Spaghetti alla Nerano

Nerano is a charming Italian fishing village south of Naples on the tip of the Sorrento peninsula, just across from Capri. It is here the Spaghetti alla Nerano was invented in the 1950s. Stanley Tucci introduced flocks of American fans to this classic dish in the first episode of his “Searching for Italy” series, And recently the New Yorker published a definitive recipe for this fabulous dish. We tried it a couple of times and have some suggestions to make it work a little better.

While the ingredients are just spaghetti, zucchini, cheese and maybe a pat of butter, there are some details in the recipe that make it work so well. First of all, the zucchini slices are deep fried, not pan fried, and you want them to get quite brown, nearly burnt to develop the flavor in an otherwise pretty tasteless vegetable.

Confronted with the need to thinly slice three or four zucchini, we resorted to our Cuisinart food processor, using the 2mm slicing disk.

Probably the most important thing about this dish is assembling while everything is still hot, so the cheese will melt. In professional kitchens. Two people assemble this dish. We’ll tell you how we did it with only two hands below.

The basic ingredients are:

3 medium zucchini
8 oz spaghetti
Deep frying oil: sunflower or canola
2-4 oz grated cheese (Parmegiano Reggiano or Provolone del Monaco or Caciovavallo)
1 clove garlic, minced
1 bunch basil leaves, cut up
Pat of butter

Grate the cheese in a food processor, and remove to a bowl
Slice the zucchini into thin, uniform slices. We used a 2mm slicing disk.
Deep fry the zucchini slices, until quite brown. For 3 zucchini, we divided them into 4 batches for frying.
Put the zucchini on paper towel on a plate to let them drain.

Bring a couple of quarts of salted water to a boil and add the spaghetti all at once, stirring with a pasta fork to make sure it submerges.
Heat the zucchini and garlic in a skillet.
If your spaghetti requires, say, 4 minutes to cook, scoop out a cup of pasta water around the 2 minute mark.
Put about 10% of the zucchini in the bottom of a medium bowl, stir in a handful cheese and add hot water to help melt the cheese into a creamy sauce.

As soon as spaghetti is about done, lift a little out of the boiling water and mix it into the bowl. Do not drain the spaghetti: it will cool too quickly, just lift it right out of the hot water.
Then in several layers, add zucchini, hot spaghetti and cheese and stir, adding more hot pasta water when you need it. The zucchini and cheese tend to clump together, so this layered mixing helps distribute it throughout the pasta. You may not need all the spaghetti. But when you have mixed all the zucchini and cheese with some of the spaghetti, stop and arrange the mixture on a serving plate.
Top with a pat of butter and the basil leaves and serve right away.

You can serve this as a main dish or as a side dish. Here we illustrate a side dish serving with a few meatballs to make the meal. You will be amazed at how good this simple meal can be!

Shrimp and cherry tomato aioli toasts

It doesn’t take long to put together this shrimp aioli dinner. All you need is shrimp, crusty bread, some garlic mayonnaise (aioli) and a few common spices. We made ours using red Indonesian shrimp because they looked the best that day, but any fresh shrimp will do.

1 lb fresh shrimp
2 cups cherry tomatoes, stems removed
3-4 slices crusty bread
Olive oil as needed, probably 4-5 Tb.
3 garlic gloves, thinly sliced.
1 Tb wine vinegar
1 ½ tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp ground cumin
½ tsp red pepper flakes
Chopped parsley

The Aioli

2 egg yolks
1 Tb fresh lemon juice
1 tsp Diamond Crystal kosher salt
1 large clove of garlic, mashed and minced (or use a garlic press)
½ cup extra virgin olive oil

You can make this in a bowl with a whisk or use a blender. The blender is faster.

Put the egg yolks lemon juice, salt and garlic in the blender, and with the blender running, slowing pour in the olive oil. Let it run another 10-15 seconds and top. You should have a nice mayonnaise. Put it in bowl in the refrigerator while you prepare the shrimp.

The Shrimp

Place the shrimp on a plate and dry them off. Sprinkle with kosher salt and let rest while you make the toasts.
Put 2 Tb olive oil in a cast iron frying pan, and heat to medium high. Put in 2 slices of toast and brown. Turn the toasts and brown the other side. Drain on a paper towel and repeat with the other slices, and drain.

Add more olive oil and cook the shrimp for 2 minutes on one side, and turn and cooka bout 2 minutes more. Remove the shrimp to a bowl.
Add more olive oil and all of the cherry tomatoes. Cook at medium high until they brown on the bottom, about 4 minutes. Turn them all over and cook another minute or two.

Add the vinegar, sliced garlic, paprika, cumin and ½ tsp red pepper flakes and 2 tsp Diamond Crystal salt. Cook, stirring until some of the tomatoes begin to burst. Add the shrimp and stir until heated through.

Spread the aioli thickly on the toasts and spread the shrimp and tomatoes on top of the aioli.
Decorate with parsley and more pepper flakes and serve at once.

I fell back in love with my Rollei SLR

In high school, I had a Yashica 6×6 and a Minolta 35mm. And while they were good for their time, my high school had a Rollei Twin Lens Reflex (TLR) for use of the photo group, and I just had to upgrade and get one of my own after using it.

My father bought me a used Rollei 3.5 for high school graduation and I held onto it and used it for nearly 40 years. If you want the complete list of cameras I owned, along with some pictures, I wrote about them a couple of years ago.

But in the 1990s, I started to see that my Rollei TLR images weren’t as sharp as they used to be. I felt that it would probably be too expensive to repair and sold it. Then I put together (quite) a bit more money and bought a slightly used Rolleiflex 6008 Integral SLR along with a grip and an extra film back (shown at top of article).

It has an f/2.8 80 mm PQ Planar (Zeiss) lens with leaf shutter up to 1/1000 of a second (for PQS lenses, and 1/500 for PQ lenses.) PQ stands for Professional Quality. This model was made from 1995-2002, and I believe I bought mine around 1997-8. And unlike the venerable TLRs, this camera has a huge variety of interchangeable lenses made for it.

The reviews of this Rollei SLR were really positive and still are. The camera has shutter priority, aperture priority manual and fully automatic exposure settings. It also has several TTL metering settings: center weighted mullti-zone, 1% spot and multi-spot metering. And since the film advance is battery driven, you can take multiple exposures a half second apart. These features put it far ahead of the competing Hasselblad.

While the camera performed well optically, it was plagued by the terrible batteries that Rollei provided. They didn’t hold much charge or last that long, and new batteries, which were expensive, were no better. So, I put it away and concentrated on a series of Nikon digital cameras: D70, D80, D7200 and now a Z6.

Not long ago, I thought I might be able to sell that Rollei and get a TLR instead. Of course, I had to make sure it worked. But of course, both batteries were dead and no longer chargeable. There are now after-market replacement batteries available, some of which simply welded in new rechargeable AA cells in the original Rollei battery case. But, most of them required an expensive new charger. Finally, I found a replacement battery system complete with charger on eBay from a user with the id mignon1. It works flawlessly and comes with a plug-in charger so you can recharge the battery without removing it from the camera!

I didn’t need a darkroom!

So, I took a few rolls of film on my “new” Rollei and was simply astonished at what a great camera it still is. My first rolls were using black and white film: TMax-400, Ilford HP5+ (ISO 400) and FP4+ (ISO 125). I developed them in my basement darkroom, loading the film into the developing tank inside a big changing bag I bought from Adorama. This bag is 25” x 22” x 17”, so you have plenty of room to unroll 120 film and spool it into your developing tank reel.

And, while I have a complete darkroom, it turns out that with a new Epson v600 scanner, I really never needed to fire up the Beseler enlarger. While the scanning software provided with the Epson scanner is perfectly adequate, you can get faster scans and a bit more flexibility by buying a copy of Silverfast. For black and white, it seems to manage resolution better, and it does a better job color rendering from color negatives than Epson scanning software does. The detail is amazing and the color quite stunning. I sent that roll to The Darkroom to develop the negatives, but did the scanning and printing here at home. It turns out you can also buy color C-41 developer kits quite cheaply, and there are only two baths rather than the old 5 or 6, so it is as simple as b/w processing.

Scanning

But does scanning do as good a job as analog enlargement? I ran some tests by printing out the same photo both ways, and could not see any difference at all! Scanning a 6×6 cm negative, gives you around a 100 megapixel scanned image: more than you’ll ever get from your digital camera, and the gray scales are identical as well. In examples below, the left hand image was scanned from the original negative, and right hand image was printed in the darkroom using Ilford Multigrade paper and a #3 contrast filter. They are essentially identical results even when printed at 8×10 inches.

Negative printed on Ilford Multigrade with #3 contrast and scanned from print.

(I will have to say that I can probably knock out 8×10 prints in the darkroom faster than going through all that scanning and printing, but photographic paper is way more expensive than printer paper, and I don’t have to wash out the trays afterwards.)

This Rollei SLR is built like a tank. Heavy, sturdy and well made and will probably last for many years. It does however, weigh nearly 5 lbs and the best way to carry it around is in a padded gadget bag that distributes the weight across your shoulders. I keep a tripod in my trunk, as well. If you are used to taking hundreds or thousands of shots a day, the Rollei makes you rethink your composition, since each roll has only 12 shots. You will find that every shot is likely to be a winner. Think of the Rollei as a more portable view camera that can get the high-resolution pictures you really wanted.

So I’m not selling my Rollei 6008! It’s the best “new” camera I ever bought!

The Benjamin opens in Ridgefield

Four of us went to dinner at The Benjamin last weekend, and found it quite enjoyable. The restaurant’s name honors Benjamin Franklin, who brought back many of France’s best culinary ideas to the states while he was ambassador. The Benjamin is located in the building formerly occupied by Bernard’s. It opened just this July, managed by Rob Moss, Dave Studwell and BJ Lawless who own and operate Washington Prime and BJ Ryan’s Restaurant Group in Norwalk.

The new Benjamin décor is similar, but much refreshed with the formal restaurant on the left as you enter, and the bar and some high-top tables to the right, looking out over the gardens. The upstairs has more restaurant seating and there is outdoor dining available in good weather accessible from the main floor, and an additional small patio seating up to 24 off the upstairs dining room.

The menu by Executive Chef Benjamin Travers, formerly of The Modern and Café Boulud in New York City, is styled as “uniquely American and French-inspired.” You will find four salads, two excellent soups, two raw bar items and 6 appetizers, nearly all seafood based, but including a seductive sounding charcuterie for $34. There are eight entrees: scallops, duck breast, halibut, lobster risotto, rack of lamb, roast half chicken, filet mignon and a Wagyu hamburger. There is also a vegetarian saffron risotto with wild mushrooms.

Bread is not provided free at The Benjamin, but you can order their Signature Bread Service for $9, consisting of whole wheat sourdough bread with 3 butters. We didn’t try it.

We started with the soups: we tried the Potato Leek Soup ($21) which comes with lump crab, smoked trout roe and a chive. The service is lovely: they bring you a bowl containing the roe and what is essentially a small crab cake, and then pour the soup around it in the bowl. We agreed that this was outstanding.

The other soup is a Chilled Pea Soup ($17) with grilled spring onions and brioche. Rather than the heavy puree you might expect, this is a lighter soup with actual peas in it, along with the spring onion, pea sprouts and pieces of brioche. Again, an excellent choice.

Our companion who ordered the Olive Oil Poached Halibut ($39) praised it highly. It is served with herbed couscous, fennel, picholine olives, pistachio, and beurre blanc. He noted that it was a good-sized portion and was particularly drawn to the fennel flavor. It certainly looked delicious.

Several of us were drawn to the Rack of Lamb ($49) served with charred eggplant, baby zucchini, piperade lamb jus, and mint. There certainly was plenty of delicious lamb there, but served on a big cutting board, the chops quickly cooled and by the time we got to the last two, they were pretty cold. Since lamb fat congeals above room temperature, many restaurants serve lamb on warm plates. This would have been better.

You will note that none of the dishes on the menu come with much in the way of vegetables or starches. Instead, like a steakhouse, you can order side dishes from the menu. But their choices are minimal, and things like mashed potatoes, beans, carrots or broccoli are absent. You can only order French fries, truffled fries, mushroom fricassee, truffled fingerling potato or roast breakfast radish and red onion.

And consider the lowly hamburger (albeit Wagyu), which is already $25 by itself. With fries, you’d be paying $37! That is a bit much.

Phobe Damrosch, in Service Included her delightful diary of working the first year at Per Se, listed among Diner’s Rights, the right to salt and pepper. At The Benjamin, they will bring around a giant pepper mill and grind where you point. And while they let you touch the salt mill, they whisk both away so you have no chance to add salt or pepper later in the meal. A little dish of salt would help here.

Desserts

There are eight desserts from Pastry Chef Melissa Knauer, formerly of Arethusa A Mano in Bantam, CT. The two we had were excellent.

One dessert we ordered, chocolate mousse with caramelia chocolate and caramel sauce ($14), was quite showy and spectacular, and big enough to share a bit. The other, Strawberry Profiteroles ($13) was quite a surprise. The two “cream puffs” were filled with a delicious, smooth strawberry mousse and served with sliced strawberries and a shortbread crumble.

Overall, we enjoyed our visit to The Benjamin, but the entrée prices are high for Fairfield County, with most of them in the high thirties, and the lobster risotto a eyebrow-raising $58. Only the burger (without fries) and the vegetarian entrée were under $30. The outdoor dining option on the first floor is an elegant little grove to the right of the building, but the upstairs patio is quite plain by comparison, especially considering the elegant interior.

Nova Cafe opens in Wilton

Nova Cafe opened in Wilton just a few days ago and it seems to already be a big hit judging from the steady flow of customers. A sister to Ridgefield’s Tazza Cafe, Nova has a similar but not identical menu.

Nova Café’s menu includes a variety of breakfast sandwiches, oatmeal and overnight oats dishes with various fruit and granola toppings, acai bowls and pastries for breakfast. For lunch, they offer some very interesting wraps like Buffalo Chicken and Chicken Gorgonzola, hot pressed paninis like Monte Cristos and Chipotle Chicken and signature sandwiches including roast beefs and smoked turkey and brie. They also offer sourdough cheese melts and about a dozen creative and delicious sounding salads.

We had breakfast there today, a little after the rush, around 9:30, and were impressed with the pleasant and hard-working staff and the delicious breakfast sandwiches.

One of us had the Bacon Egg and Cheese sandwich ($6.95) on a croissant (they were out of the hard rolls, but the croissant was delicious. In fact, it clearly had 2 eggs in it.

Our other choice was called Power Start ($7.95) and it was my favorite, made from eggs, ham, cheddar on toasted multigrain bread. As you can see from the picture, they did not skimp on ingredients. It was great!

Nova has a selection of their own coffees for sale as beans, or you can grind them on the spot.

One display case shows some of the pastries available, here mostly muffins and scones. Earlier they had a wider selection of pastries. The other display case shows the sandwiches and wraps prepared for the lunch rush.

While they clearly do a significant take-out business, there are a few tables in the main dining room and quite a few more tables in the airy secondary dining room. Considering the early, enthusiastic response to Nova, they will certainly need all those tables.

Our bill for the two sandwiches, coffee and tea with tax, and 15% tip was $25.50. We’ll be back for lunch sometime soon! Hours at their 200 Danbury Rd address are 6:30am to 6:30pm Monday through Saturday and Sunday from 7:00am to 6:00pm.

Welcome to Wilton, Nova Cafe! We wish you well!

James Beard’s Tomato Pie

I came across this really simple recipe for a savory tomato pie, published in Sarah Leah Chase’s newspaper column in the Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror. Chase and others trace the recipe back to Ruth Reichl, but I haven’t found anything with Beard’s imprimatur. However, a lot of Beard’s writing was collections of other people’s recipes, so we may never know who first made this really simple and delicious pie, which amounts to a biscuit dough crust and about 4 other ingredients. All I can tell you is that it was a hit at a group picnic/party I took it to recently, and so I’ll pass it on to you.

Basically, you make a batch of buttermilk biscuit dough and press it into a pie pan as the crust, fill it with a layer or two of sliced tomatoes, and top with a mixture of mayonnaise and cheddar cheese and bake it.

This recipe works fine with ordinary hothouse tomatoes, but it will probably excel with fresh garden tomatoes as well. We’ll soon find out!

First make the biscuit dough

2 cups flour
1 Tb baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
6 Tb cold unsalted butter (3/4 stick, or 3 oz.)
1 cup plus 2 Tb buttermilk
Chopped parsley

Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl. Then cut up the butter into little cubes by slicing the stick of butter lengthwise along two long axes and then cutting it into slices along the short axis, which will each fall into four pieces. Then blend the butter into the flour with a pastry blender and toss in a small handful of chopped parsley, and mix in the buttermilk. No need to roll the dough out: just press the whole ball into a 9-inch pie pan and spread it to fill the pan and up the sides.

Then make the tomato pie

4-6 ripe tomatoes, in thick slices
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1 ½ cups mayonnaise
Fresh basil leaves, chopped
Salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 375˚ F.
Spread the tomato slices on top of the biscuit dough, filling the pan, and sprinkle with salt and pepper, and sprinkle the chopped basil on top.
Mix the mayonnaise and cheddar cheese and spread over the top of the tomatoes.
Spread some more chopped basil leaves on top.
Bake about 35 minutes.

Let it rest for 10-15 minutes and serve warm, or chill it and serve it cold. Cold, it is a great addition to a picnic or party.

Easy popovers in less than an hour

Even though popovers are really easy to make, they have the reputation of being difficult and in the domain of expert chefs instead of a simple dinner roll anyone can turn out in very short order.

For some years, we have been using this somewhat elaborate recipe by Marlene Sorosky Gray first published in Hearst papers some 10 years ago. It even requires overnight refrigeration, but makes great popovers. However, Gray’s text suggest that almost any of a dozen common variations work just as well, so we set out to find the easiest one.

We started with this really simple King Arthur Baking recipe, since their bakers have a way of simplifying things for the average user. And we must say that recipe is a winner too, and terribly easy to follow. There are only 5 ingredients in their popovers (and ours) and the recipe is so simple, you’ll have it learned in no time.

4 eggs
1-1/2 cups milk
1-1/2 cups flour
3 Tb melted unsalted butter.
1 tsp salt

There are three tricks we use to make these popovers work.

Start with warm ingredients, no cold milk or eggs.
Use non-stick spray on the popover or muffin pan.
Cook at 450˚ F and finish at 350˚ F.

Making Popovers in a Popover Pan

Preheat the oven to 450˚ F. Place an empty cookie sheet on the very top shelf to keep the tops of the popovers from burning.
Place the 4 eggs in a bowl of hot tap water for 10 minutes, to bring them to room temperature.
Heat the 1-1/2 cups of milk in the microwave for 75 seconds to make sure it is warm.
Melt the 3 Tb butter in the microwave for 1 minute at 50% power.
Empty water from the bowl, dry it slightly and reuse it to mix the batter.
Break the eggs into the bowl, and beat them with a whisk, and then add the milk and beat briefly to mix the eggs and milk together.
Add the flour and salt and mix with a whisk until uniform. Small lumps are OK, but beat the mixture for a minute or so until the batter is somewhat foamy.
Mix in the melted butter.
Spray the popover pan cups with non-stick spray and then fill each cup about ¾ full.
Bake at 450˚ F for 20 minutes, without opening the oven.
Reduce the heat to 350˚ F and bake for 20 minutes more, without opening the oven. If you bake them at 350˚ F for only 15 minutes, you will get fluffy popovers that deflate a bit as they cool, but are very tender. At 20 minutes, you get a firm shell that will hold its shape.
Take the popover pan out of the oven and serve the popovers hot, right away, with butter or butter and honey.

If you must let them sit and cool, you can reheat them in the microwave for 1 minute (this keeps them soft) or in the oven for 5 minutes (this hardens the crust somewhat.)

Some people serve popovers with things like chicken salad and scoop the salad into the popover shell. We think that’s nuts. Serve the hot popovers alongside the cold salad, so they stay hot to spread with butter (and honey).

Leftover popovers, still make a nice shell for breakfast and lunch dishes. We reheated a popover, split it open and filled it with scrambled eggs.

We also make a nice cold meatloaf sandwich with a cold popover. You could even use them as hamburger rolls! They are also great snacks with jam or with peanut butter!

Cooking time in various pans

We baked popovers countless times in various pans to give you the details. We used three different sized pans.

The standard popover pan holds 5 oz. of batter and makes six towering popovers. Just follow the recipe above.
The large muffin pan holds 2.5 fluid oz. of batter and makes a dozen moderate sized popovers.
The small muffin pan has 2 oz. cups and makes a dozen modest popovers.

Large Muffin Pan

Making popovers in a muffin pan with only 2.5 oz. of batter is much the same as using the big popover pan: you just get smaller popovers. Be sure to spray the pan well with nonstick spray as the nonstick coating is probably not as effective as the popover pan’s is.

We found that you need to reduce the cooking time at high temperature (450˚ F) from 20 minutes to 15. We tried several different times at 350˚ F: 10 or 15 minutes gave you light puffy popovers that sagged a bit as they cooled. But at 20 minutes, we got a firmer shell that is probably better for serving a group, or for filling the inside.

Smaller Muffin Pan

In the small 2.0 oz. muffin pan, you have a lot less leeway, since the muffins are smaller. As before we found that 15 min at 450˚ F worked well, and 15 minutes at 350 ˚F gave you nice puffy popovers that deflated a bit when cooled. But if you went to 20 minutes, the popovers were quite dark and firm although not quite burned. Stick with 15/15 for this size pan, although you could try 15/17 if you wanted to experiment. Of course, ovens vary and these times may be different in your oven.

Minimuffin pan

Our minimuffin pan holds 24 small muffins, with each cup containing only 1.5 oz. So after a couple of tries, we found that you get perfect mini-popovers by baking for 15 minutes at 450˚ F and for 10 minutes at 350˚ F. They are puffy but fairly firm and would be great for a party.

So, you can see that it’s easy to make popovers in any kind of pan and the baking is little more than half an hour. Have fun impressing your friends!

The Proprietors — Imaginative cuisine

The Proprietors Bar and Table at 9 India Street on Nantucket is always worth a visit to sample Chef Michael LaScola’s imaginative a playful cuisine. You can order a large plate and an appetizer sample a number of the smaller plates instead. Between us, we did both. The menu changes frequently, so you may not order what we did, but the food is surprisingly good.

Right at the top of the menu was a Cream Puff filled with chicken liver mousse and rhubarb ($14). We split one. Not only was it quite filling, it was probably the biggest hit of the night for us: smooth and flavorful.

One of us opted for the Green Salad with buttermilk dressing, quinoa, rye crumb and aged Gouda ($25), and an exemplary salad it was.

We also tried the Pretzel Parker Rolls with Kobe’s duck pastrami, and sour cherry mustard ($29). This looked great on the plate, but the duck pastrami was so thin we never got a good taste of its flavor. We imagined we were supposed to make little sandwiches of the pastrami and sour cherry mustard, and that worked very well together.

One of us tried the seared scallops with hot and sour vin, caramelized shiitake, endive and turnip ($49.50) and found it excellent.

The other offering was narrated to us in a really noisy environment so we may have the title wrong. It amounted to Gnocchi with rabbit stew and onions ($39), but there may have been other descriptors we missed. The gravy and gnocchi were delicious, but there were but a few shreds of rabbit to be found. However, the overall taste was outstanding.

For dessert, we split a single Banana Bread Sundae, served with chocolate and caramel sauce and cherries ($20). It was terrific, but so filling we couldn’t (sigh) finish it.

Our bill with two glasses of wine with tax but before tip was $220.95. While there were some misses, the cuisine was overall unforgettable.

Ventuno remains top-notch

We had dinner at Ventuno last Friday, and it again proved itself one of the island’s top restaurants. The menu may seem confusing at first, but it really is divided into Antipasti, Primi (mostly pasta dishes), Secondi (mostly meat dishes), some snacks, and Dolci (desserts).

Unlike a lot of other restaurants, Ventuno still serves bread, a half loaf of terrific ciabatta for $6. You can get it with butter, olive oil, or probably both. It’s crusty and excellent!

We started with five local oysters with a grapefruit granita for $21. The grapefruit ice blended well with the oyster liquor to make a wonderful start to the meal.

One of us ordered their outstanding Caesar salad with romaine. Celery, ciabatta-parmesan croutons and Caesar dressing ($19).

For one entrée, we ordered Agnello: slow cooked and grilled lamb coppa ($48). Coppa is an unusual cut, in that it is part of the collar of muscles that extend from the loin. There are only two per animal, so it is fairly rare. Usually it is cooked slowly, resulting in really tender piece of meat. In this case, it is grilled briefly for the flavor as well. It was some of the tenderest lamb we have ever tasted. It was served with heirloom polenta, broccoli rabe, and a caper-anchovy gremolata.

For our other entrée, we ordered Capesante e Gamberi: grilled shrimp and Nantucket sea scallops, served with house bacon, grilled spring onions, spring peas herb gremolata, parsnip crema an preserved lemon piccata($51).

Finally, we split a dessert called Bomboloncini ($15): bittersweet chocolate filled donuts, coffee gelato and chocolate sauce. A delightful end to an outstanding meal. The bill, with two glasses of wine, including tax, but before tip was $233.26. It was one of the best meals we had during our visit.

The Pearl re-opens in 2023 under new management

The Boarding House and The Pearl were sold by the Raynors to Blue Flag Partners in 2019, and after the pandemic and some remodeling, they re-opened this spring. The Boarding House does not have any on-line presence, because they no longer take reservations. You just show up at or after 5:30 to have dinner with them.

The new version of The Pearl is less formal than its predecessor (no tablecloths) and very friendly, as evidenced by the substantial crowd dining there on Thursday. While the menu has some similarities to the old Pearl (our 2013 review is linked here), the menu is definitely the creation of the new management. They do not mention their chef’s name in their publicity, however.

The menu has some similarities in style to the old Pearl, including the Salt and Pepper Wok Fried Lobster, now with a Market Price of $80, and the 60-second steak and eggs ($33) share plate. And the menu is divided as before in 5 Snacks, 8 Shares, and 6 Entrees, but it is rather briefer than its predecessor.

What is very different is the style of the new Pearl. The staff are warm and friendly, and the diners all seem to be having a good time. The austere blue décor has been replaced with tan composition table tops, with napkin settings including both silverware and chopsticks, emphasizing the style of the new Pearl as Asian Fusion.

For our visit last Thursday, we selected two snacks: Lobster Rangoons ($27) and Heritage Pork Dumplings ($25). We did ask how much the Wok Fried Lobster was, and it turned out to be $80, but our waitress told us we would be happier with the Swordfish Katsu ($49) instead.

We also asked her whether, with these two starters, we would still need to order two entrees, and she said no, suggesting we could always add in another Share such as the Spring Pea Fried Rice ($25). So, we ordered that too.

We got the Lobster Rangoons first, and –a word of warning—these come right out of the fryer and onto your plate, and are full of hot steam. Don’t bite them directly: cut them open first. They are excellent.

Our Heritage Pork dumplings came second, and considering how dark the sauce was, it seemed more likely to contain black bean sauce than the specified red chili oil. But again, they were very good.

The Swordfish Katzu is a very interesting idea. It is basically swordfish breaded with Panko crumbs and deep fried. It doesn’t specify any sauces in the preparation. However, by deep frying the swordfish, they have solved the problem of dried out swordfish, which is all too common in other preparations. The swordfish was tender and juicy unlike any other version we’ve had. It was served with green goddess curry, spring peas, and mint.

Unfortunately for variety, the spring pea fried rice was rather similar, so we probably should have picked a different side dish. It came with chorizo and mushrooms, cured egg, crispy garlic and mint, but the peas and rice predominated. We show the two items plated below:

Finally, we chose two desserts, Cooper’s Chocolate Chunk Cookies, with sea salt and almodn milk to dip them in ($10) and Miso Caramel Budino ($12) with coffee syrup, milk chocolate crunch, candied ginger and crème fraiche.

The Budino was outstanding! Our bill was right around $200 including tax and $5.16 “kitchen appreciation.” Definitely a good deal for the evening.