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Friday, February 25, 2011

So-So Dinner, Cheese & Dog Cookies

I really hate to write my opinion about a restaurant if it's not a good one...And before I start off with anything bad I want to say I used to live across from The Franklin Southie and dined there many times and always had excellent meals.  But Laura wanted to go to the original Franklin Cafe for her long delayed birthday dinner and I figured it would pretty much be the same thing, but it was not.  Franklin Cafe is on an interesting little street in the South End with fun things like cheese shops (more later), A Dog Bakery a human bakery, coppa and so on.  When I found out south end formaggio was near the restaurant I was super excited.  I love love love cheese.  We are really early diners so we went into Formaggio first (right next door) and stared at an overwhelming display of cheese for a long time before we both decided on something.  I also got some proscuitto di parma. 

We made our way next door and were the first diners there.  But there was a camera crew there as well taping (what I assume was the owner) eating.  The camera crew was there all night taping food.  We were trying to scope it out the entire time.  We started with a glass of wine, both very good and I asked if they had any specials.  They said "not yet" which actually really annoyed me.  Those sort of things should be decided right when a chef comes into work and does their prepping  I really had high hopes for a tuna special they run a lot.  The menu is kind of a mix of things.  I started with seafood bisque soup and Laura a bibb salad.  Okay so my soup, well it tasted really good, but the consistency it was strange and that was because it was made from pureed seafood.  I don't think I've ever dreamed of pureeing seafood unless I wanted to feed a baby seafood.   It would have been much better if the scallops and fish were whole in the broth, but I asked what it was and ordered it anyway so it's my fault.  The flavor was good though.  Laura was not impressed with her salad.  We both got pasta for entrees.  I got gnocchi with a Gorgonzola sauce and prunes.  It was delicious, the gnocchi was a little tougher than I would normally think it should be but it was great.  The only thing, I guess I ordered an appetizer because I only had like 5 little gnocchi.  The menu didn't really seem to be separated into appetizers and entrees, I wish that had been pointed out to me, I would have asked for like a double order! Laura got a pasta with shrimp and it looked really tasty, she seemed pretty pleased with it.  We were left alone for awhile before I finally asked if we could see a dessert menu and guess what, they didn't have any dessert! Say What! I mean, at least get some cupcakes from the south end buttery and serve those up people! I want something sweet at the end of a meal!

So, our dinner was just so-so.  It's not like I wouldn't go back, but because they don't have dessert I actually probably wouldn't - not when there are so many other places to go.  And the Southie branch I think has better food.

On our way back to the car we stopped at the Polka Dot Dog Bakery which was oh so cute!

On a better note, when I got home I devoured some of my prosciutto and that my friends was AMAZING.  (Oh I also stopped for a McFlurry haha)

Here is Laura's review
here

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