probably one of the worst dessert ive tasted. very salty and weird tasting
this hazelnut one was pretty good.
Journeyman totally didnt do it for me. nothing i had was memorable. portions were small; ingredients did not work well together and lacked flavors. service was friendly but slow. dinner was really unsatisfying.
Journeyman
Category: American (New)
9 Sanborn Ct
Somerville, MA 02143
(617) 718-2333
had been wanting to try kaju tofu house for a long time, but the long lines jus too crazy for me. one day i was really craving for soondubu, so i decided to wait.
this is my fave banchan – sweet potatos, love it so much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
galbi – super low quality meat, look at all that fat. meat was hard to chew.
We ordered two soondubus at two different spicy levels, but they all tasted equally spicy. It was super bland, one of the worst soondubus ive ever had. Even my Korean friends agree with me. Boston Korean food disappointed me once again, kaju tofu house never again.
Kaju Tofu House Category: Restaurants Korean 58 Harvard Ave (between Cambridge St & Franklin St) Allston, MA 02134 Neighborhood: Allston/Brighton
ive been to beehive couple times at night for drink but always wanted to check out their brunch. they have live jazz brunch on saturdays and sundays. we took my mother to beehive for mother’s day brunch.
we sat right in front of the stage section. it was a little too loud to have a conversation.
mimosa
moroccan cigars, lamb-filled phyllo springrolls
short rib, farmhouse cheddar & fontina grilled cheese
this was terrible. meat was not tender and the bread was dry and as thick as my pillow.
smoked salmon eggs benedict – very average.
the beehive prime burger, frites, slaw, gorgonzola, bacon
this was good comparing to other things we had
a full stomach of food
the food was disappointing, but we did enjoy the live music at beehive. i will continue to come here for drinks at night. check out their website for live music events.
The Beehive
Categories: Jazz & Blues, American (Traditional), American (New)
541 Tremont St
(between Hanson St & Milford St)
Boston, MA 02116
Neighborhood: South End
(617) 423-0069
highly anticipated Bronwyn opened up in Union Square last night. we were lucky enough to get a reservation. i am a huge fan of t.w. food in cambridge. bronwyn is wiechmann and her husband’s new venture. i was super excited for the german wurst and bier meaning sausage and beer in german.
the bar opens til 1am
we sat in the back room, a european feel.
i like the chairs
couple beers were sold out already by the time we got there around 830pm
Ayiner – hefeweizen
i was in love with this grapefruit beer. i usually dont like fruit beers, but this one was really good.
house made sausages: not overly salty and very well flavored.
Knödel bacon bread dumpling, fiddlehead purée – i didnt really taste the bacon tho
Biernudeln dark beer pasta, artichoke, mustard, blue cheese
somehow i misread the dark beer pasta as deer pasta, so i was expecting deer meat at the entire time. -_-
Jagerschnitzel thin veal schnitzel, foraged mushrooms, walnuts, honey
i really liked this dish.
Oat-honey Challah, Rye Roggenbrot, Bauernbrot, juniper-sesame crisp, butter, sea salt
chocolate cake – i liked the richness of the chocolate, but i found the cake was a lil bit too floury
since it was our first time there, we wanted to sample a variety of dishes. although everything we had was FANTASTIC, i would probably skip the pasta, desserts and some of the starters next time. they have an extensive list of german beer and wine. i would come in for drinks and order bunch of their house made sausages and maybe a pretzel if im super hungry. just now as im writing up this post, i realized i didnt try any of the rieslings!!! i freaking love german riesling. ughhhhhhhhhhhhh how could i not try any?! service was awesome, fast, and accommodating! cant wait to return to try their riseling and more beer!
it was pork belly’s birfuday last thursday so we decided to celebrate it at Asta.
Asta, standing for Alex & Shish’s Taste Adventure, is Alex Crabb’s first restaurant after serving as sous chef at L’espalier for over five years.
parking wouldve been a pain, but fortunately they share the valet at Deuxave next door.
we sat at the ‘bar’ overlooking the kitchen. i loved the setup. it felt very cozy like i was dining at someone’s kitchen.
asta only offers tasting menus available in three, five and eight courses. they allow everyone at the table get different tasting menus which was awesome. ive read good reviews on the 5 course tasting and someone mentioned the 8 course was ‘overly conceptual’, so i was curious about that as well.
2008 Schoenheitz riesling ‘lisenberg’ alsace
duck heart, green almond milk, carpaccio
8-course tasting #1. oyster smoked and raw with celery juice
5-course tasting #1. peas with sheep’s milk cheese from vermont and mushrooms.
8-course tasting #2. after the storm: seaweed pasta, salmon roe, lemon mussel foam.
this was probably one of the ‘conceptual’ dishes. i loved it! when chef alex brought the dish, it smelled like the ocean. i was a fan of the lemon mussel foam, the whole dish tasted like ocean it was awesome. i loved it how it incorporated visual, smell, and taste.
the chefs were super friendly
8-course tasting #3. poached arctic char with ramps and cheeries.
5-course tasting #2. asparagus with egg and ajoblanco
8-course tasting #4. quail – escagot was stuffed in the quail, green garlic, and fava leaves. this was another one of our faves.
5-course tasting #3. scallop with farro, blueberries, and coriander. the scallop was fabulous ‘
2012 ch. d’Or et de Gueules ‘les cimels’ rose rhone – i wasnt a fan of it
5-course tasting #4. beef ribeye with chopped herbs, stinging nettles, and baby radish.
i thought this was a lil underwhelming and bland. the ribeye was very well executed, but i was looking for a kick to the flavor that it’s lacking.
8-course tasting #6. lamb with beets & scallions – same thing with the lamb: very well executed but a lil bland.
8-course tasting #7. campari stewed rhubarb with ricotta, pink peppercorns and white chocolate. im not a fan of rhubarb, but the flavors worked well together.
coconut cream pie. super dericious. the sweetness was just right.
5-course tasting #5. swiss roll – chcolate, passion fruit, tobacco. im a sucker for passion fruit, this def hit the spot. rich and creamy dark chocolate with passion fruit filling. ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
8-course tasting #8. almond and apricot – rosemary milk. this was served warm. super dericious and satisfying as well.
bunny cookies )))))))) hehehehehehe
i had a great meal at asta. food was light, dericious, creative, and unique in terms of the ingredients, smell, presentation, and taste. the unfamiliar ingredients connected surprisingly well together. the presentation was beautiful. i dont think they were ‘overly conceptual’ either. its like alinea in chicago, they combine food with art. i totally dig it.
like i mentioned before, i totally love the ambience and kitchen setup. very cozy, relaxing, and entertaining. staff was very friendly, knowledgeable, and accommodating. although i wish couple dishes had more flavors, the overall experience was excellent. i will def be back.
Asta
Category: Restaurants American (New) American (New)
47 Massachusetts Ave
(at Marlborough St)
Boston, MA 02115
Neighborhood: Back Bay
this is gonna be a long, disorganized, chaotic , and angry post just like the experience i had at little lamb restaurant 2 days ago . if you dont have the patience to read the entire post, here is my conclusion: the very second WORST dining experience i have ever experienced after Giacomo’s Ristorante
where do i start? I have absolutely no expectations for good services whenever I dine at a Chinese restaurant. As long as the service is timely I’d be happy with it. Little lamb def failed terribly in every possible aspect you can imagine.
Little lamb, xiao wei yang, is Mongolian hot pot chain and was just opened its first north American location in beacon hill boston last week. The menu, consisting of various broths and some of my favorite small dishes, looked really promising so I called up a few friends to check it out. We got there at 7:00pm.
The restaurant was half full. We were sat right away. The waiter brought us the menus and left without absolutely no explanations or warning of sold out items. I was confused about several items on the menu so I had to verify with the waiter. Getting the waiter’s attention was the most frustrating thing ever, he would just walk by me knowing that I was waving to him. So at this point, I started to try to get any other waiters’ attention. All of them did the same thing: walking by me knowing that I was trying to get their attention. I started to wonder if little lamb hired all blind workers or i became invisible. Finally, our waiter came, I ask him what’s in the veggie dumplings? He said he has no idea, but he would ask the kitchen for me. Great! I was also confused about another item on the menu, he told me it was sold out. Great! Why didn’t u tell me earlier?
They basically give u a piece of paper which has a list of their items and you can just check it off whatever you would like to order. However, the drinks are not on the paper so you actually have to tell the waiter what you want. We ordered 5 different drinks from the menu and they didn’t have 3 of them. They didn’t even have milk tea. Fine, we will take water.
We waited, waited, and waited. 20 minutes passed. He didn’t even bring us our drinks. He finally brought us 3 drinks but no water for my friends. 40 minutes passed, not only no food was brought to us, the FIRE ALARM WENT OFF.
the drinks sucked.
Seriously, has it ever happened to you? Fire alarm going off in the middle of your meal? It’s bizarre. Thanks to the fire fighters arrived only a few minutes later and turned off the fire alarm so we could return to the restaurant in less than 15 mins. We thought about leaving but for the sake of my blog and all my dear readers out there, we had to get the full experience for you guys so we endured it. We were starving and already waited for 50 mins at this point.
the fire trucks
to give u the ultimate experience, here’s a vid clip
Half of the customers left when we returned inside. They finally brought our hot pot and couple veggie dishes and noodles. So throughout the night the service was EXTREMELY slow. Not only that, after couple hours, they only brought us half of the stuff we ordered. Every time I asked the waiter where the rest of our food was he had no idea what was brought to us and what wasn’t. I had to name each dish that hadn’t been brought to us (not to mention it took me at least 10 mins of staring or waving at the waiter every time I tried to get his attention). He would only bring us 1-2 dishes every time I asked then forgot the rest again. This went on all night. We were super frustrated and starving! He would also name the dishes wrong; no idea what he was bringing to us. At the end of the meal, he still missed a few dishes but we all really just lost all our patience and just asked for the bill. How could this possibly happen!?!??!?!?! We checked everything off on a piece of paper so they should know what exactly we ordered. It’s hot pot! They don’t need to cook anything just wash the veggies and cut the meat and bring them over! How can you mess this up so bad?! They absolutely had no training whatsoever, not even common sense.
the veggie dumplings that the waiter had no clue about – chives, eggs, vermicelli.
at this point, the dinner already lasted 3+ hours. When the bill came, it was TOTALLY wrong. We got charged for some of the stuff that was never brought to us. They also charged us for a bottle of spring water. There was a bottle of spring water on the table but my friend brought that from home. WTFFFFFFF really?!? So I circled every item that was wrong on the bill for him and walked to the cashier with him, the bill kept going up each time he modified it. It took them FOUR tries to finally get the correct amount. At this time, we were beyond mad. They offer to give us some kinda ‘VIP’ card. We rejected it without a second thought. I told them we will never come back again and they ask me cluelessly ‘why’? Their cluelessness got us mad even more. UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH we just wanted to bang our heads against the wall. this whole bill situation took another 30+ minutes, so our entire dinner lasted almost 4 hours. last time i had a 3+ hours dinner was eating a 27- course sushi tasting menu.
in terms of food:
you can get your own sauce
the broth was only ok. flavor wasnt rich at all, jus flat, msg, salty taste. the spiciness was not pleasant, like it was gonna choke up your throat and it wasnt even spicy enough for us.
this was the only time that the water boiled and never boiled again after we dumped food in. the heat was really low even we turned it to high.
the meat was pretty hard, thick, and chewy and too much fat on it.
hot pot meat should be sliced paper thin, melts in your mouth soft and mostly lean meat.
as we were eating, the water kept dripping down on us from the ceiling!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
well flavored, but fried instead of grilled
we order 15+ different kinds of veggies, noodles, dumpling dishes, but since the service was super super super slow and we were starving. i didnt wanna make my friends to wait any longer to take my pictures, so i stopping taking pictures.
since the heat was never hot enough, the oil started to grease together. got pretty nasty.
i understand that they just opened not long ago, but this kinda service is beyond hopeless. if you are not ready, at least start with a soft opening instead of a GRAND opening. Only serve limited amount of people until you get comfortable it. At least realize your mistakes, learn how to use the cashier machine, and have some kinda common sense. food was nothing special, even they had something good, half of the stuff on the menu was not available. Average food with this kinda disastrous service. We will not be back for sure. i dont think they will be ready anytime soon.
if you are still reading, thank you so much you are awesome. i really had a terrible experience and felt even more terrible for putting my friends through this. experiences like this are really unforgettable. RIP my brain cells that died that night from all that frustration and anger!
Little Lamb Restaurant
Categories: Food Do-It-Yourself Food Restaurants Asian Fusion Do-It-Yourself Food, Asian Fusion
326 Cambridge St
(between North Grove St & Grove St)
Boston, MA 02114
Neighborhood: Beacon Hill
i recently opened a store on Etsy selling french macarons. im currently talking to a owner to see if i can sell my macarons at his ‘store’.
anyways, im taking orders for this mother’s day weekend. we do pick-ups or free delivery to anywhere within 20 miles radius of downtown Boston. i cant ship macarons at this moment due to its delicate nature.
)))))))) hehehehehehe
