29-Sep: Craigie Street Bistrot
Last night I took Julie to the Craigie Street Bistrot, which has been getting a lot of praise lately… For her birthday.
The food was fantastic. The menu is French, with a significant emphasis on locally available ingredients. A notable aspect of the restaurant is that the wine list comprises only French wines, and it was first-rate.
Sadly, the tasting menu was not available, nor, apparently, their “neighborhood menu.”
But the atmosphere and experience left a lot to be desired. The basement didn’t bother me as much as the slightly over-heated aspect, enough to make us glow a bit — and I have to say that it reduced the enjoyment of the food. That is a problem with fancy eats: the environment needs to be tuned pretty well, especially if you’re going to survive multiple courses. We were stuck in the far end, and the air wasn’t moving very much. To top it off, the room was acoustically horrible, and we had to listen to every word of the conversation of two 21- or 22-year old Harvard males, loudly braying about nothing. Among their conversational tidbits was: “I really want to go to Northern India, and study the interactions of Muslims and Hindus.” “Wow, that would be really cool!!” I guess. Then they talked about their Facebook profiles. Julie and I were discussing Ian McKellan, and I said that I couldn’t remember what his dates were in NYC. One of these conversants dropped in our conversation and said that it had finished two weeks ago. Jerk. But in fact, it hadn’t: The last night was tonight. So, not only was their conversation overbearing, it was ignorant and audaciously rude.
Given the annoying difficulty of focusing on our food and our conversation, it was a place that almost demands some piped in music or white noise to cover up the conversational ambience. I know that is a bit tacky, but in the case of the Cragie Street Bistrot, they have a problem.
Still, the food was so good that we will go back. But maybe for a birthday, one goes for the sure thing, such as Evoo.
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