Festivus Gastronomicus
Review: Union Oyster House Is A Crappy Place To Eat
The Union Oyster House is bad. Jenny Lee was in town an so we all went out to dinner. Unfortunately, we decided to join Will’s roommate Gilles and go to the Union Oyster House based on his recommendation that it was a good place to eat. He was wrong. It was a bland, surly, rip-off.
41 Union St.
Boston, MA 02108
(617) 227-2750
(map)
I’m not going to spend this entire review complaining about how crappy my experience at the Oyster House was. Mind you, I will get a good deal of complaining in. Instead, I feel it’s important to discuss the lesson learned from the experience.
One of my first summers back home from college I needed a car to commute to work. I arrived home from school to find that my dad had bought a VW Rabbit from a student of his for $500. Now had he gone about this in the normal fashion; taken it for a test drive, had a mechanic look it over, etc., then all would have been fine. We wouldn’t have bought the car.
It turned left just fine, but right turns were a bit tricky. Also the accelerator got stuck in the down position- twice. Did I mention the coat hanger that served as the antenna? But we didn’t know about all these problems when the car showed up in the driveway because my dad bought the car sight unseen from a German girl who was leaving the country. He trusted her because she was German.
Unfortunately, she did not abide by some secret Teutonic code as assumed by my father. She was just another person fleeing the county who needed to get rid of her hoopty asap.
After driving the Totenwagen (deathmobile) I should have known better than to fall into the same trap as my father. I agreed to go to the Union Oyster House because of the recommendation of Will’s roommate Gilles, a Frenchman. I had heard of his appreciation for fine chocolates and assumed he was genetically predisposed to gastronomic refinement.
Wrongo. He repeatedly said the place was good and it was crap. Expensive crap. I’m very thankful that Jenny’s visit made it worthwhile, otherwise I would have really been pissed.
When Jen, Jenny, and I showed up were treated like shit by the hostesses who rudely informed us that we were early and would have to wait. No shit. If my friends tell me the reservation is for 8:30 and it’s really for 9 o’ clock, I know I have to wait. Just point me to the bar and take another $5 from me for a beer. There is no need to be all bitchy about it and act like we are an inconvenience to you when it’s us who have to do the waiting.
Then we sat at the bar. Entrees at this place go for $25+ so you figure you can ask for a decent aperitif and they’ll have it. No, nothing. So I get a beer. They don’t even serve us at the table in the bar. Jen has to go up and get the drinks. Then, it takes forever for me to get someone’s attention to get some drink napkins after my drink has soaked the entire tabletop in front of me. It’s clear the service is crap and we haven’t even been seated.
After everyone shows up we navigate through the weird hallways and stairways and dining rooms to get to the top rear dining room of the place. It’s decorated with lots of old paintings and expensive (read: old) looking wood.
I feel a little weird that there are several women in our group because, after looking around the room, I don’t see a single other woman in the place. Just a bunch of business jerks looking ridiculous with napkins tied around their necks.
We go to order and I go for the Lobster Newberg. I’ve never had Lobster Newberg and I wanted to give it a try at a nice place like this because, even though the service is crappy, I still believe the place is going to have good food based on Gilles word. Besides, what’s $3 or $4 more when you are already paying out your ass for a meal.
We finish our orders and Jen politely asks the waitress if she will split the bill in 2. Since we have multiple people from other countries with us dealing with exchange rates etc., I feel this is a good idea and will ease the process of paying in the end. The waitress agrees with an expression on her face that normally accompanies finding cat pee in one’s shoes.
So the Euros order some Oysters from our surly waitress to start things off. Again, we are made sorry for the inconvenience we are imposing on them with our presence.
The oysters are really quite good: small, but very fresh. We’re off to a good start. However, you don’t really have to have a great chef to have great oysters, just a good fish monger.
We also ordered Basque Style Mussels. The Larousse Gastronomique defines a la Basquaise as “a French term for recipes using tomatoes, sweet peppers, garlic and often Bayonne ham associated with the French Basque country.”
This is not what we got.
At the Union Oyster House, Basque Style is “steamed with Garlic and White Wine” which sounds suspiciously like a la Mariniere, “A method for cooking shellfish or other seafood, especially mussels, by cooking them in white wine.”
No Basquaise accompaniments were to be found. Only a small solo cup, that’s right a fancy solo cup, of horseradish. Solo cup: now that’s class.
Now you can fool a lot of people who don’t know food, and most people don’t know what they are eating most of the time. The problem is that when you serve a group made up largely of Frenchmen and Spaniards, they know what Basque Style really means. There was already mumbling around the table about why they are serving up mussels cooked the most simple way possible and dressing it up by calling it something it’s not. At this point I’m offended on multiple levels.
My Newberg comes and it’s really not what I expected. I expected fresh soft lobster, not overcooked rubbery lobster. The Newberg sauce was okay, a little too heavy for my taste, but that’s the recipe. The pastry part was already mushy by the time it got to the table and the rice pilaf was an insult. For $29 I didn’t exactly get a “generous portion” of lobster as they put it and rice pilaf is about the cheapest thing in the world you can serve at a restaurant. It was bland and tasted like it had been sitting in a warmer/steamer for a while.
It was nice seeing our waitress when she came to serve our entrees, because that was the last we saw of her for almost an hour. She never asked us if our meals were okay or if we needed anything. She never came back to refill our waters or get us more drinks. As I began to fume, Jen reminded me that the place was pretty full and maybe they were understaffed.
Our waitress visited one of the tables behind us four times before Jen got up to go ask if someone would come to our table and get some more water, etc. Clearly they were not understaffed. Everyone at the waitresses station was really friendly and said someone would be over shortly. 20 minutes passed. I finally had to personally invite our waitress to come participate in our dining experience and play the part of the person paid by us to periodically make sure no one at the table was dead. I think she only consented because other diners were listening.
The next evening Amy and Aaron were saying that most of my reviews end up being for places I like and that they liked reading reviews on the Festivus G for places I didn’t like. Well here ya go. Most of the time I go out to places I know are going to be good and I don’t like to spend my money on meals that won’t live up to my expectations.
The Union Oyster house is a fine place to eat if your tongue is completely scarred from massive burns and you’ve lost your sense of smell. You won’t even mind the abominable service if the same accident rendered you blind and deaf. Furthermore, if your company pays for it all in the end, as seemed to be the case with all the business jerks, then there’s no way I could recommend otherwise. However, as apparently everyone else in Boston knows, it’s a craphole for the rest of us. There are 10 better places to eat that I know of that are less than a 5 minute walk from the Union Oyster House.
The summer I drove the Totenwagen was one of the best of my life (and I’ve had some good summers), despite the constant fear my gas pedal would get stuck again or that the smoke and steam that came from the hood was actually a serious problem. The fun I had with my friends completely distracted me from the hooptiness of my ride. Likewise, the company at the Union Oyster House made up for the bad food, bad service, and new one I was ripped when the bill came. However, as with the Totenwagen, I will not be fooled again.
December 1st, 2006 at 2:10 pm
when i ordered the oysters the waitress harassed me that it comes with like 10 oysters and did the ppl on the other bill want oysters blah blah blah. i was like, just bring me the oysters. then when she came with my order, she said who got the scallops. it didn’t occur to me it was mine in the first 2 seconds, so she literally huffed and put the plate down behind her. never mind that it is part of her job to remember who got what.
good times, good times.
December 8th, 2006 at 4:48 pm
But did you happen to notice the “Boston Stone” just outside of the restaurant? Seriously, its the only reason to be on that St.
December 12th, 2006 at 7:17 pm
yeah, would not say service was strong point. i liked my cornbread though and was happy to have new england clam chowder in new england. it was also amusing to see laurent get all huffy and puffy - it’s been awhile since i was privvy to this kind of performance!