The Ultimate New England Meal

Eating clam chowder at Fenway Park is one my favorite
Boston traditions.

While The Drunken Goat Dispatches will largely focus on eating and drinking in Chicago, it will from time to time cover eating perspectives from other cities. Last month I had the opportunity to visit Boston. Having gone to Boston University and lived there for many years, it's always great to go back and play tour-guide for visiting friends and family.

While its food scene isn't as dynamic and ever-evolving as it is here in Chicago, Boston does several things exceptionally well: oysters, lobster rolls and clam chowder. Groundbreaking insight here, right?

Since I've moved to Chicago, I've been on a continual quest to find something - anything - that resembles the New England fare I grew up on. This is especially the case when summer rolls around, and I start craving Harpoon IPA, lobster rolls and oysters night and day.

So, in a city where practically every restaurant is claiming to have "Boston's Best Clam Chowder," here are a few of my must-visit eating stops:

Oysters and rose is a great start to any meal.

• Fenway Park: There's a Legal Sea Foods vendor in Fenway Park, and it's one of my favorite places in Boston to get clam chowder. Legal is a venerable Boston seafood chain. Its flagship restaurants - though solid - aren't that special or interesting of an eating experience. However, I do love their outpost in Fenway, with its classic chowder. There's something particularly exciting about eating it at Fenway Park, ideally on a crisp fall or spring night with a Guinness or Sam Adams (both also available at the park). It's also easier to eat soup at a ballpark than you would think.
   
• Neptune Oyster: Located in Boston's charming North End neighborhood, Neptune Oyster is a quaint, seafood haven in the city's Italian neighborhood. Its oyster selection changes daily based on the day's catch, and it typically includes no less than a dozen different kinds of oysters from Rhode Island, Cape Cod, Maine, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and elsewhere throughout the Atlantic.  Neptune Oyster's two lobster roll options (one served hot with drawn butter, the other served cold with the slightest touch of mayo) will leave you making one of the most complex, difficult decisions of your eating life. It's like choosing between favorite pets or children.  
  



Lobster roll at B&G. No words needed.

• B&G Oysters: Led by the creative inspiration of Barbara Lynch, B&G Oysters in the South End is casual, noisy, fun and delicious. The heart of the restaurant is its small, open kitchen. We sat at the bar overlooking the oyster shucking station. I could have watched it for hours. On a busy Sunday afternoon, we went for B&G's Boston-food trifecta: oysters (some briny, some sweet; all New England), chowder (smoky and rich thanks to the welcomed addition of pancetta) and lobster roll (pitch perfect served with house-cured pickles and hand-cut fries). It was easily one of my most favorite meals in recent memory.          

This is just a brief sampling of some of my Beantown favorites. Until my next visit, my quest for lobster rolls and oysters in Chicago presses on...


Where is your must-visit Boston drinking and eating destinations? What about your favorite seafood spots in Chicago? Leave a comment and let me know.

Delice de Bourgogne Seduction

Those of you will come to know that while I love food of all varieties, my most favorite edible is cheese. Hard, soft, salty, mild, goat, sheep, buffalo, cow: I've never met a piece of cheese I didn't like (or at least want to meet). It seems as though the artisnal cheese plate has become a restaurant standard these days. There are a few places in the city that do this exceptionally well. The Purple Pig, Bin 36 and Bin Wine Cafe and Bluebird immediately to mind but certainly there are others.  

I recently had the opportunity to sample the cheese plate at Maude's Liquor Bar, a new, bistro-inspired restaurant and bar in the West Loop with very forgiving lighting, a comfortable and cozy atmosphere and classic French food. It's the type of place to hunker down in during a storm.

Heaven on a plate. 

As it so happened, a friend and I stopped in there on a Wednesday night as one of Chicago's legendary spring downpours was winding down. After sampling their Viognier, Sauvignon Blanc and Saint Germain Fizz, we turned to Maude's cheese plate and were completely and utterly seduced by the Delice de Bourgogne.

Where other restaurants go over the top with their cheese varieties and corresponding accoutrement, Maude's approach is direct and simple. The Delice de Bourgogne is a rich, buttery cow's milk cheese that's impressive enough to stand on its own. It's pungent but not overbearing. Maude's served a large, oozing wedge of it with a warm baguette and a spread of apples and dijon mustard. The hint of spice in the spread countered the richness of the cheese perfectly. The experience left us wanting more, and we both later confessed we woke up the next morning thinking about it.

I'd like to say that the Delice de Bourgogne was the first time I was seduced by a wedge of cheese, but it wasn't. In fact, I have a long and storied past with Humboldt Fog. A topic for another day.