Savoring the treasures left behind
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Most of my friends are spending the summer mastering traffic patterns. Their goal: a breezy ride down the highway to the Cape or the Berkshires. I listen intently. No one seems to discuss the other traffic patterns. The ones you have to manage when you get there.
Know where it's really beautiful and nearly empty in the summer? Home. No, not your house. Your city. Summer in the city makes you feel young again. There are plenty of places to park. You can walk to supper after work on Friday. And if you're feeling flush, get a hotel room, and then walk to breakfast.
Join the Friday afternoon downtown bustle, and walk to the Boston Harbor Hotel with the same determination in your step as all those important dressed-down lawyers.
The Intrigue Cafe is the little restaurant inside the hotel that overlooks the water. The best seats are outside (it's cool even in the heat). Tourists are lined up for dinner cruises, and smart commuters are dashing to catch the water ferry for their rides home. Sit back with a glass of the house sparkling wine, a Vouvray Brut, which tastes a little peachy. It'll similarly color your spirits.
Then go to the hotel concierge and ask for a map of Boston (they're free), and wend your way along the Big Dig, following Atlantic Avenue to Commercial Street into the North End. You can press your nose against the metal fence and look right down into the construction. They're turning the city inside out, and there's still a sidewalk all along the water. It's a little like having all the plumbing in your house changed, as the plumber insists on keeping your water on the whole time.
You're headed to Richmond Street to Monica's, where the charm comes in the form of four beefy Argentinian-Italian brothers named George, Patrick, Juan, and Frank Mendoza. Monica is Mama, who owns a salumeria on Salem Street, around the corner from another Monica's, this one on Prince, which serves pizza. The Richmond Street Monica's is light, airy, cool, and crowded.
We've made a reservation and there seems to be a table available, but we can't have it yet. Will we have a drink at the bar? Of course. We meet Angelo, who slips behind the bar. No, he says, no drink. This isn't a real bar. It's a service station. Oh, OK, he says. You can have a drink. No, you can't order a bottle. This is only a service station. OK, OK. You can get a bottle and bring it to your table. No, you can't order an appetizer. What do you think this is?
So there we are. We've left Boston behind and flown to Italy in minutes - or Italy as seen through the eyes of four Argentinian-Italians and one Italian-Italian bartender/waiter.
Lo and behold, Angelo turns out to be our waiter. Now can we order an appetizer? No, he says. I need your order. But our order includes an appetizer! No, I want your order.
So we give him our main-course orders, and beg him to bring an appetizer of calamari and another of grilled mushroom salad. And they arrive in seconds. We gasp at the speed. Oh, says Angelo. You seem happy. We are happy, we say. I thought you were mad at me, he answers.
Monica's is a wonderful place. The brothers look so much alike that you can spend your evening trying to figure them out, like staring at identical twins. The calamari in a tomato broth with grilled bread was worth the hassle, and so was the mountain of smoky mushrooms on mesclun. Lamb chops were rosy and crisp, and tasted like lamb did when I was a girl. Their fried potato cake garnish was a thin, golden disc. My veal chop was so undercooked, though, that it had to go back. Once done it was too chewy, but the classic risotto Milanese was beautiful.
Angelo made a nice, short espresso and we headed to Mike's Pastry on Hanover Street for a quarter-pound of miniature chocolate florentines. They were fortification for the walk back along the water to Atlantic Avenue.
For breakfast, you want a place where you can wear shorts and clogs. Sit in the window at Panificio on Charles Street, read the paper, sip tea and nibble fresh fruit or frittata. This should be required on a tour of Boston.
Brothers Chris and Dave Spagnuolo (sons of Spagnuolo's Bake House in Nonantum, Newton) and their friend Michael Zappula are running a hip little operation here. The cases are filled with Spagnuolo's Italian goods, the tables with neighbors who use it as a hangout.
Dress for dinner, and head to the opposite side of the city, to the South End. With its arts and crafts-style and mission furniture, Icarus is calming, a throwback to an era when restaurants were there to make sure you spent the best possible evening. When the bartender waves away my offer to pay for a ginger ale and club soda we've had at the bar, I know I like this place.
I also like the idea that chef and co-owner Chris Douglass still sticks his neck out, as he did with succulent grilled shrimp on a bed of greens, garnished with a tiny scoop of hot and icy mango-jalapeno sorbet. A flattened quail with dark, mustard-coated skin nested on a bed of tiny Beluga lentils studded with black mission figs.
Clams and pasta were both roasted, so the littlenecks were sitting in their own intense garlicky juices, and the fine, homemade angel hair was toasty on top. Soft-shell crabs were deliciously crisp, set on a black rice cake.
Profiteroles filled with dark chocolate ice cream drizzled with caramel sauce were simply fabulous, as were three icy scoops of raspberry, chocolate, and mango sorbet. Twenty years in business, and Icarus isn't jaded or stale.
On the way home, we headed to the nearest Big Dig fence to have a peek inside again. Was it the wine and heat? We thought we were onto something - that maybe if we looked down in there all the time, from all different spots, that we could figure out what they're doing. It seemed like a traffic pattern worth mastering.
