There is still no opening date in sight for French chef Guy Martin’s hotly anticipated Sensing restaurant.

It’s been two years since the development team behind the $300 million Battery Wharf/Regent Hotel project announced that they had lured Martin to open his first American restaurant in their luxury digs.

In March, Martin did a quick PR tour through the city, promising a late spring launch. But in June, when we wrote about the project’s challenges in the face of the tanking real estate market, Sensing hadn’t yet opened.

Then, in mid-June, Regent Hotels & Resorts announced that they were pulling out of the nearly-completed project. So until a new hotel operator inks a deal, Sensing is stalled. (more…)

Come summer, there’s only one thing I look forward to more than sunning my vitamin D-deprived skin on a Cape Cod beach, and that’s lobster. Oh, and clams, and corn, and chowder, and watermelon… In other words, all the fixin’s of a down-home clambake. So I was more than a little excited to head down to Dennis this weekend for a friend’s 30th birthday fete, where just such a seafood feast awaited.

Of course, the Cape and islands play host to dozens of clambakes every year; the ones at Chatham Bars Inn and Ocean Edge Resort in Brewster are annual traditions. Many are big productions, where a staff goes through all the rituals of digging a pit, laying the coals, layering all the uncooked edibles with seaweed, and allowing the whole mess to steam on the beach. For better or worse—and I’m thinking way, way better—we did things the easy (lazy?) way, and ordered in. (more…)

As a gourmand, foodie, good food-advocate, whatever, I’ve lately been trying to eat as much locally grown food as possible. (It’s especially possible this time of year, as it’s the height of summer and Boston-area farmers’ markets are busting at the seams with fresh greens, ripe berries, and amazingly fragrant herbs.)

But every now and then, a hankering for things sourced from far, far away—San Marzano tomatoes, Gruyere cheese, Kona coffee—tests my limits (and usually succeeds). This week, thanks to a recent Bahamas getaway, I’m craving Caribbean.

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About a month ago I attended a very posh prosecco tasting at the Back Bay restaurant Azure. Included in the small, lunchtime gathering were about half a dozen local wine writers and food editors, who were greeted in the exquisitely appointed private dining room with a chilled flute of Mionetto Sergio Spumante to tide us over until the arrival of our fashionably late host: The winemaker himself, Sergio Mionetto.

A little before noon, Sergio finally breezed in, his charming wife and diligent translator (Sergio studied winemaking, not English, apparently) in tow behind him. For the next three hours, we sampled prosecco after prosecco, each paired with a plate of food from the kitchen, as Sergio (via translator) waxed poetic about his vision for each sparkling star.

Yes, food journalism can be a tedious chore. It was in the middle of the very first course that I became distracted from Sergio’s fascinating tutelage. The salad in front of me, though otherwise well-executed, was underseasoned. (more…)

As if the South End doesn’t already overwhelm diners with tough choices (Chocolee or Aroa? Stella or Rocca? Flour or the Buttery?), Thursday night saw the official opening of the neighborhood’s second trendy tapas spot, Estragon.

And, since the Boston staff has more than a few ardent fans of chef Ken Oringer’s Toro—some of whom can be found there several nights a week—a handful of curious editors were on hand to try out the competition. (more…)

As a food journalist in a smallish city, I’m frequently recognized around town by a chef, a manager, or (especially) a bartender. Not primarily a restaurant critic, I don’t take pains to preserve my anonymity, though I do try to maintain a low profile—a better strategy for taking in the genuine feel of a place.

Sure, there’s a handful of local eateries where I’m all but guaranteed a free scooby from the kitchen, or a heavy pour of the pinot gris. But beyond a few egregious cases, it’s like being a regular old regular: the same “special” status I’d enjoy as a heavy-tipping amateur gourmand in any other profession.

Lately, though, the VIP game seems to have taken a particularly ugly turn. (Naturally, it’s not usually when I’m the one on the receiving end of such strokes….). Several weeks ago, I was dining at the bar in a posh boîte in the South End. Er, well, trying to dine at the bar, I should say. Not a staffer recognized me as a journalist, so I got a taste of VIP treatment from an onlooker’s perspective.

Talk about obnoxious! (more…)

Don’t get me wrong: I’m a food snob at heart. Nothing whets my appetite more than the prospect of taking a delicately crafted plateful of precious farm-fresh, heirloom, artisanal morsels and scarfing it down in seconds. If the menu includes the first and last name of the farmer/forager/clamdigger who personally wrested said ingredient, hours earlier, out of the soil/forest/swamp, so much the better. To my mind, O Ya and Clio are regular hangouts, not once-a-year splurges—a dangerous habit on a food writer’s salary.

What with all the rarefied feeding frenzies at the city’s most exquisite botes, who has time to give casual-dining chains the time of day? My budget-conscious grub crawls tend to involve ethnic hole-in-the-walls, not Cheesecake Factory and Applebee’s. Life’s too short to suffer generic food that’s been whitewashed for the masses. Right?

Well, right-ish. Over the years, I’ve had plenty of opportunities to stray from the straight-and-narrow of the, um, organic skate-and-marrow. Yes, most of the food served at national chains is pretty abysmal (I’m not talking local chains like Legal Sea Foods or Boloco…). But there actually are a few rare, hidden gems amid the chipotle-southwestern grilled chicken and mandarin-orange fajita nonsense; you just have to pick and choose.

So…with my foodie credentials precariously on the line, I will attempt to go where no Chowder posting has gone before. Here are a few chain dishes worth slumming for: (more…)

In my cell phone address book, there are four buttons I push to get food (how do you say, behavioral conditioning?). They are: “Thai,” “Pizza,” “Indian,” and “Wndrsp.” Since I live in JP, that translates as Ban Chiang House, Same Old Place, Bukhara, and Wonderspice. With those four buttons, I’ve been able to avoid using my kitchen appliances for anything but reheating leftovers and hiding dirty dishes for months. Still, I’m always on the lookout for Button No. 5.

Could it be the Real Deal, the West Roxbury–based sandwich shop that recently made its debut on Centre Street? I’ve been there twice now, and I still don’t know—mainly because I’ve left both times feeling flattened by a Mack truck. (more…)

Though the city’s not lacking in the overpriced-beef department, it’s always sad to see a restaurant go. As the Globe unceremoniously reported on Friday, chef Pino Maffeo’s steak-centric Boston Public (formerly Boston Public Meat, formerly Restaurant L), went all Toscanini’s on us, abruptly closing its doors and citing financial difficulties.

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Especially in Boston, where chefs and restaurateurs tend to tiptoe down the safe route wherever possible, it’s refreshing to see the occasional spark of daring.

Lounging al fresco on the fabulous square-front patio at Eastern Standard one recent evening, I decided (quite uncharacteristically) to pass on bar manager Jackson Cannon’s matchless cocktail list in favor of a glass of wine. The by-the-glass list featured the usual five or six white options, five or six reds, a sparkling wine or two. Then…eight rosés. Eight rosés? That’s, like, at least seven more than most restaurants offer on the entire menu, let alone by the glass.

Even self-styled Southern French restaurants, like La Voile and the Intercontinental’s Miel, which should be leading the rosé revolution (the world’s best rosés come from Provence and the Côte d’Azur, just down the Riviera from Cannes), muster only one or two choices. (more…)