet talker told us to check out a restaurant down the street and "tell em the Cheez Shap sent yas".
We didn't make it, but stumbling upon an authentic Italian family-run cheese and dry cured meats store knocked off another item on my TO DO/TO TRY list and as an added bonus, the salami and prosciutto we bought were incredible.
New York
Unfortunately this section will be pretty short because we spent most of our 3 days there frantically trying to cover as much site seeing in this MONSTER of a city that we could.
After being pretty disappointed with a sushi place we found near Wall Street, we opted for street meat for lunch and a had 1$ New York hot dog. While not on the TO DO/TO TRY list, it is a good and cheap option for hungry tourists trying to see everything.
The only pic I have related to food from our whirlwind in New York City is of this beauty of a beer at Radegast Hall and Biergarden. Can't even remember what kind of bier this was, but they were all good, and came in big sizes.
The place also served bratwurst and sauerkraut made in-house, which our host said were good.
Ok folks, finishing off this series of travel posts with this last few lines and then I'm Yukon Ho!
From now on the posts on this site will be less of a traveling food critic theme, and more related to what this blog was created for: Documenting my own kitchen experiments.
I thought it fitting to finish this post with the mention of my meal in Newark International Airport.
Behold the glorious Spicy Chicken Breast Sandwich. You rule Wendy's in Newark International Airport.
This beauty isn't mine and was stolen from the Internet but they all look like this. (I've had 100s)
Thats it, thats all, see you in Whitehorse.
-Maciej
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