Boston Luxury Chocolate Salon Tasting

Trying to avoid refined sugars? Ha! Forget it!

I had the pleasure of being one of the judges for the 1st Annual Boston Luxury Chocolate Salon. Judges were sent a huge package filled with various artisanal chocolates from chocolatiers all around the US. We then judged on various aspects such as best flavor, most luxurious, most delicious ingredient combinations, and so on.

I was amazed at the level of artistry that went into some of these chocolates, such as the beautiful gems you see pictured above by William Dean Chocolate.

I know you can't lick the screen, but I can at least give you a visual tour, and maybe a few descriptions of what we thought of these chocolates. :)

From left to right:PB&J chocolate, crème brule custard, fig, orange, and cheesecake

These were my favorite in terms of artistry, WOW factor, and all around presentation. Each chocolate truffle looked hand painted. The box itself was sturdy, shiny, and resembled an expensive jewelry box. Indeed, they were filled with edible jewels inside! Truly beautiful works of art.

I also loved their fancied PB&J bar, which was made with high quality peanut butter and dark chocolate.

Marti Chocolatt
I think these were overall my favorite chocolates. They weren't quite as dramatically beautiful as the William Dean chocolates, but they had more refined, sophisticated flavors (and they are still beautiful!). We had rose tea with raspberry in dark chocolate, purple yam in white chocolate, and a chevre (goat cheese) chocolate. I actually didn't like the chevre one (it tasted a bit stinky to me), but I loved the rose tea with raspberry and really enjoyed the purple yam in white chocolate as well.


Dean's Sweets
The chocolates from Dean's Sweets have interesting unique flavors that work really well. We tried lemon apricot chevre (very nice!), coffee, and Maine sea salt caramel.


Dolce Bella
I like Dolce Bella's philosophy of trying to preserve the "just-picked" fruit flavor. They pick their ingredients fresh off the plant and process them into chocolate within an hour of harvest. I have to say that the just-picked flavors were really nice and bright. We tried "just picked raspberry," "just picked chocolate mint," and "peppered rosemary orange" (which I actually did not like). I loved how the mint actually tasted like fresh mint leaves, not just mint oil.

Dolce Bella's Almond Toffee
This tasted like regular toffee -nothing particularly special, though solid.

The Chocolate Truffle
This company makes more "normal" traditional chocolates, such as chocolate covered pretzels, chocolate covered cookies, and PB&J bars reminiscent of the sandwiches you ate growing up. I thought the chocolates tasted fine, although they seemed a bit less refined than some of the other artisanal chocolates we had tried. This is comfort chocolate at its finest.

Similarly, The Chocolate Truffle's Cranberry Caramel Turtles were reasonably good, but nothing made them stand out above the rest.

These truffles from The Chocolate Truffle were HUGE and we were already getting a little tired of chocolate! In general, we thought these truffles were too big and too sweet.

Aphrodite Chocolates

We then tried some creative flavors from Aphrodite: matcha green tea (pretty good but a bit too sweet), Scotland cream (love the shot of alcohol inside!), cherry croquant (really enjoyed how the outside is crunchy, though it was a bit too sour), and cappuccino (nice flavors, but a bit too sweet).

Amano makes various hand-crafted chocolate bars with different, unique origins. Here, we have chocolate from Venezuela (smoky, toasted, almost woodsy), Madagascar (fruiter, creamy, less interesting), and Chuao (fruity).

Dark Chocolate Quinoa
The only Eco bar in my batch, this quinoa bar was "interesting." Here are some quotes from my fellow tasters.

“I like Nestles Crunch Better.”
“The chocolate is pretty good.”
“The rice is lacking . . .needs more crunch.”
“Kind of soggy.”

So there you have it. It was probably the most chocolate I have ever consumed in two sittings (we tried but we really really couldn't bring ourselves to finish it in one sitting!!).

Final awards will be announced in August! Stay tuned.

Smith & Wollensky $50 Giveaway Winners

View from the top of Smith & Wollensky

Thanks to everyone who participated in the Smith & Wollensky giveaway!

The first winner is Abbe who said, "my favorite steak place in Boston might be Grill 23. I'm all about the sides!"

Second winner is Cavitybuster who said, "my favorite steak place is Wolfgangs on Lexington Ave in NYC. The porterhouse for 2 is delicious! Very similar to Peter Lugar's in Brooklyn, but this restaurant is right in anhattan and easy to get to."

Please e-mail me your address at jen[a]tinyurbankitchen[dot]com. If I don't hear from you by this Friday, I will pick a new winner.

Have fun in Boston's castle and enjoy the summer grill menu!

For anyone who's interested in the tour: just make a note of it in your reservation and they will gladly take you on the same tour that I got.

Have fun!

Crenellations at the top of Smith & Wollensky

Tuna Tartare

One of my favorite sauces is spicy mayo. You know which sauce I'm talking about - the one they use for spicy tuna rolls or spicy salmon rolls. It has an addictive flavor of its own and works really well with all sorts of raw fish.

Granted, please don't waste the sauce on really fresh fish that can stand on its own. But for your ordinary everyday roll?  Why not?

Tartare typically costs less because it's made with inferior or uglier materials. The most beautiful pieces of fish are cut into sashimi or nigiri slices. The remaining bits, which still often have great flavor but possibly compromised texture, must be chopped up and served some other way.

The ones that don't have as good flavor can easily be enhanced with the addition of this magical spicy mayo. It's a great and simple way to dress up less expensive fish into something fancy and delicious.

I recently visited New Deal Fish Market to check out their fish selection. I asked if they had toro (tuna belly, one of my favorite foods in the world). Unfortunately, they had sold out of toro, but they did have this less expensive cut of fatty tuna (pictured above, bottom left piece with the stripes).

Carl Fantasia, the owner, told me that this cut was more flavorful than normal tuna (maguro) because it had more fat. You can tell too - it's got the classic pink color of toro and tons of marbling. However, this part of the fish has a lot of connective tissue (all those white stripes you see), and therefore the only way to really prepare this fish is to chop it up into small pieces or painstakingly remove the connective tissue.

I took his advice, sort of. I painstakingly removed the connective tissue AND chopped it all up into little pieces (once I realized that the tiny slivers of meat between the connective tissue were pretty much useless on their own).

I mixed it up with some spicy mayo and, viola! I had my own tuna tartare.


Spicy Tuna Tartare
1/2 tsp Sriracha Sauce (Asian chili sauce)
1/4 tsp Sesame Oil
2 T Mayonnaise

Raw fish, finely chopped

Combine Sriracha sauce, mayonnaise and sesame oil in a bowl and mix together well. Add more Sriracha sauce and/or sesame oil to taste. Combine with chopped up tuna and serve.

If you'd like, you can stuff the finished tartare into a small cup and invert it onto a plate for a more dramatic presentation. Top with something green, like scallions (as pictured), parsley, or chives.

Note: please make sure to purchase fish suitable for eating raw. This usually means it's really fresh (you can always ask the fishmonger) or it has been frozen for a specific amount of time according to FDA guidelines.

Enjoy!

Michelin Starred Tartare
Here are a few other tartares from some very nice Michelin-starred chefs. Can you guess where these are from? (click on the photo to find out).

Finally, A Note on Sustainability
Unfortunately, bluefin tuna is highly overfished and is not a sustainable choice. According to the Monteray Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch, all populations of bluefin tuna are currently being caught faster than they can reproduce. The better choice for tuna would be certain types of yellowfin tuna (also known as "ahi" sometimes), U.S. Atlantic bigeye tuna, or certain types of albacore tuna. You can see the entire list here.

I'm personally very guilty of being woefully unaware of whether the food I am eating is sustainable or not. The thought of bluefin tuna going extinct because of our current unsustainable practices makes me sad, and therefore I've decided to try harder to become better educated about the seafood I eat.

Related Posts
Spicy Chili Mayo
Homemade Chirashi (New Deal Fish Market)

Giveaway
Today is the last day to enter the Smith & Wollensky $50 gift certificate Giveaway. Just come here and tell me your favorite steak or burger place. Drawing occurs TONIGHT at midnight.

Homemade Chirashi (New Deal Fish Market)

Have you ever purchased fish and eaten it raw at home?

I tried it once - ages ago. I bought a little pack of "sushi-grade" fish from a Japanese supermarket and tried to roll my own maki and shape my own nigiri.

It was such a pain! It took forever to shape each individual nigiri, and my rolls were so ugly. I had trouble making them as tight and beautiful as professional ones. Worst yet, the final product did not taste nearly as good, still cost quite a bit, and took way too much time.

So I didn't touch raw fish at home for ages.

More recently, one of my Japanese friends told me about New Deal Fish Market. Apparently, it's the best place to get fresh seafood, and all her Japanese friends got their fish there. In fact, the fishmongers are so accustomed to the Japanese customers that they'll use the Japanese terms for the fish.  Maguro anyone? Or maybe some hamachi or toro?

So, the other day, when a friend of mine suggested the idea of chirashi (so much less work than rolling individual makis or shaping little nigiris), I was sold. I made a beeline for New Deal with visions of fresh chirashi dancing in my head.


New Deal Fish Market is a small, third-generation family-owned fish market located in East Cambridge. The owner, Carl Fantasia, left his engineering job to take over the family business, which has been around for over 80 years. Carl is a living encyclopedia jam packed with fish knowledge. He can tell you where the fish is from, when it was caught, and ways to prepare it.

Going to New Deal is like going back in time. Gone are the one-stop mega supermarkets with aisles and aisles of everything you can imagine. Instead, you have your local fishmonger who just sells seafood and related items. It's like the life of a generation past, where on a typical day you might visit the local fish monger, stop by a boulangerie, and pick up meat from the town butcher.

New Deal Fish Market is unique in that they carry quite a selection of whole fish, which is much less common these days. Better yet, they will clean it for you and pack it on ice so it'll stay cold during transport. People really swear by this place, and many have been known to drive long distances from the burbs just to buy fish here.

When I asked Carl which fish were suitable for eating raw, he pointed me to the left side of the counter, which had some lovely salmon, tuna, and hamachi (yellowtail). I probed a little more, asking exactly what made them safe for raw consumption.* Was it because they had been previously flash frozen? Or were they just really really fresh?

Carl told me that this salmon was not frozen.  However, he continued by explaining that parasites were not a problem because the salmon was "ocean-farmed," meaning its diet was strictly controlled. As I discuss in more detail here, farm-raised salmon has a much lower incidence of parasites compared to wild-caught salmon. For wild-caught salmon, the FDA recommends freezing the salmon at -4 °F (-20 °C) for 7 days to kill potential parasites.

I typically prefer wild salmon to farm-raised salmon for a whole host of reasons. However, because I was preparing raw salmon at home for the first time, I was happy to reduce the risk of parasites by buying farm-raised salmon.

If you tell him you are making sushi, he will gladly remove the skin for you and even pack it up if you want to use the skin for something else (e.g, frying it up crispy to make salmon skin rolls! Yum!).

When I got home, I took out my trusty Shun Santoku knife (my all-time favorite knife at home right now - it is sooo sharp), and begin slicing up the hamachi and the salmon.

I'm no sushi chef (those guys train for years before becoming masters of their art). All I can say is to make sure to cut against the grain, not with the grain. For the salmon piece below, that meant cutting the piece in half first and then slicing the long way.

Once you've made the sushi rice, all you need to do is fill a bowl of rice with your favorite toppings. I personally love mixing in some flying fish roe with the rice to add just a bit of color and flavor. I didn't have any this time around, but you can definitely add a few slices of tamagoyaki, cooked shrimp, crab stick, or whatever suits your fancy. It's really up to you.

This is not really recipe, as the amounts are very very flexible, but I've tried writing it in recipe form for those of you who like having something to follow. Have fun with it, be creative, and use this more as a guide than an instruction manual. :)


Homemade Chirashi

"Ingredients"
A sharp knife
Assortment of fresh raw fish (about 1/2 lb per serving)
Sushi rice (about 1/2 cup uncooked rice per serving)
Wasabi (optional)
Soy Sauce (optional)
Picked Ginger (optional - can be purchased at Japanese specialty stores)
Flying fish roe (optional)
Tamagoyaki (Japanese omelet - optional)
Shiso leaf (optional)

Make sushi rice. Optionally mix the sushi rice with flying fish roe. Fill an Asian rice bowl with the sushi rice and top artfully with your favorite ingredients, finishing off with a small mound of wasabi. Use soy sauce on the side for dipping if necessary.

Enjoy!


Epilogue: how was the fish?
The salmon was good - soft, buttery, and reasonably flavorful. For some reason, the hamachi had an ever-so-slightly fishy smell to it. I'm not sure why this was the case. My friend and I did buy the last of the hamachi on a Saturday afternoon, so it's possible that it was just a bit less fresh. People in general still consistently rave about this place, so I'm guessing my experience was not at all representative of the market in general. I did lightly sear the leftover fish the next day and it tasted absolutely fantastic.

I plan on going back to try some other fish that they sell there. I'll keep you posted!

Meanwhile, does anyone else have experience at this place? Or do you have another favorite fish market? Please share!

New Deal Fish Market
622 Cambridge Street
Cambridge, MA

*As an aside, there is no federal regulation on what constitutes "sushi-grade" fish. It is merely a marketing term, although inspectors will check that food establishments have documentation of parasite destruction (e.g, frozen for a certain length of time) for certain types of fish intended to be consumed raw.

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GIVEAWAY!
It's still not too late to enter to win a $50 gift certificate to Smith & Wollensky! Just come here and tell me your favorite steak or burger place! Drawing occurs Wednesday night (July 28th, 2010), at midnight!

Smith and Wollensky + Giveaway!

It's not everyday you get to dine inside of a castle.

It's even more rare to be able to dine inside of an armory, especially when that armory still maintains and preserves much of the history of the original armory.

And how often do you get to climb to the top of the armory and look down towards Boston?

And then finish off with some fantastic dry-aged prime steaks, fresh lobster, and truffled mac & cheese?

Guess what? This has got to be one of the best kept secrets for tourists in Boston. Come to Smith & Wollensky, enjoy a fascinating tour of the armory, and then sit down to a great meal in the beautiful dining room.

Let me take you on a sneak peek of this experience!


We met with Wayne, the general manager of Boston's Smith & Wollensky, who had kindly invited us to try out their new summer grill menu. Little did I expect such a neat tour of this fascinating building.

Some background first. This castle was home to the First Corps of Cadets, Massachusetts' volunteer militia. From 1891 to about the 1960's, the Cadets lived, studied, drilled, and worked in this building. After they left in the 1960's, the building sort of sat around, falling into disrepair. It wasn't until the early 2000's when Smith & Wollensky spent $12 million restoring and updating this building to its current state today.

Upstairs is a museum of sorts where they have a collection of various types of military uniforms throughout history. Wayne knows some pretty interesting facts about each uniform, and he tells great stories about each one.

There are also some beautiful beautiful dining rooms on the upper floors. These can be rented out for private events, or are sometimes open to guests depending on the season.

Much of the architecture has been restored back to its original form. Up here, you really feel like you have traveled back in time.

The further up you go, the more interesting it becomes! Here we are at the top. As you can see, they are still working on this space and trying to figure out what to do with it. Any ideas?

Can you guess what this table was used for? Cadets would lay out maps on the large table and strategize while higher level officials could looked down from the upper floor and keep an eye on what was going on.

And then all of a sudden we are on the 6th floor turret. A turret is a small tower that projects vertically from the wall of a building.

Here we are peeking through a "crenellation," a type of architecture where cutouts exist in the wall enabling fighters to discharge arrows or other weapons out towards the enemy.

At the top, signal flags could be used to communicate with the State House across Boston Common, whose flat open space afforded clear views across the top of the trees.

What a beautiful view of Boston!

After soaking in the view for a few minutes, we slowly stepped our way down to the kitchen.

First Stop: Steak Aging Room!

All steaks are butchered and dry-aged for 28 days on site. I was really impressed with the dedicated dry-aging cold room. It was immaculate, set at the perfect temperature, and seemed really well organized.

We briefly stopped by the huge wine cellar.

And then it was finally time for dinner.

And now it's finally time to look at the food! Here's a look at some of the offerings off of the Summer Grill Menu. Of course, the menu has a lot of their classics, such as their popular ribeye or filet mignon. However, it also has a lot of lighter summer fare, such as various flatbreads, sandwiches, and salads. There is a significant focus on lobster, such as surf & turf and lobster mac& cheese.

Spicy Lobster and Avocado Flatbread - $12
We both really enjoyed this dish. The flatbread was light and crispy, and the toppings were fresh and flavorful. I especially enjoyed the contrasting flavors and textures of the crispy flat bread, the creamy avocados, the juicy tomatoes, and the fragrant cilantro. Of course, Bryan loves avocados and cilantro. He basically remarked that "you can't go wrong" with this combination of toppings.

Lobster Salad - $20
arugula, butternut lettuce, hearts of palm, mango,red pepper, cucumber, tomatoes, scallions, mango-chili vinaigrette
Similarly, we both really liked the salad as well. I love palm hearts and corn in any salad, so I was quite pleased. This salad is chock full of lobster meat, so it's a bit pricier but worth the money.

Miso-glazed Chilean Sea Bass - $34
Asian slaw, lemon teriyaki
I told the waiter I wanted something lighter for my entrée, and he recommended this fish dish as his favorite. I thought the dish was well executed, with a nice crispy exterior and soft, melt-in-your-mouth interior. The miso-glaze, although not the most creative of flavors, is a solid stand-by that is reliably tasty.

20 oz bone-in Ribeye Steak - $33
Of course, this is a steak house, so we had to try their steak. Bryan always orders ribeye because he thinks it has the most flavor of any cut. The waiter took the time to caution us that the restaurant tends to cook meat on the rarer side (like in Europe), so we should take that into account when ordering.

Bryan's response?

"Great! I'll have it rare please."

They did a fantastic job.

Check out that perfect "crust" that forms a thin layer around the pink and still slightly cold inside. Bryan loved it.

Creamed Spinach, Rosemary Foccacia (complimentary), Sauteed Mushrooms, Hash Brown Potatoes
all sides are $10 except for the baked potato ($6) and are meant to be shared

We also ordered a bunch of sides to share. Their bread (upper right) is amazing and one of the best "sides" on the menu. Best yet, it's free! The rest of the sides were OK, although none blew me away. In my book, winner for "best mushrooms at a steakhouse" is still Craftsteak in Las Vegas. My favorite hash browns hands down go to The Oceanaire (just make sure you order it "a la Oceanaire" style).

Lobster Truffled Mac & Cheese ($16)
The lobster mac & cheese (summer special item) was pretty good. It's basically the truffle mac & cheese off of the regular menu but with lobster added.

Wollensky Butcher Burger - $13
One of our favorite items was actually the burger! At $13 we thought it was an incredible deal. Bryan even said that he liked it better than Tony Maws' famous bone-marrow infused grass-fed burger at Craigie on Main, which, by the way, costs almost 50% more than this one. This burger was incredibly juicy and just had a beautiful inherent beef flavor. Keep in mind these are burgers made with 28-day dry aged prime beef. It's not surprising that they are so good.

And for $13, it's a total steal. They did a great job of cooking it medium-rare just like we ordered. The fries were forgettable (I think we said we liked the ones at Five Guys a lot better), but we were so distracted by the juicy burger that we hardly noticed.

Coconut Cream Cake
By this time we were pretty stuffed, but for the sake of our readers we thought we should try a few desserts. I'm not a huge fan of coconut, but I still thought this cake was nice in that it was light, not too sweet, and overall had a good, fluffy texture. It sort of reminded me of Asian cakes.

Strawberry Short Cake
I love strawberry shortcake, especially one that's made with a biscuit like this one. I thought this dessert was very enjoyable, and if I were to come back, I would choose this one over the coconut cake. In general, their desserts are traditional and solid.


Any more thoughts?
Our general impression about this place was that these guys really know how to prepare and cook meat. We know that some people may not be used to the fact that they tend to undercook their meat compared to other steakhouses. However, after being used to having meat overcooked all the time, this was a welcomed relief. Plus, the steaks have really good flavor because they are prime and have been dry-aged for almost a month.

The summer grill menu items, such as the lobster avocado flatbread and the lobster salad, were surprisingly good. I especially loved the bright citrus-y flavors of the salad, which had corn, palm hearts, and lobster tossed together in a mango vinaigrette. The sides underwhelmed me, but then they are not the star of the meal anyway.

We both loved the burger and still think it's the best burger deal in town.

If you are interested in the tour, just make a note of it in your dinner reservation, which you can do through their website.

Giveaway!
Wayne was kind enough to offer me two $50 gift certificates to give away on this blog. Here are ways to enter. Please leave a comment for each entry.

1) What is your favorite steak or burger place, and why?
2) Tweet about this Givewaway. Please make sure to include a link to this post and also mention @tinyurbankitchn
3) Blog about this Givewaway and link to this post. Please provide a link to your post in the comments here.

I will draw TWO winners next week on Wednesday night at midnight.

Good luck!

Smith and Wollensky
101 Arlington St
Boston, MA 02116


Disclaimer: Time to time I receive products, meals, etc. for free as a food blogger. I do not receive any payment for these posts/reviews. The views expressed in the posts are completely my own. This meal (minus the alcohol) was paid for by Smith & Wollensky.