Yelp Boston

29/12/2016

No Name restaurant was great in the 1970's and slowly went downhill. They are known for their fish chowder.  My last meal there, I ordered fried clams, a no-brainer.  Wrong!  The clams were soggy and chewy so I sent them back. The manager came out, we spoke, and he
replaced the fried clams. The second batch was cooked better but the clams were still chewy with not much taste. CANNED CLAMS.  My mother felt badly because she used to work a 5 minute walk away on Summer Street and frequented No Name.  None of our family ever went back.  It's a shame. I am not a big fan of Legal Seafood…Read more No Name restaurant was great in the 1970's and slowly went downhill. They are known for their fish chowder.  My last meal there, I ordered fried clams, a no-brainer.  Wrong!  The clams were soggy and chewy so I sent them back. The manager came out, we spoke, and he
replaced the fried clams. The second batch was cooked better but the clams were still chewy with not much taste. CANNED CLAMS.  My mother felt badly because she used to work a 5 minute walk away on Summer Street and frequented No Name.  None of our family ever went back.  It's a shame. I am not a big fan of Legal Seafood either, having eaten there maybe a dozen times over the years with my family and various friends. Pray tell, where do I like to eat seafood in Boston?  I go to the North Shore, to Ipswich or Essex or Gloucester. On the South Shore I go to the Hingham Lobster Pound or Burke's in North Quincy.  Most people have never had fresh clams, they just don't know it.  Good clams are sweet.  I prefer the smaller ones, as they are tastier than the larger clams.  I find clam strips have very little flavor; the bellies give clams their special taste. You will most likely find this review funny. Enjoy!

PS When I was a kid, bluefish was considered inedible and my retired neighbor who used to go fishing off Nantucket and Martha"s Vineyard gave the bluefish to neighbors with cats. We
human ate the striped bass. Also, we used to throw back the skate we caught surfcasting. Times change with marketing!

28/12/2016

I absolutely love the food! they provide one of the best customer service and always pass by to ask if everything is fine. i've had the mango rice with crispy chicken and beef pad thai and they were amazing!

28/12/2016

Walking into RUKA Restobar feels a bit like being transported to an alternative, trendier future, and the future is chic. You can tell that the team behind Yvonnes and Lolitas took everything they learned about delivering a gastronomical experience and applied it to their latest venture. Presentation is everything at RUKA, because dining should be a visual treat too. From the largely wood interior, the splashes of color around the restaurant, the menus,  to the plating and presentation of dishes and cocktails, the attention paid to the details make RUKA an experience. Granted,…Read more Walking into RUKA Restobar feels a bit like being transported to an alternative, trendier future, and the future is chic. You can tell that the team behind Yvonnes and Lolitas took everything they learned about delivering a gastronomical experience and applied it to their latest venture. Presentation is everything at RUKA, because dining should be a visual treat too. From the largely wood interior, the splashes of color around the restaurant, the menus,  to the plating and presentation of dishes and cocktails, the attention paid to the details make RUKA an experience. Granted, walking in from the Godfrey hotel, through a door with no signage aided this feeling of transportation.

I came in at 6pm to catch up with a friend, and also check out the newest restaurant to hit the neighborhood. It being the Tuesday after the Christmas holiday, it wasn't that busy, and I was able to get a seat at the bar easily. Waiting a bit for my friend to arrive, I ordered the delicious, delicious Fight Song from their "cockteles" menu, and sat back and appreciated the ambiance. Sure enough, small groups and couples filled up the bar and the restaurant. Once my friend arrived, the waiter gave us a quick rundown of the menu. As a "small plates" place, it was important to know how many plates on average a person ordered. He told us most people got 2-4 plates a person. Everything is tapas, but the "monumentals" are their large format dishes. We weren't particularly hungry, so we tried to order tapas that sounded interesting. We were looking for peruvian dishes and ended up ordering 5 dishes. We sat back to enjoy our drinks and conversation but what seemed like only 15-20 minutes later, our food arrived in rapid succession.

For the most part, while the food did taste good, none of what I ordered made me insta-crave another bite. The Salmon Ceviche Makimono, Salmon Tacos and Hamachi Tiradito arrived first. Tiradito is a peruvian sashimi dish served over a spicy sauce. While interesting, I didn't find it spicy or particularly flavorful. The makimono is basically just salmon ceviche wrapped on a bet of cucumber, instead of a bed of nori and rice. The cucumber gives it more of a crunch, but the water content dilutes the flavors of the fish I think. Of the three, I enjoyed the Salmon tacos the most.  

Next up was the Octopus Lomo Saltado and the sweet potato dumplings. The octopus dish had plenty of cuts of cooked octopus, with the string fries adding another textural component. Its prepared well, and the octopus is tasty.  As for the sweet potato dumplings, when they are served, the waiter will pour a hot barley/dashi broth when it arrives, and the soup is delicious. The broth isn't steaming hot though. Throughout the meal, service has been impeccable.

For all its attention to detail and ambiance, you certainly do pay for it at the end. 5 dishes and a drink ended up with a total of $100, not including tip. At the end of the meal we were satisfied, but not full. If we had been starving, I'm sure the cost would have been significant.  While I did find the food that we ordered to be only good, the drinks, service, and ambiance here are great. Other dishes on the menu look amazing and I need to work my way through that beautiful cockteles book. You can buy 1 for $20 and the proceeds go to charity!