Wow, we get a whole week?

This week is World Vegetarian Week, with a few places in Boston offering special menus. That is cool, but damn, I wish they offered those menus all the time!

It's a good excuse to take yourself out for a veggie dinner this week, though. I might have to take this opportunity to return to My Thai Cafe in Brookline, my favorite new restaurant, which I have still been unable to blog about because I just don't know how to express its sheer deliciousness. My other favorite place to celebrate World Vegetarian Week might be Ten Tables in JP, which has a vegetarian tasting menu every night, and where they ask you what you like and what ingredients you don't like when you order it.

Speaking of hummus

To follow up on Christine's insistence upon above-average hummus, a quick note about my favorite store-bought hummuses (hummi?). John and I really like Sabra hummus, but you have to get the kind that comes in the flat container with the red-rimmed top as pictured on the website. (I've seen the same brand in a taller, typical-hummus-shaped container and it's not the same.) This is worth searching out; some Boston grocery stores carry it but not all. The roasted red pepper and pine nut varieties are particularly delicious. This hummus is extra smooth and creamy. I must warn you against the "Supremely Spicy" version however; I dig hard on spicy foods and this is one of the few commercial "spicy" products we found overwhelmingly too hot, i.e., really not pleasant to have in your mouth in any quantity.

I also like several varieties of hummus carried at Trader Joe's, namely the horseradish hummus (nicely tangy but not hot) and the three-layer hummus (or the "triple threat" as my brother has termed it), of which layers the cilantro is my very fave. I wish the cilantro hummus was available solo, because it's sooo yummy; it's on the thick/chunky side and good in sandwiches. TJ's also has several new varieties of hummus, including a white bean and basil kind I just bought and really loved. Very creamy and pesto-y. I find that when TJ's starts carrying a product I really like they discontinue it within weeks, so go seek this stuff out now before it's too late!

I require my hummus to be extremely delicious

I was so disappointed to be disappointed by Cafe Jaffa, on Gloucester Street near the Pru. On the veggie friendly front, Cafe Jaffa passes muster, but on the actual tastiness front, not as much. Middle Eastern food is so naturally vegetarian friendly, and I was anticipating some delicious plateful of chickpea products, pickled things and fresh vegetables. I sort of got that, piecemail, but nothing about it was amazing.

I split the potato bourekas with my husband for an appetizer, and they weren't bad. I liked the texture and the sesame seeds on top of the little dough packets. But the flavor overall was bland. Then for dinner I ordered a falafel and hummus plate, which came with a salad and pita. I think I was expecting a plate with all that on it together, some kind of varied entree with nice garnishes. My salad came first though, and it was pretty good--a Greek salad with firm pickle slices and feta. Then my entree came, and it was just hummus and four falafel balls on a small appetizer plate, with a shared side of pita bread. So then I wished I had saved some salad and feta to mix with the hummus and put on a pita. The hummus was just OK, but not that flavorful, and same with the falafel, which was too oily and without a distinct flavor other than oil. The hummus was the biggest disappointment. I really think that homemade hummus, when it's the foundation of a vegetarian meal, should have great flavor and consistency (like Farm Grill Rotisserie's, for example). Cafe Jaffa's hummus had too much of one flavor--maybe cumin or red pepper--that overwhelmed it.

I left feeling full, but Cafe Jaffa fell short of what I had been craving.

Finally, a decent burrito

Veggie friendliness: Four out of five stars

It's sort of terrible that a national chain restaurant is by far the best Mexican in the Boston area. But really, Chipotle's burritos are an order of magnitude better than any other place I've been in Boston. Anna's Taqueria is just bad, with no salsa options, cheese in American slice form and weird, tasteless vegetables that should not be in burritos. And their rice is not vegetarian. I liked the burritos at Piquante in Central Square, but Chipotle in the Dedham Mall is the only really decent burrito I've had since moving away from my beloved Illegal Pete's in Boulder.

Chipotle is veggie friendly too, which maybe isn't so authentic (the slogan at another Boulder Mexican place was "Praise the lard") but I'm not complaining. There are tasty sauteed peppers and onions, two kinds of vegetarian beans--pinto and black--and plenty of flavorful salsa options. And, the rice is just so yummy, with cilantro and lime. The tortillas are just right and they have the big warmer/steamer thing for them. The guacamole is also excellent. The only thing that could be improved is if they mixed all your burrito fillings together at the end before wrapping. But that was always what set Illegal Pete's apart, so if that's the only thing missing, I can happily eat Chipotle's burritos until my next Colorado visit.

Also, Chipotle is cheap and they have a big vat of real brewed iced tea. They're in Dedham, Somerville and Brookline that I know of in the Boston area so far.

Vintage's gnocchi is newfangled

UPDATE on 3/25: Apparently Vintage is now closed. It must have closed in the past week or so...one of my fellow Restaurant Week diners drove by over the weekend and saw it was closed, and read that the restaurant had financial troubles. Sad!



Veggie friendliness: Three out of five stars

I can't believe how much I enjoyed eating at a steakhouse, but my food was really, really good at Vintage, in West Roxbury. I went during Restaurant Week, and couldn't get anything on the RW menu because it was almost entirely meat-based (there was one good looking salad, but they don't let you order just one part of the RW menu). I ordered a basic salad to start, with Boston lettuce and a tangy dressing--so delicious and pretty too. There's only one vegetarian entree on the menu, and it's not specifically described--it's just called "for the vegetarians" or something like that. The night I went it was a gnocchi with caramelized onions, peppers and fontina cheese. It wasn't a traditional gnocchi in little dumpling shapes; it was gnocchi dough formed into two spirals with the vegetables and cheese wrapped up inside, with a dab of sauce on the plate. It was really delicious and the texture was also great. The "gnocchi" part of the spiral was a little grainy, almost like polenta.

Vintage is a really nice place; it still feels pretty new and the atmosphere is not very Route 1 at all. We had great service too -- no funny looks from the waiter when asking veggie questions. I don't know if I'd go back there for a non-RW dinner since it really is meat-focused, and it's also pretty expensive. My entree was of course much cheaper than steak, but still over $20. But if I was dragged there by steakhouse-loving friends, I wouldn't be too upset about it.

Nothing but side dishes at Sonsie

Veggie friendliness (at brunch, anyway): Two out of five stars

I got shot down by the waitress during brunch at Sonsie more than I liked. She told me that they didn't accept any substitutions on any dish, which immediately cut my options down. The side dishes I got were yummy, but it was frustrating not to be able to order any egg dishes at all. To be fair, they did offer French toast, which was vegetarian, and the huevos rancheros could be ordered without the sausage side -- but I’m always skeptical of the true vegetarian-ness of refried beans, and the eggs could only be made sunny side up (not even the way the eggs were cooked could be substituted), which I am not a fan of.

Anyway, I enjoyed the home fries immensely -- crisp with onion slices and plenty of salt. The yogurt with honey and granola was also very good, with chewy, probably homemade granola. The English muffin wasn’t that warm and by the time the butter finally arrived, it was too late for it to melt.

So, it was a nice place to be for Sunday brunch, but sadly lacking in veggie friendliness. I had better luck there another time for drinks and appetizers, so I think I'll stick to the later-in-the-day Sonsie.

Restaurant review: Pomodoro

I'd been wanting to try this little Italian spot in Brookline for months, but my boyfriend had a bad experience there in the past (namely, he'd ordered rabbit, and when the waiter accidentally gave the dish to a man at the next table, had to watch that man eat it even though he hadn't ordered rabbit -- he thought it was an amuse bouche, perhaps?). This Saturday night John agree to give it another shot, and we weren't sorry.

We had 8:45 reservations and had to wait 15 minutes to be seated, but the bartender cleared a spot for us at the bar and brought our drinks right away, as well as a plate of chunks of warm, toasty, airy peasant bread with olive oil and olives, which we could have easily filled up on if not careful. After we were seated and ordered, the adorable pregnant Irish waitress brought us a free order of calamari as well. Now that's service.

I like the menu at Pomodoro because there are lots of main-dish pastas -- sometimes pasta is relegated to the "first course" section of the menu at nicer Italian restaurants. And many of these pasta options are vegetarian. They all sounded delicious to me, but I went for the roasted vegetable lasagna. This comes with a very rich, delicious tomato sauce -- must be where the place gets its name. It's a very sizable chunk, too, with plenty of vegetables among the layers of delicate pasta and cheese; I could only manage to eat about 20% of it after all the pre-meal delights.

To make matters better (or worse) we were also served a free dessert -- a little cube of tiramisu that tasted like it included Irish cream -- methinks this spot has the same owners as the nearby and lovely Matt Murphy's Irish pub.

A great romantic spot for a date.