September 4, 2013 An Amazing Day of Food and Sightseeing in Boston Lunch – Quattro and

September 4, 2013 An Amazing Day of Food and Sightseeing in Boston   Lunch – Quattro and

Dinner- Du Midi

 Today was one of those whirlwind days packed full of great sights and food, as impressive as the food and sights of yesterday were unimpressive.

 Around 10:00 a.m. we started by talking to the concierge about restaurants.  He recommended Quattro for fresh contemporary Italian Cuisine in the North End and Du Midi as the favorite of the hotel’s Manager for French food near the hotel. 

 We then started our sightseeing by walking from the Revere Hotel to Copley Square near the beginning of the Freedom Trail.  The Freedom Trail is the self guided walking tour of sights associated with the American Revolution.  I waited at Copley Square surrounded by the First Public Library, the Old South Church, another church and the Copley Hotel, while Suzette and Willy walked to the Apple Store, so Willy could get a new charger and a European adapter for his new charger ($140). 

While Willy walked back to our room at the Revere Hotel to drop off his computer, Suzette and I got on the subway at Copley Square and went to Government Center to visit the Park Service Information Office, where I received another map of the Freedom Trail.  The Freedom Trail is marked by a line of red bricks bordered by gray granite bricks.  We then walked a short block to the nearby Faneuil Hall, where the Sons of Liberty met in the 1770’s to plan the Boston Tea Party and other Revolutionary actions.

Then we walked next door to the Quincy Market and waited for Willy at Ned Devine’s Irish Pub, where Suzette drank a Red Ale made exclusively for the Freedom Trail by Samuel Adams Brewery Co. and I drank a Mangers Irish Apple Cider in honor of Willy’s trip to Ireland.  

When Willy arrived, we followed the red brick marked trail across the I-93 freeway to the North End of Boston and soon arrived at Hanover Street where there are many Italian restaurants and bakeries.  We saw many names we had seen in the Guestbook Guide and soon found Quattro.  We made a tentative reservation and then walked on to the lovely small square where Paul Revere’s house is located (built in 1680) and through the narrow historic streets of the North End to the Old North Church where the two lanterns told Paul Revere that the English were coming to Lexington and Concord.

We then toured a colonial house beside the Church with a printing shop and chocolate manufacturing area.  This was the shop in which the original copy of the Declaration of Independence was printed.  It currently contained a 1700’s Revolutionary era printing press that the lady who was demonstrating the printing techniques said was in all respects identical to the original Guttenburg press, except the press lever that pressed the weight was metal instead of wood.  She spread ink onto lamb skin covered sticks over wadding and inked the type face and printed a facsimile copy of the Declaration of Independence.  Then we walked through a door into the other side of the shop to a table where chocolate processing was demonstrated.   We were given a sip of hot chocolate laced with orange, fennel, chili, salt, pepper, and other herbs, which is the way people took their chocolate in the revolutionary era.

After our chocolate experience we walked back to Quattro and were seated at a window table.  The menu was interesting: I chose octopus salad, Willy ordered a lovely fig, feta and arugula pizza and Suzette ordered ground spit roasted chicken filled ravioli.  We ordered a bottle of 100% Cortese 2011 Gavi Rene di Basasiolo white wine grown on the Niovi Ligure Hillsides.
 

 Slices of flattened loaf of dark bread filled with olives, baked at a bakery owned by the same food group at Quattro, were served with a lovely olive oil infused with garlic cloves.  Soon we were dipping and nibbling dark heavy bread and sipping wine.

When the Octopus salad arrived, it was drizzled with olive oil and parsley flakes with large chunks of what appeared to be pressure cooked boiled octopus, blanched string beans and chunks of sun dried tomatoes and halved fresh cherry tomatoes, roasted wedges of potato and marinated red onion threads. 

 

Then the pizza arrived crispy and slightly charred, topped with a white sauce, slices of feta and parmesan and a pile of baby arugula.  

 

Then the ravioli arrived.  It was the least interesting dish flavor-wise but the most authentic, stuffed with ground spit roasted chicken and sauced with a wild mushroom ragu and garnished with roasted tomatoes.  The mushroom in the mushroom cream sauce seemed to be sliced lobster mushrooms.

 

We loved today’s meal as much as we hated the lunch yesterday.

After lunch we walked through the North End, stopping at an Italian bakery for a Florentine, on our way to the bridge over the Charles River that led to the Navy Yards where ships have been fitted out and refurbished from the 1700’s through the 1970’s.  The Navy Yard has been turned into a National Historic Site where the USS Constitution and WWII SST and a destroyer are berthed.  We took a tour of the USS Constitution, which was one of the original six ships built for the original U.S. Navy in 1797 that saw engagements in the War of 1812.  The ship has been restored to its original condition, minus all the ship’s stores and crew, but it has all its cannons and rigging and one or two sails.   

 

I loved it; the open deck was lined with cannons and there was a gun deck below the top deck and a third level that was for eating and sleeping in hammocks with less than 5 feet of clearance in height in places.  The ship’s name of Old Ironsides was derived from its sandwiched American oak hull that deflected cannon balls (clearly the highlight of my visit to Boston).  

 

We then walked through the Navy Yards to a ferry that took us across the Inner Harbor to the Aquarium, where we caught a Green line subway back to the hotel.  At the hotel, we washed up and changed for the evening.  Then at 5:00 Suzette and I left for the Fine Arts Museum and Willy returned to Apple store to try to get a back up cable for his I Phone 5 instead of the I Phone 4 one he had gotten this morning.

 

The Fine Arts Museum was amazing also.  It has a superb collection of art from all periods except perhaps American Modernism.  Two Georgia O’Keefes, Two Marsden Hartleys, etcetera.  But lots of Albert Bierstadts, including the amazing “Storm in the Mountains”  (http://www.undergroundwebworld.org/Art.Gallery/Nature.htm),  a room full of Winslow Homers, including “Boys in a Pasture”,  a bunch of large format original prints from "Birds of America" by James Audubon and several of the smaller format versions of Birds of America in their original bound volumes.  We finally decided to limit our tour to Contemporary, European Impressionism, Millet's Barbizon School, Pre-Raphaelites and Chinese and Japanese art.  I saw the most beautiful Peach Bloom glazed ink jar and vase I have ever seen and then the best Buddha statute I have ever seen.

Then we went to the Impressionist hall and saw some great Claude Monets and Paul Cezannes, but we could walk no farther.

 

 Finally at 8:30 we left the Museum and returned to the Arlington station and walked the block to Boylston St. and then beside the Boston Commons, past beautiful Haute Couture shops such as, Christolfe, and Hermés, and soon arrived at Du Midi.

Du Midi's menu and wine list were amazing.  It is hard to decide.  After studying the extensive menu and wine list, the only thing I was sure about was that we wanted the chocolate soufflé ($10.00).  I decided to order the raw scallop Live Sea Scallop, Cucumber, Coriander, Freeze Dried Corn, Shaved Foie Gras Torchon  $ 15) and a Seared Duck Breast, Chickpea Croquette, Black Olive, Almonds, Black Mission Figs, Lavender Jus   ($30.00).   Suzette ordered Slow-Cooked Crispy Pork Belly, Lentilles de Puy, Parsnip Purée, Pork Jus  $ 14 and Willy ordered Braised Lamb Neck, Goat Cheese Polenta, Morels, English Peas, Favas, Persillade $ 30.  Since the menu items were beginning to add up and the cheapest bottle of wine on the extensive Wine Spectator awarded wine list was around $50.00, Suzette and I decided to order individual glasses of wine and Willy ordered another Dark and Stormy (Dark Rum and Ginger Beer).

 

I cannot begin to describe how delicious the food was.  When asked about the foie gras torchon, our knowledgeable waitress described that it was foie gras that was wrapped in cheese cloth that was then twisted tightly until most of the fat was squeezed out of the foie gras and then it was placed in the freezer to chill.  Then the frozen foie gras was grated onto the top of the scallop dish and garnished with frozen kernels of sweet corn.

 

When I tasted the pork belly, I was amazed that it was pork comfit and the most tender piece of pork I have ever eaten.     I also loved the small Lentiles de Puy with it and the parsnip puree.

 

Willy’s lamb neck dish was the most interesting dish; it was slow roasted and the variety of ingredients, Goat Cheese Polenta, Morels, English Peas, Favas, Persillade; wonderful.

 

I loved my beautifully prepared duck breast with its lavender jus was very classical but nice, except for the unusual garbanzo puree croquettes set on slices of Mission figs.  The sauce was a demi-glace infused with fruit flavors and lavender; elegantly refined in every respect.

 

Finally, the chocolate soufflé came with a small pitcher of crème anglais.  We ordered a glass of Ferrand Amber cognac ($16.00) and opened the soufflé and poured the crème anglais into the soufflé that was perfectly cooked; creamy dark chocolate in the center and crisp on the edges; a perfect ending to a perfect meal.  The cognac was a generous glass that lasted beyond the end of Suzette and my tastes of the soufflé.

I have not had so perfect and interesting a meal since the Gramercy Tavern meal in NY for Rebecca’s graduation in May.  In fact this was the best French meal I have had in several years.  We did not do a full five or six course meal, but everything was exquisitely conceived and executed in a completely classical manner and sharing a seafood and a pork comfit appetizer and a duck and lamb entrée and a dessert seemed like a perfectly balanced meal.

 Bon Appétit