So it was restaurant week in Boston where everything is $33 for a 3-course meal. Not exactly eating cheap, but veritable bargain basement prices for the goodness of the Metropolis Café. Thank jebus for the restaurant week!

Metropolis Café

584 Tremont St
Boston, MA 02118
(617) 247-2931
(map)

Located in the heart of Boston’s South End, the Metropolis Cafe is a very cool place to go. It’s such a cool place to go, you may not even get to eat there once you’ve gone. The dining room is pretty small and can get very, ahem, cozy when the tables and bar is full.

Jen and I had to wait an hour and a half when we went there for our engagement dinner- with reservations! I will say, however, that we were given free prosecco while we waited and we had no problems with them getting us ‘primed’ before dinner.

Before you scroll down, take a minute. Cool down a bit. I know, you’re in a good mood reading some new entries on the old Festy G Funk. But get serious for a moment. This isn’t just about good times- it’s about damn good eats.

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Proceed

What you see below is chestnut soup with truffle oil and pancetta. It was rich, creamy, had both truffle oil and bacon, and was a very interesting flavor what with the chestnut base. It’s the kind of thing you assume they’d never give the philistines at restaurant week.

There are a great many ways to describe this soup that could evoke it’s true greatness, but it gives me most pleasure only to describe the fact that I was able to taste it and you were not. This is a soup not only meant for tasting, but also meant for bragging.

Unfortunately, they did not serve up the trough of chestnut soup we wish they had which left us palpitating waiting for our next course. Jen had the lobster gnocchi and I had a steak with a deep dark demi-glace and pommes cocottes.

Short of hiding a $100 bill under the gnocchi, the lobster gnocchi was about as perfect as it could get. The sauce really accentuated the lobster’s flavor and the gnocchi was cooked perfectly. Even Jen who normally doesn’t like gnocchi because of it’s texture, loved the gnocchi.

The steak was obscenly good. And that’s not a description I’m just throwing around either. Throughout the evening you could hear people from across the room yelling, “Holy shit that’s a good steak!” and “Jesus H. Christ that’s one fucking tender cut of beef!” I, being much more refined, was able to mitigate my natural instincts and merely gestured my satisfaction to passersby through the window.

Personally, I thought the best part of dinner was the potatoes with the demi-glace. The demi-glace was almost like syrup with a berry flavor in it and the texture of the potatoes was slightly crispy outside with a soft center. Biting down on a fork full was like stepping on packing bubbles if the packing bubbles were full of demi-glace and slightly beefy and on your tongue. Perfect.

We both stuck close to home with desert and Jen selected the chocolate pudding to round out the meal. When it arrived it was clear that it was much more than just pudding. It was delicious pudding and molten fudge on top of a brownie, topped with whipped cream and mixed berries. It was, in her words, her “favorite thing ever.”

I went with the trifle for desert and was actually a bit disappointed. Now I don’t blame the fine cooks at Metropolis Cafe however. You must realize that my mother may as well be the queen of trifles and trumping her trifle is no easy task. The bar was set high, both by my exceedingly high trifle standards and by the preceding courses. The trifle failed to achieve greatness.

The Metropolis Cafe is one of our favorite spots in Boston- hands down. Jen and I even chose to go there the night of our engagement. There probably isn’t much of a better endorsement than that. I can’t remember the details of what we had that night so many months later because of the shock of nuptial bliss and because of the aforementioned free prosecco. It was another delicious meal though, I assure you.

• Ambiance: 8
• Service: 8
• Plating: 9
• Taste: 9
• Value: 8
• Festivus Gastronomicus Rating: Fantasticus

This entry was posted on Friday, May 16th, 2008 at 12:37 am and is filed under Reviews, $$$. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.