We love a good clam chowder as much as the next New Englander, but this season, local chefs are giving us excellent reasons to look beyond shellfish standbys. So we traded shrimp cocktail for shrimp ceviche tacos, clam strips for surf clam crudo, and tried a fresh twist on a classic lobster roll. Meet seven of the best new plates around town.
There are five types of ceviche served with chips at Loco Taqueria & Oyster Bar, but one variety is tasty enough to make it inside a taco at Southie’s freshest hotspot, where it’s topped with fresh-squeezed lime juice, garlic, cilantro, aji amarillo, red onions and pickled Fresno peppers. Says chef Matt Drummond: “The texture of the marinated rock shrimp and crunchy taco shell accent each other nicely, along with the bold flavors of red onion and pickled chilies.” It’s the only taco that Loco serves cold, a feature that’s already helped make it a popular seasonal pick among diners.
$15 at Loco Taqueria & Oyster Bar, 412 W. Broadway, Boston (617-917-5626) locosouthboston.com
Out of Their Shell
By Improper Staff | Photo Credit: Nicole Popma | May 29, 2015
We love a good clam chowder as much as the next New Englander, but this season, local chefs are giving us excellent reasons to look beyond shellfish standbys. So we traded shrimp cocktail for shrimp ceviche tacos, clam strips for surf clam crudo, and tried a fresh twist on a classic lobster roll. Meet seven of the best new plates around town.
Shrimp Ceviche Taco
There are five types of ceviche served with chips at Loco Taqueria & Oyster Bar, but one variety is tasty enough to make it inside a taco at Southie’s freshest hotspot, where it’s topped with fresh-squeezed lime juice, garlic, cilantro, aji amarillo, red onions and pickled Fresno peppers. Says chef Matt Drummond: “The texture of the marinated rock shrimp and crunchy taco shell accent each other nicely, along with the bold flavors of red onion and pickled chilies.” It’s the only taco that Loco serves cold, a feature that’s already helped make it a popular seasonal pick among diners.
$15 at Loco Taqueria & Oyster Bar, 412 W. Broadway, Boston (617-917-5626) locosouthboston.com
By Improper Staff | Photo Credit: Nicole Popma
Housemade Crab Tagliatelle
For chef de cuisine Stephen Oxaal, crab dishes are synonymous with spring and summer dining, and Jonah crab is “the best-tasting type” in his book. He highlights that flavor profile with this dish he created for B&G Oysters—a housemade tagliatelle topped with the local crab, pearl onions, shellfish nage and ramp greens, another ingredient that gets special attention. “The arrival of ramps is worthy of celebrating,” he says. “We fold them into the pasta and also add them into the dish at the very end of the cooking process, so they’re barely wilted and very aromatic.”
$26 at B&G Oysters, 550 Tremont St., Boston (617-423-0550) bandgoysters.com
By Improper Staff | Photo Credit: Heath Robbins; Styling: CC Buckley / Anchor Artists
Butter-poached Lobster Roll
Executive chef Richard Vellante and his team recently retooled Legal Sea Foods’ long-standing best-selling entree with two new recipes. The traditional lobster roll (seen on the cover) sports a new bun—lightly buttered and toasted—lending a crunch to the tender lobster, not to mention a spot-on bread-to-shellfish ratio. As for the meat, the whole lobster is used to create different textures and tastes; the tail is meatier while the claw and knuckle are sweeter. The menu has also welcomed this red-hot newcomer: a warm butter-poached version, featuring melted butter slowly infused with the lobster shells. “It takes 9 hours, but it’s worth it,” Vellante says. As for the great cold versus hot debate? “We’ll let our guests decide.”
Market price at Legal Sea Foods, locations at legalseafoods.com
By Improper Staff | Photo Credit: Jillian Medugno
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Billi Bi “Pierre Franey”
Move over, clam chowder. After reading the biographies of French chef Pierre Franey and food journalist Craig Claiborne, chef Michael Serpa was inspired to create a classic billi bi, a rich mussel soup said to take its name from tinplate tycoon William B. Leeds, a devotee of a version served a century ago at the legendary Paris bistro Maxim’s, and later popularized in the States by Franey and Claiborne. Combining PEI mussels, leeks, egg yolk and chives, the result is now a standout on the menu at SELECT Oyster Bar, where Serpa suggests pairing it with a glass of crisp Chablis. “I think the soup is a bit more direct than a chowder, where the clams often get overpowered by cream, bacon, et cetera,” he explains. “The billi bi is all about the mussels and everything else is in the background.”
$12 at SELECT Oyster Bar, 50 Gloucester St., Boston (857-239-8064) selectboston.com
By Improper Staff | Photo Credit: Jillian Medugno
Baked Oysters
Don’t get Island Creek Oyster Bar chef de cuisine Nicki Hobson wrong: She loves raw oysters, but it’s nice to change it up a bit. Her current crush is on the baked oysters, each one served over leeks, sprinkled with chorizo, topped with a spoonful of hollandaise on the lip of the shell and garnished with chives. “Because the oyster is only cooked until it’s warm, it still carries a very fresh, open ocean quality. You then get the brininess of the oyster and saltiness of the chorizo,” Hobson says. “The melted leeks and hollandaise bring a nice silky, creamy texture to round it all out.”
$14 at Island Creek Oyster Bar, 500 Comm. Ave., Boston (617-532-5300) islandcreekoysterbar.com
By Improper Staff | Photo Credit: Jillian Medugno
Scituate Scallop with Bartlett Pear + Poppy Seeds
Loyal Nine’s menu taps oft-overlooked seafood picks, like blood clams and knobby conch. And while the Scituate scallop may sound familiar, this preparation is unusually lively. “Oysters are always eaten live; clams are frequently eaten on the half shell,” says executive chef Marc Sheehan. “So why not scallops?” The raw texture is firmer, the taste cleaner. Accompaniments change with the season, and here Sheehan preserves Bartlett pears in hard cider infused with peels and cores, black pepper, lemon thyme and ginger, pureeing the fruit’s flesh with lemon juice and brown butter. For textural contrast, there are poppy seeds, housemade sea salt and—adding a subtle floral note—diced basil. Of the pear-based vinaigrette with confit leek oil, Sheehan adds, “There have been many nights on the pass when, after getting sauced with the vinaigrette, a few of the scallops have danced in the shell.”
$9 at Loyal Nine, 660 Cambridge St., Cambridge (617-945-2576) loyalninecambridge.com
By Improper Staff | Photo Credit: Jillian Medugno
Local Surf Clam Crudo
Sometimes coming up with a truly excellent new dish takes teamwork. Ostra executive chef Mitchell Randall says that he and sous-chef Cameron Cieslak often go to the fish pier for inspiration. That’s where they came across the New Bedford bivalves used in Ostra’s local surf clam crudo, a fresh treatment for big clams that often get chopped up for chowder or clam strips. Served with shiitake mushrooms, cucumber, radish and soy caviar, it’s a dish layered with different flavors. “The clam is very sweet,” Randall says. “There’s the earthy mushroom, the crisp texture from the cucumber and radish…and the soy adds salt to the dish.” The inspiration for the soy caviar came from Ostra’s pastry chef, Jennifer Luna, who’d recently been creating gelatin-infused fruit pearls for some of her desserts. “We thought it would be a cool play on caviar for a crudo dish,” explains Randall, who draws on fond memories of growing up on seafood on the Maine coast. “Nothing beats a shellfish dinner with family and friends.”
$17 at Ostra, 1 Charles St. South, Boston (617-421-1200) ostraboston.com
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