FoodNerd!

I had a really tasty little morsel at Rendezvous in Cambridge last night. They call it a “little lasagne” and it’s a freeform stacking of pasta sheets, ricotta, comte and swiss chard, with a pungent, salty, dark green salsa verde and chopped almonds alongside.

Absolutely delicious late-summer vegetable treat, savory, filling and not too heavy.

The rest of the menu was pretty good too. Duh. Try the Summer Breeze if you like whiskey drinks or bitters. And the summer chowder is dreamy.

Remember that Vietnamese place down the street from my house? It is awesome, and I am very happy.

The pho is really good. Delicious broth, supersoft tendon, tender steak, fresh toppings. Even comes with the wee little Viet chilies, which is awesome even though I never put them in my pho.

The Vietnamese style fried rice is also excellent, with tender shrimp bits and lots of wok hay. They have some homemade chili oil and some chili garlic sauce that are very good on it. Ask for the condiment tray if they don’t bring it automatically.

The banh mi is good too, though the bread is a bit bland and dry — easily remedied with a drizzle of the green chili vinegar from the condiment tray. Our friends got a bowl of bun and a wonton noodle soup, both excellent.

And they deliver within a 5 mile radius. I can now have someone bring me pho ga on a cold winter night when I am sick. THAT, my friends, is quality of life.

Pho & Spice
457 Moody St
Waltham, MA
(781) 788-8899
http://www.yelp.com/biz/pho-and-spice-waltham
I will not link to their actual website at phoandspice.com because it plays music. SINFUL. But I will make a special exception in their case and continue to patronize them anyway, because did I mention? Pho within walking distance. Noms.

UPDATE: The Bun Bo Hue is really good too.

Yesterday I derived equal pleasure from eating an immoderate quantity of Fritos with lunch and from a 7-course tasting at No. 9 Park. A good, good day.

Ah, the pleasures of a Sunday breakfast in June: Plain well-done waffle at Josephs II in Waltham, with fresh strawberries on the side, plus a plate griddled ham. NOMS.

This place in NYC is a fairly ridiculous faux-Japanese/anime theme restaurant serving Asiany burgers and appetizers, with the usual Manhattan excesses and menu for skinny girls, with perhaps a minor whiff of David Chang about it for good measure.

It’s completely idiotic. But still I kind of want to go there anyway.

We were in Montreal for a dance weekend, and between the sleep deprivation and the language barrier, we were not going too far afield. Happily the dance venue was smack in the middle of what appeared to be Little Saigon, so we ate pho and banh mi the whole time. The banh mi were particularly good, on skinny crunchy baguettes with a schmear of pate and mayo on each, plus the grilled pork or cold cuts and daikon, carrots and wee hot peppers.

Then finally last night we had a bit of time so I asked one of the Montreal dancers where the really good poutine was to be had. He sent us to La Banquise, and he was not wrong. Yum.

Really delicious, crisp fries as a base, with good gravy and squeaky cheese curds on top, and then you can go nuts with variations. T got his with hamburger meat and sauteed onion, which was the best. It’s basically a burger and fries all smushed up together on the plate — can’t go wrong. I had smoked meat which was not as good as you’d hope, and tallasiandude got merguez sausage but what came wasn’t nothing but a hot dog as far as I could tell. So I guess stick with simple toppings and stay away from cured meats. Anyway, absolutely the best possible meal with a beer after two solid days of dancing. Open 24 hrs, too, doing a brisk business in cheesy gravy fries. Hell to the yes.

Or pretty darn close anyway. Ham Randy: thick cut smoked ham, cheddar cheese, fresh red tomato, lightly spicy jalapeno mayo, on grilled sourdough. DAYUM. Available at Penny Cluse Cafe in Burlington VT, where we are visiting pals.

Comes with delicious bread and butter pickle slices and some cilantro-cabbage slaw. We also got a side of excellent mac-and-cheese, and a broccoli-cheese-cherry pepper relish grilled sandwich, and a side of bucket-o-spuds (homefries with cheese, pico de gallo and sour cream). All excellent, but eclipsed by the glory of the Ham Randy.

Apparently I run 12 minute miles. That’s pretty freaking slow, but I am still proud as can be, considering I do THREE OF THEM AT A TIME. Go me.

Also this helps make up for the many dumplings and spare ribs and bao that went into the piehole at Hei La Moon this weekend. Very good dim sum, of about equivalent quality to China Pearl, but with two notable differences: 1) no black sesame jelly roll that I could find, and 2) the best damn turnip cake I have ever eaten, perfectly flavored and griddle fried fresh to order.

UPDATE: on a second visit, I scored some black sesame jelly roll from one of the first carts that came around at 11am — by the time we left an hour or so later it was all gone. So get ‘em early, y’all. They’ll keep on the table for you.

I really enjoy The Publick House in Brookline. It has awesome beer and very good french fries, and a congenial atmosphere. (I enjoy nerdy beer snobbery.) But it does seem there’s a spottiness to the quality or at least the execution.

The french fries are even better than last time, which would have been difficult, but now they are *crunchier*. I didn’t detect quite as much meaty flavor, which makes me wonder if they changed cooking fat. If so, I guess I am willing to trade crunch for porkiness. And the sauces, good lord, the sauces: truffle oil mixed into ketchup. garlic mayo. spicy mayo. mayo-mustard whatever it is. YUM.

But my arugula salad with duck cracklings really missed the mark. The cracklings tasted off, stale, as if the fat was old or they’d been sitting around. It made the otherwise acceptable baby arugula mostly unpalatable, and I would go further to say that the goat cheese didn’t do the duck flavor (even had it been at its best) any favors. Bummer.

The ribeye was delicious, with a bit of truffley butter and an unusual and surprisingly complementary diced salad of minted tomato and cucumber, but its shaved potato gratin wasn’t sufficiently cooked. Just because you cut a potato paper thin, y’all, doesn’t mean you get to skip out on cooking the damn thing. I dunked it into the truffley ketchup and ate it anyway, but it bummed out the tallasiandude.

All was forgiven, though, because the Rodenbach beer was so terrific. It’s a Flemish red ale, light in body and extremely easy to drink, especially on a hot day, with a strongly sour flavor, almost like a citrus drink but with more complexity and a bit of bubble and bitter. Absolutely delightful, and just the thing for me after a long couple of days at work getting to a release deadline. Hurray!

I mean, we always liked it. The steak tartare was tops and the cocktails were always well made, and you can’t beat the busy comfortable vintage atmosphere. But most things were drastically oversalted, and the cocktail attitude needed to be adjusted — when I read your cocktail menu, I’d at least like to know the general flavor and format of the drinks.

Notwithstanding, we’ve been going there a few times a year now for several years, and this last visit, we realized: all those problems have gone. There’s a new cocktail menu, still a little oblique but at least you know whether you’ll get gin or whisky or fruit or bitters. Nothing that arrived was oversalted, and the scallops in spicy roast corn was truly one of the best things I’ve ever eaten there, perfectly balanced, creamy, spicy, savory and light.

So yay — a place we liked a lot before has a lot more to like now.