paul kinnucan

My wife and I had dinner at Hammersley's Bistro in the South End last
night. It was our first visit. We won't be going back. I knew I was in
for a bad time when I opened the towel in the bread basket to find
slices of cold bread. What's the point of wrapping cold bread in a
towel? The basket turned out to contain two kinds of bread: chunks of
focaccia and greyish slices of an open-textured bread. When I asked
our waiter what kind of bread the latter was, he replied shortly:
"Sour." "Oh, you mean sour dough?" I asked as he was rushing
off. "No, our chef doesn't like to call it that," he said, stopping
short, and then went on to remark that the restaurant has been using
the same starter for years to make this bread. Okay, so what's
Hammersley's problem with calling sour dough bread by its full name.
Too plebean for him? Despite the ancient pedigree of the starter, the
"sour" bread was unremarkable.

The waiter also informed us, unasked, that the other bread in the
basket was focaccia. I've noticed that if you ask a waiter about
anything on the table or menu that they assume you're a total
rube. Anyway, I found it rather weird and jarring to be served
focaccia in a bistro, especially as focaccia in Italian restaurants is
usually served with seasoned olive oil for a dipping, not exactly a
bistro concept and certainly not Hammersley's as none was forthcoming..

(Actually, I knew we were in for a bad time when the host showed us
to a table next to a waiter's station in a half empty restaurant.
This, in my experience, signals without fail that one is in
a restaurant where appearance triumphs over substance.)

We split an appetizer and an entree. The appetizer was duck confit
with fresh grilled plum ($12). The confit was fine (it's hard for a
restaurant to screw up something designed to be made months in
advance) but the plum was unripe, i.e., mouth-puckering sour and
tough, and undercooked to boot.

The entree was a mixed grill described on the menu as containing
lobster, sweetbreads, spicy sausage, and corn ($29). Considering the
price, I was dismayed to find, when it was served, that the
centerpiece of the affair, half a lobster in its shell split
longitudinally down the middle, was cold and its meat extremely tough
so that we had to struggle to get it out of the shell. The lobster had
probably been grilled many hours or, who knows, days before, kept in
the fridge, and then reheated (dare I say, microwaved?), but not
enough, at the last minute. The "spicy" sausage, which I was expecting
to be chorizo, turned out to be one token slice of chorizo amid many
chuncks and slices of a garlic pork sausage that tasted remarkably
like ordinary sweet Italian sausage. We also ordered a side of a
garlic mashed potato cake ($7), which turned out to be superfluous as
the entree included slices of new potato. The waiter, ever helpfully
unhelpful, neglected to point this out when I made the order.

By the way, while taking our order, the waiter said "excellent" after
I announced my selection of the entree. I felt a warm glow and the
glow had not entirely subsided when I heard him say exactly the same
thing to the couple at the next table apropos of an order that had
nothing in common with ours.

The wine list started at $30 for South African wines that you can find
at Stop & Shop for less than $10. The cheapest red on the list,
Byron's second label Hangtime Pinot Noir, which I love, was $30. I buy
it at the corner liquor store for $14. I ended up ordering a bottle of
a white Chateauneuf de Pape for $49, which turned out to be decent but
not great.

We ended the meal with glasses of a mediocre Tokay ($8), followed by
espresso and Hine Cognac ($12 a glass). No lemon peel or lumps of
brown sugar with the espresso, just the expresso itself, a first for
us in a restaurant of such pretensions to haute cuisine. The bill
before tip was $165 for two, okay for what was promised but not what
was delivered.

Paul