Well sort of. Co-workers and my south shore buddies have mentioned to me about some random restaurant that was apparently haunted. They mentioned how if you look at the ceiling where the brick oven pizza is made that you can see footprints from a baby on the wall. My first thought....they could of been painted on. My second thought....who cares about that, how is the food??? haha, i know sometimes I can be too blunt. Thanks to my friend Kristin, she reminded me about the restaurant/bar, and we decided to check this place out Saturday night. It is called the Scarlet Oak Tavern, located in Hingham, and since their renovation has been thriving with stellar reviews and is the place to be for a great meal and drinks in the south shore.
Ghosts aside, I decided to check out the menu online, which luckily was available and easy to read. My girl Kristin is a meat & potatoes type of girl, so I was expecting a typical steakhouse sort of place, but boy was I way off! I was drooling after reading the menu...no really, I was. Forget the main courses, I wanted to order every single appetizer! What to choose??? Do I get the crab & cheddar dip? Or one of my fav's the beef carpaccio? Oooooo what about the mussels braised with beer & garlic???? I am a Libra - Libra's can't make these types of decisions! In the midst of my food panic attack, Kristen suggested sharing some oysters from the raw bar, and slowly my panic attack subsided. Ahhh...yummy, refreshing oysters to prepare my palette for tasting...sounds damn good to me!
Now as a side note...the Scarlet Oak Tavern offers a raw bar TOWER, which sounded pretty impressive, but be warned, it is only for seafood lovers. It has a sampling of oysters, shrimp cocktail, littleneck clams, and two types of seafood shooters. I plan to go back to check this baby out!
Ok back to me & my inability to decide on what to eat...which is rare. I was originally thinking I was just going to order a bunch of apps, but since everyone has raved about their yummy comfort-food style courses, I certainly didn't want to miss out. After scoping out the menu, I landed on the Braised Short Rib Bolognese. Goat cheese gnocchi, wild mushrooms and more cheese were integrated with the short rib...and it was...WOW. I have to say, I would of never put braised short rib with gnocchi, and the mushrooms didn't make sense either, but it was freaken amazing. The mushrooms were probably the best tasting mushrooms I have ever had. The gnocchi was cooked soooooooooooo perfectly...and just melted in your mouth. And the short rib...how can anyone not like short rib! Any meat that falls off the bone and you don't have to cut is a winner in my book. WOW. And the sauce really just pulled everything together. I was blown away...and pretty much licked my plate clean! Not too mention the oysters were cleaned to perfection and had that amazing salty brine taste. All of us at the table devoured our meals and washed it done with an Australian red wine that wasn't to heavy or bitter...just right :-)
I was completely satisfied, but then came the dessert menu. I hate when this happens, because I am not normally a sweet-craving person, but of course I always seem to find one dessert that sounds so intriguing...and then I buckle and end up ordering it. Grr. So indeed that happened, and I ordered the S'mores. I had envisioned an over sized s'more for some reason, but when the waitress came with it, it looked like alittle cake. There was a circular graham cracker crust and in the middle was the chocolate and marshmallow torched so that it was a little crisp on top and gooey on the inside. It tasted good, but I wasn't impressed with the execution of it. Personally, I feel like alcohol makes everything taste better (hence, my bourbon pumpkin pie...see below) so I would of loved to seen some Grand Marnier drizzled on top of the s'more, or maybe mixed in the chocolate sauce. Ah well, luckily I still had to kill the bottle of red which I had no problem doing!
While finishing our wine...we decided to check out the ceiling near the brick oven to see if we saw footprints. One of the waitresses was kind enough to show us exactly where to look, and sure enough 2 tiny white footprints were right on the wall. It was a cool feature, am I convinced that is was haunted? Not really...but the overall vibe in the restaurant was pretty chill and those footprints made it that much more fun & exciting to be sitting in a possible "haunted" restaurant. Overall, I highly recommend the Scarlet Oak Tavern. The menu is small, but literally has something for everyone. A generous wine list helps too :-) Just an FYI - make a reservation if possible, me & my company lucked out and got a table near the bar, but if we wanted a booth we would of had to wait an hour & a half!
Here's the website!
http://www.scarletoaktavern.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment