The Buttery

One of the most highly recommended brunch places in Boston (at least among my colleagues/friends) is The Buttery in the South End, so that's where I ended up yesterday morning.

The South End is not an easy area to navigate for a non-native of Boston, as there are tons of one-way-only roads and oober narrow streets. Somehow we got lucky though, and managed to snag a parking spot immediately in front of the restaurant: it was the first sign that the morning was going to be a good one

The restaurant was pretty busy when we arrived, but we managed to get two seats at the bar without having to wait. The front of The Buttery is an area where people can order coffee or pastries to go, while seating for those who plan to dine-in is towards the back. This is a clever ploy on their part, since walking by their display of baked goods on the way to our seats got me hungryyyyyy.

I ordered a blueberry scone to start, which came with clotted cream and fresh strawberry preserves. The strawberry preserves and clotted cream were delicious! For all intents and purposes, the scone itself was just a vehicle for me to enjoy the condiments. I was a little disappointed that the scone wasn't fresh-out-of-the-oven warm, but the orgasmic yumminess of the everything else more than compensated


For entrees, Vera ordered the New England Crab Cake Sandwich with a side of Parmesan-garlic fries. According to her, it was probably one of the best crab cakes EVER. The fries were also good, but not nearly as awesome as the truffle-Parmesan fries that we had eaten at 28 Degrees the night before

I ordered the Buttery Breakfast, which consisted of two eggs (I asked for mine scrambled), two pancakes, and two sausages.

The pancakes were probably the best part of the entree: they were light and fluffy, with just a tiny bit of crispness at the edges

The food at The Buttery rivals many of my favorite places in NYC, and was in fact much better than several places that receive tons more hype (*hem* * hem* Balthazar). Highly recommended

Overall rating: 8.5/10

The Buttery

314 Shawmut Avenue
Boston, MA 02118

28 Degrees

It took me the longest time to recognize that South Boston and Boston's South End were two different entities. You always hear about people getting shot in South Boston, and it's also the place where my car got taken when it was towed for being on the wrong side of the road on street-cleaning day. So when I first moved to the city and a friend from home suggested that I try some of the highly-recommended fine-dining in Boston's South End, I thought she was insane. How could there possibly be fine-dining in an area known for gang wars (ok maybe a *bit* of an exaggeration) and purse-snatching???

I finally got straightened out, and last night a few of us went out to dinner at 28 Degrees in Boston's South End. When we first walked in, the scene seemed like a mix between a bar, a club, and a restaurant. Decor was an attempt at oober-trendy, but they seemed to be trying a little toooo hard. There was what appeared to be a bachelorette party at the bar, and a few handfuls of young male professionals lurking near-by.

One in-arguably cool thing in the restaurant though, was the water display on the ceiling in the bathrooms. If only there were fish in there too...

The menu was an American version of tapas, with a mix of "small plates" and "big plates." I ordered the yellow fin tuna tartare:

I thought the tuna was a little bit too finely diced, but otherwise the dish was good. The fish was fresh, and there was a perfect hint of lemon.

My friend from home Vera ordered the steak tacos:

Eliza decided on a cheese plate:

Louis ordered the BBQ ribs "big plate" which was accompanied by mango coleslaw:

Caroline chose the tomato, basil, and mozzarella pizza:

We also ordered truffle Parmesan fries for the table, which out-shone my tartare. The amount of truffle oil seasoning the fries was perfect - strong enough that the ketchup and aoli sauce served on the side were completely unnecessary, but not overwhelming. (Unfortunately we were so excited to dig into them that I completely forgot to snap a shot)

Instead, included is a pic of two of BIDMC's best PGY-2's

Overall rating: 6.5/10

28 Degrees
1 Appleton Street
Boston, MA 02116

Yasu

It's that time again: the end of the academic year. For us that means a brand new set of interns and no longer being at the bottom of the hospital totem-pole, but it also means losing some of our favorite prelim-interns as they move on to the real part of their training. Tonight, in celebration/mourning of Mike's move to Georgetown next week, a group of us went out for Korean food in Coolidge Corner.

The place that we chose was Yasu - a restaurant that has a menu which consists of both Korean BBQ as well as Japanese sushi.

After we were first seated, it took a very long time to get any sort of attention from the wait-staff. Korean restaurants (at least on the West coast) are notorious for giving poor service to non-Koreans, and demonstrating blatant favoritism towards their own people. I didn't expect this to happen to our group though, since one of us was Korean, and another one reportedly *looks* Korean. Unfortunately it was still a good 10-15 minute wait before we could even order drinks, and it was at least another 20-25 minutes before we were able to order our dinners

The food itself was mediocre, but also not bad.

3 out of the 7 people (including the guest of honor Mike) ordered the regular bibimbap, which came with a starter of miso soup:

 Oddly enough it was served with the rice on the side, rather than on the bottom of the bowl with all the toppings over it. It also had an alarming amount of lettuce. I didn't even know that bibimbap was supposed to have lettuce! This is what it looked like after Christina was through mixing everything together:

 Ammara ordered the bibimbap in the stone bowl, which is actually how I've always typically seen it served:

Her sister was the only one to order sushi off the menu, and ordered Dragon Roll #2 (their menu has 3 different kinds of Dragon Roll): consisting of avocado, tuna, crab stick, and cucumber (basically a California roll covered by slices of tuna and extra avocado)

I'm not certain what JD ordered - in fact even he wasn't certain what he ordered - but it consisted of noodles, thinly-sliced beef and tofu in a spicy soup

 As for myself, I decided on a cold dish, given that it was well over 90 degrees outside, and muggy as a rainforest. My dish was Korean buckwheat noodles in chilled beef broth. To this I later added some chili sauce for an extra kick, but overall I thought it was a decent choice for what turned out to be a hot HOT day:

The food overall was far from amazing, and the service was below average, but if you're craving Korean or Japanese food (or both) and are in a pinch - Yasu is a tolerable choice


Bye bye Mike!!! We'll miss you


Overall rating: 5/10


Yasu
1366 Beacon Street
Brookline, MA 02446