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| Market cart |
M.C. Spiedo (pronounced Spee-aido) is the newest venture by Mark Gaier and Clark Frasier. Mark and Clark are James Beard Best Chefs of the Northeast 2010 and the duo behind Arrows and MC Perkins Cove in Ogunquit, Maine. Also, I dare you to try saying “Mark and Clark” without smiling.
The inspiration behind the menu is the chefs love of the Italian Renaissance, especially the old world flavors of Florence, Bologna, and Venice. The restaurant is named for the style of spit-roasting or rotisserie cooking that was popular at that time. This apparently translates to “no sauce”.
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| Beautiful burrata |
One of the other “concepts” of the restaurant is the “market cart”, which they bring table-side with a variety of items from their antipasti menu. This way you can have a little snack before you order. We snagged the deviled eggs, burrata, and prosciutto from the cart. But since we were a table of seven, we wanted two orders of everything and then had to wait for them to bring over the second order. We also decided to try the sparkling rose that was on the cart, but we wanted a bottle. So the cart concept didn’t work so well for us. And yes, the server did use the word “concept” when explaining all of this to us.
We were very intrigued by the meat pie, described as:
Grand Pie
Pies such of these were served at the royal courts of central Italy and built to inspire and display culinary talent. Our pie is from original recipes of the time, and with its mixture of spices, sweet and savory flavors, it exemplifies the grand creations of this era.
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| Meat pie |
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| Tagliatelle with guinea hen |
We were going to order one pie for the table to share as an appetizer. Our server convinced us to order two (plus two additional Leonardo’s notebook salads) since the portion was “only” half a pie and each person would only get a couple of bites if we only ordered one. I guess she didn’t realize that we were also planning to order entrees and a few bites was all we really wanted. Also, “half a pie” is actually quite large. So one order would have been more than sufficient and I would not have missed the salad. Julie and I both wanted salt and pepper for the salad, which were nowhere to be found on the table and we felt bad asking. The meat pie was an interesting dish, with layers of meat and tortellini. As someone said, “I’ve never had tortellini in a crust before”. There was little sauce to be found, and the spices made it slightly sweet, which turned out to be a recurrent theme.
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| Schiacciatta pizza |
Since we were up-sold on the meat pie, I liked that the pasta dishes had two size options. I also love to see homemade pasta on the menu! I ordered the half portion of M.C. tagliatelle with guinea hen, oranges, cipollini onion, almonds, and lacinato kale. I think it was too sweet and had a little too much going on. It was a telling sign when I didn’t feel like eating my leftovers the next day, because I heart leftovers! Two people ordered the spit roasted suckling pig with house sausage, shelling bean macaroni, and a farm egg which I heard needed more pig and more sauce. The tagliatelle Bolognese was reported to be perfect though. The lasagna was also sweet, but “delicious” and “really really good”…it might have been the winner (a toss-up between the lasagna and the meat pie).
For the non-pasta people, Leonardo’s veal burger (with Fontina cheese, prosciutto, and golden raisin mostarda) was dry and not memorable, though the French fries were delicious. The Schiacciatta pizza had a greasy crust, but otherwise Claire felt like she was in 18th century Italy. The walnut paste really looked like sausage.
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| Chocolate hazelnut torte |
We also ordered the oven baked crepes with gorgonzola dolce stuffing and arugula (under the small plates section of the menu) to share, which I really liked. The other sides were ordered were a bit underwhelming. The polenta fries were yummy and came with housemade ketchup, though the jury was out on the housemade ketchup…I didn’t really like it but some people enjoyed it. The brick oven Brussels sprouts “look like they’ve been beaten to death”.
For dessert (where I like my sweets), we tried the chocolate hazelnut torte and the orange granita with anise seed cookies.
Overall, except for the company, everything was a little too sweet. Sweet pick Mark!
The damage
$70 each
The rundown
M.S. Spiedo
606 Congress Street, Boston
@MCSpiedo
Kara Cooks and Eats 