In December 1989, when the commonwealth was in the grip of a bitter cold snap and a fiscal crisis, the lieutenant governor, Evelyn Murphy, was on vacation in Florida. Since she was the candidate for governor, it could be argued that she belonged on freezing Beacon Hill, wrestling the state’s finances into shape. That was the argument my editors at the Boston Herald, where I wrote about pols and politics, used when they first found out about Murphy’s days in the sun. But the reasons hardly mattered: at the Herald, sniping at pols was a giddy blood sport. “Big or small, we shoot ‘em all,” one of my bosses, managing editor Andy Gully used to say.

So we lined her up for a kill shot. I jumped on a southbound plane with a photographer, and we staked out Murphy on Sanibel Island, on Florida’s Gulf Coast. We found her soon enough, jogging along a road in shorts and a T-shirt. The next day, we splashed her picture across page one, her middle-aged thighs flouncing across more than 300,000 newspapers. It was a terribly unflattering photograph, an image that became one of those iconic campaign symbols, like when Mike Dukakis rode in that tank with a helmet strapped to his head, looking for all the Flying Squirrel, only more dour.

Of course, that photo wasn’t the only reason Murphy lost in 1990, but it certainly didn’t help. Meanwhile, back in the newsroom, I was greeted with the highest praise in tabloid journalism: “Nice hit.”

Reporters, it occurs to me now, speak like underworld hoodlums.

I quit journalism five years ago, mostly because the money ran short. I stayed in politics, though. I just moved to the other side, going to work for Joe Malone, the former state treasurer, shifting from bomb tosser to bomb catcher. But I loved being a reporter. If you’re young and have a curious mind, there’s no better job on the planet. And there was no better job in journalism than covering Beacon Hill in the late eighties and early nineties when the state was heaving with crisis and change, the death of Dukakoids and the rise of Weldites.

And we political writers spoke in underworld terms, because we were, in fact, a sort of underworld, mob unto ourselves. As young reporters, we were shamelessly in love with the power of our craft. Most of our time was spent chasing stories that could splash on page one, or that at least could lead an inside page. We didn’t care much about committee hearings, unless a fight broke out. We all knew how a bill became law, but we weren’t interested in process. We dished dirt. We expected our phone calls to be returned. When they weren’t, we took that to mean the pols were hiding something and there was going to be hell to pay. We figured most pols were overdue in their accounts to the devil anyway. In my book, they were all pretty much rogues, and we never cut them any slack. Every misstep and misstatement found its way into the paper.

The only people we respected were older and gruffer reporters. During one of my first days in the cramped State House pressroom, Peter Lucas, a legendary Herald columnist and long-time State House fixture, apparently got fed up with the blue haze drifting off the tip of my cigarettes. So he pulled me and another chain-smoking reporter aside.

“When I have to go to the bathroom,” he barked, “do I piss all over your desk?”

“No,” I stammered.

“Then when you have a cigarette, don’t blow smoke in my face, all right?”

That was the last cigarette I smoked in front of Peter Lucas.

Our real hero, though, was Howie Carr, who had the sharpest pen in town and used it to skewer pols like so many chunks of rare meat. Then and now, Howie had a genius for invective, a gift for the viciously funny putdown. There was the time the State House released a cookbook and Howie showed up at some event, asking political figures to name their favorite dish. When he got to William Bulger, the diminutive Senate president responded, “Roast reporter.” Howie’s comeback: “How about strawberry shortcake?”

Not that guys like Howie (an occasional Boston magazine contributor) made the job any easier for the rest of us. Not long after, I was part of a group of reporters interviewing Bulger inside the Senate reception area when he spotted Howie down the hall. “Here comes that barbarian,” Bulger snarled and began to walk away. “This press conference is over.”

No one took it personally on my side. In my trade, politics was never personal. Hell, people were rarely people—they were ducks in a shooting gallery. Once, a cop who was involved in an exam-stealing scandal I wrote about invited me to his house for a cup of coffee. He didn’t want to argue his innocence. He only wanted to show me that he was a regular guy, with a wife and kids and a mortgage. Most times, reporters don’t see that at all.

When Pat Purcell bought the Herald in early 1994, he gathered the staff into the newsroom and announced, among other things, that the paper would “de-emphasize” political stories. For me, it was time to move on. Plus, by then I had a family to support, which wasn’t easy on a journalist’s salary.

I took a high-paying position as Joe Malone’s flack, which is what reporters call the press aides and mouthpieces politicians hire. I knew the basic requirements of the job, since much of it involves reacting to what reporters ask and write.
But now I was the guy answering the late-night phone calls. Now I was the one ranting about stories built on anonymous sources. I was the one lobbying for positive ink for an elected official. I was the one arguing with editors about why and how they packaged their stories. (Okay, granted, I argued with a lot of editors when I was a reporter, too.)

Reporters are still among the best people I know, and I continue to believe that journalism is an honorable craft. Because the public is so tuned out most of the time, the press is the only institution that holds government and politicians accountable. A reporter’s call sets off all sorts of alarms in most offices, and criticism from the media is a major factor in shaping public policy.

But after five years of covering politics, being in the practice of politics quickly taught me how much I didn’t know—or, rather, how much I had chosen to ignore. I learned, for instance, that the people who work in government are, in fact, people. Their intentions are generally good, and they wrestle long and hard with serious issues and questions that most people ignore. And I learned that governments—the institutions and the people that run them—rarely get credit for the things they do right.

Admittedly, I became a partisan for my boss, so much so that I even helped run his campaign for the Republican nomination for governor. Nevertheless, I honestly believe there is no shortage of success stories in government. Two dozen tax cuts in a row. Welfare reform. Declining workers’-compensation rates. An overflowing unemployment insurance trust fund and a $1 billion rainy-day fund. Even the state’s unfunded pension liability has been virtually eliminated. During Malone’s tenure, the treasury’s operating budget shrank every year, to the point where it is now half of what it was eight years ago.

But no reporter ever called to ask me about that. Reporters, it turns out, don’t have peripheral vision: They don’t see all the good things going on in government because they’re too focused on a few headline-grabbing bad things. It’s a hazard of the trade, I suppose.

That’s why I’ve come to believe that reporters, much like politicians, could benefit from term limits. Our representatives and senators are good for two, maybe three terms before they burn out. After that, instead of thinking every problem has a solution, they begin to believe every solution has a problem. Reporters are the same way. They write the same stories again and again, quoting the same pollsters and pundits, often migrating into Sunday-morning punditry themselves. After a while, they run on automatic. They even stop doing their own research, instead relying on political operatives who package stories for them, complete with photo ops and spin or, worse, blind quotes and low tips.

I was guilty of that, too. Hey, I was the guy who caught middle-aged, heavy-thighed Evelyn Murphy jogging down a Florida road in the middle of her winter vacation—exactly the kind of gotcha story that makes me wince when I see it now.

But I’d also like to think that after having been in government, after sitting at the table where the decisions are made, I’d be a better reporter if I ever chose to go back. I only wish I knew then what I finally know now. I’d spend more time looking for heroes instead of villains.

Eric Fehrnstrom was a former assistant state treasurer and the Boston Herald‘s State House bureau chief.

IF YOU’VE LIVED IN BOSTON for a while, you may be wholly unaware of the fact that this is a beer town. You probably assume that restaurants in every city make sure there are multiple locally brewed offerings on tap, that “What’s today’s IPA?” is a perfectly normal question for your bartender. If you’ve lived here for a while, in other words, you pretty much have no idea that you’ve been totally spoiled by great beer, and that the poor slobs in other cities are condemned to a selection of brews whose only real merit is that they come in cans that change color to alert you to how cold they are.

Fittingly, then, it took a visit from some out-of-­towners to remind executive editor Donna Garlough of what a great beer scene we have — one worthy of serious celebration. And when she and the rest of our staff started talking about beer culture in Boston, we realized there was an entire local economy built around water, barley, malt, and hops. We have malt producers. Homebrew shops. Breweries large and small, and craft-beer bars galore. Most important, though, our region boasts so many great-tasting, small-batch suds that you could never come close to tasting them all.

That’s not to say we didn’t try. To crown the 15 best microbrews in New England, we researched offerings from breweries in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine — from established outfits like Long Trail and Shipyard to emerging nano-breweries like Wormtown and High & Mighty. After winnowing down the options, we held three marathon tastings, each consisting of at least 30 samples in 15 styles. You’ll find the results of our exhaustive research over here.

If there’s one thing that defines many of today’s best craft brews (which can have alcohol contents of 7 percent and higher), it’s the wallop they pack. But we also learn this month that a stiff beer isn’t the only way to get a good kick to the head around here. As associate digital editor Shannon Fischer reports, Massachusetts is home to a growing number of successful UFC combatants — those guys who punch, knee, choke, and wrestle each other in the middle of a steel octagon. In her profile of up-and-coming East Bridgewater brawler Joe Lauzon, Fischer finds that while some cage fighters fit the meathead stereotype, many others do not. Lauzon, for instance, is a former computer programmer who graduated from the ­Wentworth Institute of Technology. What Lauzon has not done so far, however, is manage to win a UFC championship. Neither, for that matter, has any other fighter from Massachusetts. Lauzon is certain he’ll be the first, and Fischer chronicles his pursuit of a belt.

So that’s our May issue, a no-holds-barred look at Boston, brewskies, and brawling. I’ll raise a cold one to that.

Drizzled with a blend of caramel and sherry or served with a side of creamy sausage gravy, these sweet-and-savory takes on the now-classic pairing are as good in the morning as they are at night.

Local 149, $16
(Photos by Dave Bradley.)
149 P St., South Boston, 617-269-0900, local149.com.
Buttermilk-fried chicken pieces
Chocolate chip waffles
Roasted-red-jalapeño butter
Caramel-sherry syrup

Allston Diner, $11

431 Cambridge St., Allston, 617-208-8741, allstondiner.com.
Buttermilk-fried boneless chicken tenders
Cornbread waffles
Sausage gravy
Maple syrup

Welcome to the age of the small, attentive wine seller. (Photo via iStockphoto)

Social Wines
Partners John Libonati and Chris Schutte owned a bar in New York, burned out on the nightlife scene, then decided to open a South Boston wine shop — complete with a separate tasting room — at the corner of A Street and West Broadway. At their new digs (which were scheduled to open in April) expect vinos from small, family-owned producers, as well as hyperlocal craft beers (Night Shift Brewery, Blue Hills Brewery) and spirits (Bully Boy, Grand Ten Distilleries). “We want to sell things people can relate to,” Libonati says. “If it has a backstory, people are interested.” 52 W. Broadway, Boston, 617-539-6212, socialwinesbos.com.

TerraVino
Now open in Coolidge Corner, this shop deals exclusively in all-natural, organic, sustainable, and biodynamic wines. “A lot of people are becoming green-conscious and caring about what goes in their body,” says owner Chris Carbone. “There’s been a shift in the market to cleaner, fresher, and more green wines.” Also expect local beers from Backlash, Notch, and Long Trail. 234 Harvard St., Brookline, 617-232-1180, terravinowines.com.

Streetcar Wine & Beer
Owner Michael Dupuy, an alum of the North End’s Wine Bottega, decided to strike out on his own with a tiny (800-square-foot!) wine and beer store, opening soon in J.P. “Having a smaller shop forces you to create a niche, because you can’t carry everything,” Dupuy says. “I’ve already developed a body of producers that I really cling to and hold dear.” Look for wines from small producers in the States and abroad, and beers from the likes of the forthcoming Trillium Brewery in Fort Point. 488 Centre St., Jamaica Plain, 617-276-6372, streetcarwines.com.

Photo by Dave Bradley, food styling by Rowena Day/Ennis.

THE WILD POPULARITY of fatty-pork-stuffed buns must be credited to New York chef David Chang and his game-changing eatery Momofuku, but we’ve embraced the Taiwanese street-food standard (traditionally known as gua bao) around here, too. Authentic (and cheap) buns can be had at Chinese restaurants like Jo Jo TaiPei in Allston and Taiwan Café in Chinatown, while updated versions bearing refined touches like spiced aioli, apple-hoisin sauce, and house-made pickles are showing up on food-truck and fine-dining menus alike. Part of the stuffed buns’ appeal for chefs is their versatility, says Mei Li, co-owner of the Mei Mei food truck. “There’s the opportunity to riff on the ingredients and play around with what you put inside,” she says. And for diners? The buns are “like a white-bread sandwich,” says East by Northeast chef Phillip Tang. “The idea as a whole is easily accessible for people.” At right are four anything-but-white-bread versions.

1. East by Northeast: $9 for two
Crispy pork belly, house-made steamed bread, sweet bean paste, house-pickled onions, and apple slices.

2. Clio: $7  each
Tamarind-glazed pork belly, chili aioli, and pickled cucumbers and bean sprouts.

3. Harvest: $15 for two
Glazed pork belly, kimchi, cilantro, mint, and wasabi aioli.

4. Mei Mei: $7.50 each
Roast pork (with cracklings), house-made steamed bread, local apple-hoisin sauce, sesame-chili aioli, pickled cucumbers, carrots, parsnips, and onions.

The Painted Burro’s tacos, from left: steak asada, $15; pork cochinita, $11; chorizo with farm egg and potato, $12. (Photos by Dave Bradley, food styling by Rowena Day/Ennis.)

WE USED TO COMPLAIN about Boston’s lack of Mexican food (other than burritos). But over the past two years, close to a dozen restaurants have popped up everywhere from the Back Bay to the Seaport, bringing with them 100-bottle tequila lists, ornate interiors, and techy trappings like iPad menus. Though our appetite for flashy fare has yet to subside (the New York–based chain Rosa Mexicano is setting up shop in the Seaport this spring), a second wave of new restaurants is now bringing authentic cooking and tequilas galore, without the clubby extras.

For the team behind Allston’s Lone Star Taco Bar, who also operate Deep Ellum next door, the goal was simply to create a great hangout. “We wanted to do Mexican street food that’s casual, with good drinks,” says chef-owner Rian Wyllie. That means a menu featuring traditional tacos, tostadas, and micheladas. “It’s food that a lot of people in the industry — chefs and bartenders — like to eat,” he says.

At the Painted Burro in Davis Square, you’ll find tacos and guacamole, but also more-ambitious plates, such as whole red snapper done Veracruz-style (steamed in a banana leaf with tomatoes, olives, capers, epazote — a type of weed used in Mexican cuisine — and árbol chilies). “It’s very dramatic when it comes to the table and the aroma wafts out of it,” says chef-owner Joe Cassinelli. “When somebody sees it in the dining room, [we get] five more orders.”

Drama from the food, rather than the surroundings? We’ll raise a margarita to that.

(Photo by Dave Bradley, styling by Rowena Day/Ennis)

WHILE THE VERMOUTH at most bars and restaurants is fine in a mixed drink, the mass-produced stuff is hardly worth sipping straight. But thanks to the movement toward crafting things in-house, palatable small-batch versions are now appearing at spots ranging from Eastern Standard to L’Espalier. Erbaluce’s Charles Draghi, meanwhile, has made his own vermouth for more than a decade, and at his Bay Village restaurant he stocks red and white varieties made with wine, brandy, fruit, and herbs from his garden.

For chef Will Gilson, who will open Bridgestreet in Inman Square this summer, homemade vermouth makes it possible to get creative despite a limited liquor license. “Without having hard alcohol, we’re trying to incorporate it into the styles of drinks at our restaurant,” he says. “Making it in-house allows us to highlight the flavors of the season.”

Savor the drink’s aromatics by keeping things simple. Draghi recommends ordering it with soda water and a twist, while Gilson goes even more basic during warmer months: “I have a glass of vermouth just on the rocks.”

Red wine–braised meatballs, $7. (Photo by Anthony Tieuli.)

Milton’s 88 Wharf smacks of the suburbs. The desert-red walls, brown carpet, and round, beige chandeliers are right out of a ’90s Pottery Barn catalog. There’s no Mad Men retro here; that would be edgy. The big square room and spacious bar seem squarely aimed at the empty-nesters living in the upscale condos above.

Judging by the happy salt-and-pepper heads having fun at the bar and occupying the tables at 6 p.m. — the height of the dinner rush, chef Josh Ziskin explained later — they’ve hit their mark. Ziskin was brought in to add some style and artistry to a menu that, he told me, had been assembled largely from premade components. (Before his arrival, the three-year-old restaurant’s greatest asset was the view of sailboats on the Neponset from the large deck.)

That choice of chef was a logical one: For eight years Ziskin has had a magic touch pleasing Brookline and Newton residents with his consistent menu at La Morra. He’s devised a new set of dishes for 88 Wharf that’s a canny cross between La Morra’s sophisticated Tuscan rusticity and the steak/fries/wings familiarity of the old menu. But so far what 88 Wharf lacks is La Morra’s consistency — probably because, as he told me, Ziskin works in the kitchen only one or two days and nights a week. The rest of the time the kitchen is run by chef de cuisine Christian Ellis. This means you can get very different dinners on different nights. Even the good dishes — and there are a number of them — can be hot and well seasoned one night and cold and utterly bland another. Everything’s either oversalted or has no salt at all.

Pear-and-Robiola pizza with rosemary and honey, $13. (Photo by Anthony Tieuli.)

The unpredictability extends to the dining room, which is in the hands of a friendly but young staff. When the lights are low, it feels like a warm, easygoing adult restaurant. When they’re high, as they were on one recent Sunday, it’s more like an Olive Garden, with many big tables full of children younger than 10 (we saw no “kids’ night” sign or specials). Both ways, it can be impossible to get a server’s attention. Requests for, say, utensils are forgotten, and the waitstaff spends a good bit of time apologizing for kitchen flubs. My favorite gaffe: A pizza topped with pear and Robiola ($13), one of several Ziskin created to take advantage of the restaurant’s pizza oven, arrived too blond (we’d asked for it to be well cooked). Back it went — and vanished. As we were finishing our main courses, the server appeared and explained that indeed it had gone back into the oven, but when it was done, “The cook dropped it on the floor. So we made you another one.” It came out just before dessert, sweet with a nicely chewy crust and drizzled honey — fairly appropriate for dessert, actually — and we took it home. My second-favorite flub: When we were ordering dessert, the waiter said, “Sorry, no crème brûlée — the kitchen ran out of gas.”

For all this, though, the new menu sometimes rises to near lyricism, or at least to freshly made, satisfying food. Red wine–braised meatballs ($7) may have been overtly jumping on a trend, but the garlicky all-beef globes were moist, tasting of the milk-soaked bread that extended them, and comforting. Chicken-liver bruschetta with a salad of shaved Brussels sprouts ($9) had only a few dull-tasting leaves, but featured generous slabs of grilled bread. They’re spread with a thin layer of sweet, crumbly liver so mild you don’t have to love liver to enjoy it. The dish was just plain good, and reminiscent of La Morra’s Tuscan leanings.

Bell & Evans chicken breast stuffed with garlicky spinach and served with sage polenta, $19. (Photo by Anthony Tieuli.)

The two fish entrées, sophisticated in their simplicity, would be welcome at any downtown restaurant. Grilled trout with Swiss chard and couscous ($21) was fresh, the meat sweet and moist, the skin crisp, and the light glazing of tarragon beurre blanc a lesson in saucing. The trout’s accompaniments, braised chard with tomato and garlic, and couscous with golden raisins and pine nuts, added texture and sweetness. It was a lovely, home-style dish. Pan-seared sole ($20) with tater-tot-like fried cauliflower nuggets came with a well-conceived salad of baby spinach, grilled slices of Meyer lemon, and shaved turnip. It’s a salad I’d copy at home, though one night the leaves were soft, warm, and wilted, and another night they were raw, cool, and oily. The cauliflower tots are virtually unidentifiable as cauliflower, which makes them widely appealing, but not when they’re served cold (as they were on one of my visits).

With the exception of an order of pleasantly oily Tuscan fries ($8), the fried foods were surprisingly ungreasy. Fried mac and cheese ($8) was an odd idea — though not much odder than fried risotto, a.k.a. arancini, if you think about it. Unfortunately, the pieces were heavy and bland, with a sauce that looked and tasted like Cheez Whiz. Calamari rings with cherry-pepper aioli ($12) were expertly fried, but strangely soft. And like the cauliflower tots, the breading and frying rendered the featured ingredient unidentifiable.

Grilled trout with braised chard and couscous, $21. (Photo by Anthony Tieuli.)

Uneven execution did in much of the rest of the menu. The spaghetti with perfectly cooked shrimp, chili, and prosciutto ($12 for a small portion, $20 for a large) was the best of a disappointing category of oil- and butter-slicked pastas. A grilled pork chop ($21) was the standout meat dish, then a huge double-cut T-bone tenderloin of medium-cooked, flavorful meat. (They’ve since changed the cut to a basic chop.) But the brick-size slab of shallot-and-chestnut bread pudding beside it was cold and tasted of nothing but sage, like a Thanksgiving stuffing someone forgot to finish seasoning. Brandt Beef flatiron steak ($24) arrived cool at two dinners, as did the colcannon potatoes — mashed with cream, butter, and cabbage — which were also underseasoned. “Shepphard’s pie [sic]” — a dish of braised beef chuck and lamb shoulder baked in a tough pie crust with mashed potatoes on top ($22) — is an idea that shouldn’t have left the kitchen.

One of the desserts shouldn’t have left the kitchen, either: apple biscuits with pears and raisins ($7). The three strange rectangles tasted underbaked and were presented over a brown mess of stewed fruit in thick syrup. But the crème brûlée ($7), on a night when the kitchen had gas, was just fine, and a sundae consisting of a big, gooey homemade brownie, vanilla ice cream, and ganache that hardened on the surface ($7) will appeal to all those kids — and their grandparents.

With its pretty views and relaxed vibe, 88 Wharf already appeals to plenty of people. But for a while, at least, it will benefit from a lot more visits from the new chef.

88 Wharf, 88 Wharf St., Milton, 857-598-4826, 88wharf.com.

Critic Corby Kummer — an editor at The Atlantic and author of The ­Pleasures of Slow Food — has been reviewing Greater Boston’s top restaurants in Boston, magazine since 1997.

(Photo by Ekaterina Smirnova.)

The Vibe: This Harvard Square restaurant pays homage to the space’s history-making prior occupant: the country’s first printing press. The menu is divided into sections such as “Advance Copy” (appetizers) and “First Edition” (soups and salads). Exposed-brick walls, a large bar, and burnished wooden booths give the place a warm, tavernlike feel.

The Food: Despite the old- timey printing and bank references, the food, curiously, is Cajun. Lobster hush puppies ($7, pictured) simply tasted like fried balls of sweet cornbread, while the Cajun striped bass ($22) came with an odd “citrus salsa” made from cubes of melon. The gumbo ($24), meanwhile, was bland, even with the big helping of shrimp, scallops, and andouille sausage.

The Verdict: First Printer is having an identity crisis — it wants to be an old-school tavern, but serves Bayou-inspired fare. It’s got a great backstory. The food just isn’t making headlines yet.

First Printer, 15 Dunster St., Cambridge, 617-497-0900, thefirstprinter.com.