Definitely a place for drinks and appetizers, but you will want to skip the entrees at Temazcal Tequila Cantina in Boston no matter how pretty they look. One cool mention? Your menu is on an iPad and includes directions on how to prepare the meals, as well ratings for the different alcohols. Um, awesome!

Put it this way, the best part of the meal was our chips and dips, and I would definitely go back for them. The chips were fresh and crispy and I wanted to eat up the savory pork and bean dip like a soup. Mmmmmm, pork and chips.

The lobster guacamole tasted like guacamole with lobster put it in, but we know next time to just get the cheaper plain guac. Our first waitress was incredibly friendly, the second one that we got just plain did not want to be working there, but luckily our original waitress came back so we were happy again.

What was so bad about the entrees? The ingredients and quality was great, but the flavor was severely lacking. I got the Antojitos Mexicano’s so that I could taste a bit of everything. It came with crab flautas, chicken tamales, shrimp culiacan and carnitas tacos. The crab flautas were decent, but nothing to write home about. Chicken tamales, again just OK, I prefer the tamales the ladies on the street corners of Spanish Harlem in New York City sell out of the shopping carts. Don’t you ever wonder where they hell they get those carts from? The shrimp culiacan were massive so I was happy about that, and I never thought I would ever say this, but the bacon was way to overpowering for the shrimp. Shocking, I know, but I had take the bacon off and eat it separately from the shrimp. The most disappointing part of the meal were the carnitas tacos. It looks like raw meat at first and while the tortillas were good, the meat itself was so mushy I couldn’t bring myself to take more than a couple of bites. Maybe carnitas tacos in NYC are different than in Boston, but I’m use to carnitas tacos being incredibly flavorful, with a tiny bit of fat and crispy outsides. This was not the case at Temazcal at all. Bummer.

Also, skip dessert. The tres leches cake was a big disappointment and tasted like it was sitting in the fridge for a while.

Again, just stick with drinks and apps, and enjoy the lovely water view.

6.5 out of 10

Temazcal Tequila Cantina

250 Northern Avenue

Boston, MA 02210

(617) 439-3502

-Joyce Huang

(Pho Pasteur in Boston)

Vietnamese pork chops. If not my favorite thing to order in a Vietnamese restaurant, then definitely one of my favorite things to get. I eat every single bite dipped in fish sauce.

-Joyce Huang

Todd English is without a doubt a powerhouse in the food industry. Good looking and talented, everyone who knows chefs or watches television knows his name. I’ve frequented some of his New York City locations for drinks and/or food, with positive results for décor and product. However, when it came to his Boston location, Fig, I’m sad to say that I was disappointed. It kills me to say that because I admire him so much.

Fig is a cozy and casual dining experience, people do complain about having to wait for a table, but luckily I managed to snag one without a wait during lunch time on a Saturday. When I say cozy, I really mean it was a tight squeeze, but I would prefer that they have more tables than less. I was really looking forward to this experience because not only am I a Todd English fan, but I heart pizza. Pizza is one of my favorite things to eat. And the menu at Fig looked amazing, with fun named pizzas like the Bronx Bomber or the Red Sox pies.

The waitress brought over bread and olive oil to start. Tasty and simple. But then our real food came.

I started with :

Boston bibb & watercress salad with toasted walnut dressing and maytag blue cheese. I have to say, that other than this salad being a tad bit overdressed, it was really tasty. I can’t really figure out how to use the word ‘umami’ without sounding like an ass or pretentious, but this salad immediately brought to mind ‘umami.’ The flavors were immensely satisfying and I really enjoyed the walnut dressing.

Pizza, half Oliver’s, which is a traditional margherita, and the other half was Spicy Chicken Sausage that also had herbed ricotta, balsamic onions and a light tomato sauce. Mr. Juice put it best, all the ingredients were fantastic, but the pizza just was not that good. I have a feeling that it was made wrong. The dough was rolled out unevenly so 3/4 was extremely thin (see picture) and the rest was actually they way I had assumed the entire pie should have been. Can you see how thin the Oliver slice is in the picture? It tasted like pizza that was made on a pizza cracker. I should have made a video for you to see, but I was actually able to pick up the slices and twack them on the pan and it was so hard that the pizza slice didn’t bend at all.

I’ll probably give Fig another try, but I think next time I’ll try one of their yummy sounding pasta dishes. I’m going to need a break from ordering their pizza till this experience wanes from my memory.

6.5 out of 10

Fig

42 Charles St

(between Chestnut St & Mount Vernon St)

Boston, MA 02114

-Joyce Huang

Osteria la Civetta is definitely a cute and cozy Italian restaurant, but then when I got my food, I was a bit wary. For a price of $19, I got a dish that made me wrinkle my nose at first glance.   The above picture is their Cotoletta Alla Bolognese which is a pan fried pork cutlet topped with proscuitto and Asiago, served with oven roasted potatoes. I don’t know if it was oil or butter or just lard, but you can actually see pools of it separating itself from the meal on my dish. Not appetizing. The pork tasted OK, but again visually very unappealing and overcooked, and it did not taste good enough to make up for that. Honestly, I could have probably done a better job at home and I’m not even freaking Italian. While the pork was overcooked, the potatoes were just plain uneven. Some were cooked through, and some were very undercooked. However, I was starving and portions were small (another bummer for $19) and I ate everything on my plate, even the raw potatoes. Actually I was still hungry after finishing my dish, and had my eye on the pasta with butter that the child attending our dinner was ignoring. However, apparently his father had the same idea and got to it first.

Bummer.

5 out of 10

Osteria la Civetta

133 Main Street

Falmouth,MA 02540

-Joyce Huang

Redbones is a great BBQ place to head to when you have a hankering for meat or beer. With a large menu, and great portion sizes, you will leave with a full belly and a doggie bag.

Their fried pickles / frickles and fried Jalapenos were addicting and satisfying. The bite size allows you to easily pop them into your mouth and not want to stop eating them.

I ended up getting St. Louis ribs and baby back ribs that came with beans and coleslaw. While those two sides weren’t much to write home about, the ribs were flavorful, came with your choice of sauce and extremely tender. I didn’t want to get my hands messy, and was able to eat them with a fork and butter knife. I had mine with a sweet sauce, but they also have hot ones and a vinegar one. Not the best ribs I have every had, but thought they were very good, and really enjoyed how tender they were.

Of course I had to have some mac and cheese. I HEART mac and cheese. It was creamy, cheesy and hard to stop eating.

The service was fantastic and everyone was so nice. They even gave us extra corn bread when we asked for our leftovers to be wrapped up. I will definitely be spending my money there again.

7 out of 10

Redbones

55 Chester Street
Somerville, MA 02144

-Joyce Huang

Even though the Summer Shack in Boston was quite the disappointment, I just wanted to share these pictures with you because visually, they do a great job at presentation. The highlight of the meal was my corn dog, the batter on it was wonderful. Would I ever go back to Summer Shack? Yes, but only to the one in Connecticut, which definitely provided a much better culinary experience that the one in Boston. What was so bad about the one in Boston? Everything just kind of fell flat all across the board, except for my corn dog. Not sure what happened in their kitchen that day.

-Joyce Huang

The Franklin Café is hugely popular in the Boston area. I’ve heard tons of hype about the food at this place, but I’m sad to say that the dishes I tasted were good, but they definitely fell short of my expectations from what people were saying about it. It’s tasty, but it really just is a neighborhood restaurant.  The service is great, and the staff is friendly. I’d go there to grab a beer with my friends and if we just wanted to relax, but just like a place like Casimir in New York City, it’s a neighborhood spot that people are familiar with, and in my opinion, probably why they like it so much. It’s not a place that made me excited about the food when I tasted it. Though, on the menu, it does sound quite fancy and unique. Do I need to go back? Nope. Will I probably go back to just chill? Mr. Juice will probably make me, so, yes.

Tuna tartare: The tuna was fresh and clean. Nothing exciting. I loved the idea of serving it with pita chips, but they were burned , as you can see from the picture, and therefore,  could not be eaten with the tuna since it would then overpower it.

Gnocchi (First picture above):  I can honestly say that I don’t remember much about this dish. It was a combination of sweet and salty, but very forgettable. And looking at the picture of it again now, there is a lot going on on that plate, you’d figure that I would have a clearer memory of all of those flavors.

Fried pea shoots: Again, this sounded incredibly interesting on the menu, and combine that with my love for pea shoots, I was hoping that this would be a winner. It wasn’t. The end result was oil pea shoot sprouts that had no crisp whatsoever, and seemed to be cooked unevenly. If you didn’t tell me that they were fried, I would have assumed that they were poorly sautéed in too much oil.

Corned beef and cabbage: You guys know how I can handle a heart stopping dish. Bone marrow, pork belly, bring it on. This classic dish however, was way too heavy. It just tasted as if everything was seeped and cooked in so much fat and oil, and there was nothing there to balance out the heaviness. It made me sad because I love corned beef and was really looking forward to this entrée. Bummer.

So I guess in the end, this place was just a lot of talk and hype, and not much execution. If you are looking for a tasty bite to eat in Boston, head to Toro instead.

6 out of 10

They have 3 locations, I went to the Shawmut Ave. one.

Franklin Café

278 Shawmut Avenue

Boston, MA 02118-2125

(617) 350-0010

-Joyce Huang

It’s so great finding a Chinese and Taiwanese restaurant that reminds me of my childhood, and I did just that when I walked into the Gourmet Dumpling House in Boston. We were seated right away on a busy Saturday morning, and the menu was great.  They had dishes with bitter melon, pickled mustard greens, flounder and so much more. My mouth was watering. Mr.Juice and I finally settled on:

Sauteed pea shoot sprouts with garlic: DELICIOUS! I think this vegetable is more in season now, but they were cooked perfectly, fresh and had a slight, natural sweetness to them. We attacked the plate.

Bitter melon with spare ribs: Bitter melon is weird to me because, yes, it’s extremely bitter, which is something that can make me cringe when I take a bite, but I find it oh-so-satisfying. The meat fell right off of the spare ribs and I was one happy camper. I wish that I asked them to throw some salted black beans into it, but that was my bad.

Soup dumplings: Not the best I had, and I wouldn’t recommend going here for them. They fell short of what I normally have in NYC and needed a bigger punch in terms of flavor.

Pork dish: Mr. Juice got some sort of pork dish, and I remember it being really good, but I can’t remember exactly which dish it was so didn’t want to list a random name here. But he had half at the restaurant, and finished the other half once he got home. So it’s safe to say that he was also a happy camper.

7 out of 10

Gourmet Dumpling House

52 Beach St

(between Harrison Ave & Tyler St)

Boston, MA 02111

-Joyce Huang

Cambridge is so freaking cute, even if I did feel old compared to everyone there. For drinks and snacks, Mr. Juice and I stopped by Russell House Tavern. We sat by the bar in the downstairs area and enjoyed our time there. They had a variety of their own fancy drinks to choose from, and I must say, a great sounding menu. It was so hard to not order one of everything on the menu. I mean they had everything from  steak tartare and deviled eggs, to thin crust pizza and a pork trio entrée. In the end, because we were still full from our lunch, we ended up just ordering the following:

Raw oysters: which were delicious.

The Butcher’s choice: house smoked and cured lamb belly, mushroom and fontina cheese thin crust pizza. Even though it has lamb belly on it,  I must say, it still felt light and well balanced because the crust was extremely thin. Do I think it was a great pizza. No. Was it a good pizza? Eh. I would say that it’s a between between OK and good. I definitely would want to try one of the other pizzas though because I want to see if I would just prefer other toppings, but I have a feeling that it’s their crust that I wasn’t really digging.

Brandt Farms Marrow Bone: Whenever I eat bone marrow, I feel like I’m really to have a heart attack. But it tastes so damn good that it’s hard for me to not order it. If you’ve never had bone marrow before, it pretty much just tastes like fat that’s been topped with salt. Each it alone with a spoon or mix and match it with the sides the restaurant might give to you. Russell House Tavern served it with toasted, buttered bread and a parsley and radish salad.  So good! But remember, bone marrow isn’t for the faint of heart.

The service was great too! We will definitely be going back.

7.5 out of 10

Russell House Tavern

14 JFK St, Boston 02138

-Joyce Huang

B&G Oysters in Boston is a sleek restaurant that has a clean and modern seafood menu. They have lobster rolls and fried clams, which I love, and they make them pretty well. It’s not a cheap restaurant though, it’s a definitely on the fancier and pricier side. The fried Ipswich clams platter was $26 and the French lobster roll was $27.  I would say that it’s worth the money, but only because it’s in Boston. If it were in NYC, I probably wouldn’t return because I could get better food for less money.  Boston has some good food, but so far, from what I have had, it’s not on par with NYC at all, simply because it’s not that big of a city, so there are less options than say there are in New York City. Would I go back? Yes, because it is one of the better restaurants that I’ve been to in Boston, and while I probably will order these platters again, I can’t say that I will be happy about paying those high prices.

7 out of 10

B&G Oysters

550 Tremont Street

Boston, MA 02116

-Joyce Huang