I hit AZURE (710 Boylston Street, Boston Tel: 617.933.4800 website:/www.azureboston.com/azureboston) with my pal Trinh. It is her first time participating. Before I meet up with her, I was fortunate to see a great ole high school friend Jen H. She was up from DC at home on the Cape and decided to do a day trip to the city. We met up and relaxed in the food court at the PRU reminiscing, catching up and talking about food, life, making ends meet and being healthy. It was wonderful to see her.
Trinh is at Azure a bit earlier than myself for our 8:30pm dinner reservation. Since my last outing there a few years back with Ai chan it has changed alot. In place of the hushed, brightly light, big dining room is now a big bar in the middle of the room, low lit, loungy music piping through the speakers. Once we get the menu, we are surprised with a dizzying array of choices but no restaurant week menu (I find that you get a special listing for the restaurant week menu). After inquiring with our server, we found out that the WHOLE menu is available for restaurant. We are giddy with the prospect and all the choices we don't know where to start.
We are lured to order the seafood choices we find on the menu.
We get the flash fried squid, spicy scallop and shrimp tomato stew to start. We are served crusty bread to start and two slabs of butter. For our entrees, I get the seafood stew (fish, mussels, clams, shrimp). For dessert I opt for the pots of creme chocolate. The portions were very generous and we both could not finish our meals without feeling full.
The cooking, presentation and quality was top notch. We did feel that there was a lag in time waiting for our check and getting the check back. When we did have our server's attention she was fine.
Reservation number three was made at Excelsior (272 Boylston St, Boston, 02116 - (617) 426-7878) www.excelsiorrestaurant.com. I got my sister into becoming a restaurant week convert. She never really indulged or experienced fine dining until I dragged her to her first experience three years ago to Hammersley's Bistro in the South End. Since the meal, she has been smiling with culinary contentment everytime we go out for our restaurant week outings.
We decide to dress up for our dinner (not something we do together often). I see my sister in a skirt for the first time in YEARS and heels! (Not a word in her vocabulary--"heels" anyways). We do go to the restaurant with big anticipation for a good meal.
We opt for the wine and food pairing and get a dozen oysters while we are at it. Unfortunately not all the oysters varieties they usually serve are available so two of the dozen end up being clams. All are from the local area within Massachusetts. We are given three dippngs sauces--herb infused sauce, burgundy wine sauce and a cocktail sauce with fresh horseradish.
I am fuzzy on the exact wines but we had some from Italy (the moscato di asti), South Africa, Australia, Sonoma and a nice smooth port as well as a wine from Oregon. We are both not wine experts but we felt the wine selections paired with their food counterpart exquisite. I guess there is good reason Excelsior was giving an award from Food and Wine Magazine. The bread basket was attacked with gusto. The sweet cream flavor of the butter was brought out by the sea salt. We had a few choices of bread from a nice raison nut bread, bread stick and regular rolls. The 10 oysters and 2 clams were eaten quickly and we enjoyed the nice mix of freshness and the taste of the ocean. YUMMMMY! Then for my appetizer I had the green tomato gazpacho which was excellent with a big dallop of the blue fish pate in the center. My sister enjoyed her salad. For entree my sister had the natural skirt steak (cooked to medium rare perfection) with mash potatoes, which to her was a taste of heaven worth savoring every mouthful. I really enjoyed my fish dish.
Dessert was a pleasant affair, I had a chocolate cup with almond granita where as my sister had a ice cream over her dessert choice.
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