For some reason, I've never really had any interest in going to any Todd English restaurants before but when Lav mentioned that this place had really good pizza, I was willing to give his restaurant a try. While his restaurant in NYC, Olives, is in the swanky W Hotel, this one in Boston was a pretty low key, informal restaurant. The restaurant is in this incredibly cute and charming part of Boston and while I would never actually move to Boston, this neighborhood did kind of capture my heart that morning. I had just had a pretty filling breakfast, so I opted to go a bit lighter and get the spinach salad ($11). But of course my eyes started to linger and I saw that they had clam chowder ($9) on special. Now since I was in Boston, I felt like I had to get the clam chowder, even though I wanted a "light" lunch. Meanwhile, Lav and Eric split a pizza which was half Bianco and half Crispy Eggplant ($18.50).
My spinach salad came with heirloom tomatoes, avocado, feta cheese and a vinaigrette dressing. It was a good basic standard salad but I should have asked for the dressing on the side as it was a bit too heavy on the dressing. I'm pretty sure it was probably one of those salads that seemed healthy at first but if you read the calorie count you would pass out. But what really did me in was the soup. My one pet peeve about the soup was that it was served in an enormous bowl. I mean it almost took up the entire side of my table and when I put my spoon in the bowl I realized how shallow the actual bowl was. It was just kind of annoying to have a giant soup bowl and a giant salad plate in front of me as it made it pretty difficult to maneuver around the table. They would have been better off putting the bowl in a small deeper bowl to save space and it would have been presented better. I had been hoping that since I was in New England that I would be blown away by the chow-da. But it really wasn't that great. It was very heavy on the bacon and I didn't really get a lot of clam or potato and it was actually a bit on the thin side. It just didn't seem like what a good clam chowder should be: thick, chunky and full of big pieces of clam and potato. I almost prefer the Campbell's Chunky Soup version to this one. I didn't try the pizza in the restaurant but by the time we got to New Hampshire I was starving and warmed up a couple slices of the leftover pizza. The Bianco side consisted of fresh mozzarella, sweet onions, tomatoes, arugula, extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar and the crispy eggplant side had tomato sauce, sliced eggplant, mozzarella, whipped ricotta and basil. The pie and crust was of the thin square version and was still pretty nice and crunchy despite having lots of ingredients piled on top of it. I actually didn't have a specific preference for either of the pizzas as they were both pretty good. The ingredients were all very fresh and while it wasn't as good as the pizza at Roberta's, it totally hit the spot despite having been in our car for almost 3 hours. If I were to end up at Figs again, I would skip the soup, opt for the pizza to share and if I did order a salad, ask for the dressing on the side. Total bill: $15/pp with tax and tip.
Photo Credit: Yelp
No comments:
Post a Comment