April RC – Bostonia Public House

“World famous” pickle pot

April was my month to pick our restaurant and I was Twitter-stalking two restaurants that were supposed to open in “early April”: Bostonia Public House and Bastille Kitchen. I was a little nervous that neither would open in time for the April 23rd date that I had chosen for RC, but thankfully Bostonia Public House opened its doors on April 17th. And then I was nervous about first week jitters. 

Yummy polenta fries

I arrived early and was able to snag one lone seat at the full bar. Maybe it was because the seat was on the corner, but I waited at least 10 minutes before I even made eye contact with a bartender. Since I was about an hour early, I did not bother to check in with the host about my 7 PM reservation – and little did I know that my fellow RC’ers also arrived early, checked in, and were seated. I drank wine, but I heard that the $14 cocktail was watered down.

Our server was very eager (perhaps over-eager) and perhaps tried to be a little too chummy with us. After asking him a few questions about the menu, our takeaway was that he claimed that everything on the menu was “world famous”, for example, the world famous pickle pot and the BPH burger (it’s not called a hamburger or a cheeseburger!). We found it hard to believe that *anything* was world famous (yet), since they’d only been open for a week.

(Undercooked) pork and (overcooked) beans

We started out with that world famous pickle pot, as well as Parmesan polenta fries, tater tot poutine, salt and pepper fries, warm lump crab dip with crispy potato chips, and the Berbere spiced pork ribs with almond quinoa. The pickle pot was more like an “onion pot” and we shared that constructive feedback to our server. He said that other people had said the same thing and he was going to take it off our check. The polenta fries were super yummy – light, truffle-y, airy and perfect. I also enjoyed the house-made crispy potato chips and the fries…we were there just two days after the marathon so I may have been in carb re-loading mode. The ribs would have been better if they had more seasoning (ie, more flavor), but the almond quinoa was so good that it would be great as a side on its own. 

Crab crusted cod

For the entrees, we tried the Berkshire pork loin (with “Bostonia” baked beans, apple fennel slaw, sherry reduction), Georges Bank scallops (with artichoke, merguez sausage, white beans, pequillo pepper, harissa oil), and the native MA crab crusted cod (with asparagus, leek & potato succotash). It’s not often we have multiple people order the same thing. I went with the cod because our server said it was their signature dish (I think he refrained from calling it “world famous”). I really liked it and would consider it the winner, but it was difficult to identify the crab in the “crab crusted” dish. The pork was too rare for Julie, even though she requested it to be not pink. Luckily it was a huge portion so she was able to eat around the edges of the pork slices. The consensus on the beans was that they were too smokey and overcooked. The scallops were good, though there were a lot of white beans…and they were the largest white beans I think I’ve ever seen.

Deconstructed Boston cream pie

Sweet potato doughnuts

For dessert we opted for the “Bostonia cream pie” (vanilla custard, chocolate ganache, almond sponge cake crumble) and the Berkshire bourbon glazed sweet potato doughnuts. It seemed out of season for the apple crisp and the milk and cookies didn’t sound that exciting. The quotes are very appropriate for the “Bostonia cream pie” as I think it is trying to be a deconstructed version of the traditional dessert, but I just thought it was odd. The doughnuts looked heavenly, until someone cut into one and said, “Wait, is this filling or is this raw dough?” After everyone at the table cut into one, and double-checking the menu description, we determined that it was indeed raw dough. More constructive feedback for the server and chef: your doughnut is raw. The server insisted we wait while they cooked up another batch and it was worth the wait…the doughnuts were delicious, especially the glaze. We may have tried to eat the glaze off the raw doughnuts while we waited for the second batch to cook.

There is a lot that’s good, and there is a lot that has potential. They do carbs and cod well but everything with crab was underrated, and definitely not “world famous”. There was also a theme of undercooked (pork, doughnuts) and overcooked (beans), but hopefully they will be able to work out those new restaurant kinks.

Table faves
Parmesan polenta fries
Almond quinoa (that was served with the pork ribs)
Native MA crab crusted cod
Berkshire bourbon glazed sweet potato doughnuts (the cooked ones)

The damage
$77 each (even with the comp’d pickle pot and sweet potato doughnuts)

The rundown
Bostonia Public House
131 State Street, Boston
@BostoniaPublic