Sweet and Sour in Boston

OU's bye week, so in what's becoming sort of a tradition we took Saturday off from college football and went to Rockport for some lobster.

Roy Moore
Our first review of Roy Moore can be found here. I can say nothing has changed in one year. $12 for one lobster is a great bargain. We got one a piece and went onto their back deck and went to town.




I've gone lobster crazy in the past year. Basically since I've been to Roy Moore for the first time, I've just been wanting lobster, lobster, lobster. I'm amazed that I used to think lobster was overrated and too much work. Now I know how to pick clean a lobster in just a few minutes. Good stuff. Roy Moore's is one of the top 5 destination for anyone visiting New England.

Blacksmith Restaurant

After the lobsters, we were still kinda hungry so we walked around to find a a spot that had a nice view and decent prices. We walked up into the Blacksmith, which seemed promising due to some nice lunch specials under $10. The mainly empty dining room was wide open with large windows lining the entire wall. This gave a great view of the ocean. Because it was lunch we had to order at the front and sit down while we wait for our meal. This is fine, but the fact that she told us to sit down first seemed odd. We probably could have just looked at the menu then and there and ordered. I noticed a group that came in later had issues with this ordering system. They sat down with their menus and were loudly complaining that the waitress was not coming to them. Eventually the waitress informed them they had to order up front. Again, not the biggest of deals to us, but I can see how it can be confusing.






Abby went with the blackened Haddock and I went with the fried shrimp box. Both comes with french fries. Abby also got the Lobster Ale from Shipyard and I got a kolsch style ale. Both beers were $6, so not the greatest of bargain there. The fried shrimp were pretty good, the light batter coming apart slightly when touched with a fork. The fries were handcut fries with the skin still on and were good and salty. I just wished they would have let the fries rest a bit after they were in the fryer to drain some of the oil because only a few fries were crunchy and the rest slightly soggy. Abby liked her haddock very much, but was not a fan of the lettuce and tomato that was in the sandwich.

I probably wouldn't make it a point to come here again, since there are other places I'd like to try in the area, but it wasn't a bad lunch at all. I'm sure the prices are a little bit more during high season, but the lunch specials weren't badly priced at all. I give the Blacksmith Restaurant a 3 out of 5.



The Blacksmith does have a very nice and clean bathroom, which must have been common knowledge because I witnessed no less than 4 people who walked in from the street just to use the restroom.

New Bridge Cafe

The famous New Bridge Cafe in Chelsea. The famous steak tips. I was given a recipe for steak tips a couple of years ago and when I googled steak tips recipes to find out if it's common to use Coca Cola in the marinade I found out that this was the basis of the secret New Bridge Cafe recipe. So I tried it out and DAMN was it incredible on the steak tips. Driving home along Route 1 we decided to hit up the famous restaurant for dinner.

We arrive and this place is a dive on the outside and a dive on the inside. (Not that that is a bad thing...in fact we were hoping it would be a dive.) We parked on the street and walked in to a bar area that leads to the receptionist area. And the receptionist is one of those cool, old, angry, surly women that you see in older diners and cafes. Immediately a good sign. It took a while for her to get our name because she was running around getting bread and utensils to other tables, but once we got our name in (and by this time there were at least 5 other groups lined up behind us waiting to do the same) it only took about 5 minutes or so before our table was ready. Quick turn around means another good sign.

There was no question on what we were ordering. I got my steak tips with the salad and Abby got hers with the french fries. We also ordered the home made root beer. (Diet for Abby.) It did take a while for our food to arrive, but this gave us time to look around at the other diners and the cafe itself. Multiple TVs with the game on and tons of Pats, Red Sox, Bruins and Celtics memorabilia around. There was a table setup for 6 behind us with only 2 people sitting there waiting for their friends. As the veteran receptionist walked by to clean and setup other tables she kept giving them looks of pure evil. And I can understand why. I mean, you show up without your whole party and you take up a table that can be sat and cleared by the time your late friends even arrive is clearly a justifiable reason why the waiters and receptionist are giving you ice dagger looks every time they are near you. (We were done with our meal and were leaving right when their final friend showed up.)




Anyway, while we were waiting on our dinner, we picked at the bread. As you can tell, the bread is nothing special and no plates came out with the basket...and again, this was perfectly fine by us. We already know what type of place this is once we walked through those doors, no need for them to change and give us plates. The root beer was pretty good and sweet and we couldn't tell any noticeable difference between the diet and regular.




Our dinners arrive and Abby gets the biggest french fry wedges of all time. We get about 6 or 7 tips along with pretty big sides. I ordered mine medium rare and the wife goes for medium. However, after our first few bites, we noticed that it didn't really matter how we ordered them. Each tip we had were all different temperatures. Medium, rare, medium well. None were well done though, and all were still very juicy and nicely cooked with some good charred bits. I noticed this on the menu:



If the pic is too small, it says "Not responsible for well done orders." And I love it! No one should ever order anything well done. Bourdain talks about how restaurants will give the scrap meat leftover from butchering the nicer cuts to the well done ordering customers since they are just going to fry/bake/broil the hell out of it into a disgusting brown/black piece of crap. Even the New Bridge Cafe adheres to this rule.

Overall the steak tips were very good. Juicy with fantastic flavors that were similar to my own steak tips but with that added "something" that makes it restaurant style more than home style. The salad was a typical salad, but large in portion with a very nice homemade dressing. I did get a couple of pieces of steak that were gristly, but that didn't stop me from devouring it. Other menu items include Italian favorites and chicken or lamb tips in the same marinade. And the portions are huge. A couple next to us received Italian entrees big enough to feed families.

New Bridge Cafe is a local favorite and well known throughout New England as the place to get steak tips. This is a very deserving title. I will be back here. I give New Bridge Cafe a 4 out of 5.

Seeing as OU and UW are both on bye week, we decided to do a day trip on Saturday. (Honestly, I probably could have stayed in and watched football all day, but Abby was getting a little burnt out on college football.) After flights to Miami and London did not drop into the $85 round trip range, we settled on Rockport, MA. Abby had gone here as a kid, camping in Cape Ann with her family, and she said it was a fun day trip spot.

We started with a trip for lunch to Woodman's Historic Seafood Restaurant in Essex. Their website is: http://www.woodmans.com/









Right as we walked in, we saw all these lobsters being prepared. I decided that before the day was over, I was going to have lobster. However, this place is fried seafood heaven so the lobster was going to wait. We ordered the jumbo shrimp platter, which comes with onion rings and fries and also a cup of their award winning clam chowder. (Whenever I see jumbo shrimp on the menu, I always assume it will be those freaking huge prawns that you get in Asian restaurants...dunno why, but I do.) The shrimp were some of the best fried shrimp I've had in a while. The batter was light and had some sweetness to it. The onion rings, which Abby remembered being amazing, were just that. Again, the batter makes the rings. Everything that was fried, was very good. The "award winning" clam chowder on the other hand was a bit of a disappointment. It wasn't that the chowder was not tasty, because it did have some decent flavor. It was just so watery. I'm used to chowder being a little thicker I guess. There were huge, and I mean HUGE, pieces of clam in there which made up for some of the wateriness. I give Woodman's a solid 3 1/2 out of 5.

After Woodman's we went to Hammond's Castle. I guess this somewhat eccentric rich inventor built a miedeveil castle for him and his wife. It is now a museum. A pretty kick ass museum! I won't bore you with the countless pics we took, but if you ever have a chance to go, it's well worth the $10 entry fee. The tour will last about 1-2 hours, depending on how much of the details you want to soak in. The view alone from the back of the castle is well worth the trip.

After a stop to climb some special rocks in Gloucester, we headed to Rockport. Once we arrived we noticed why the free parking with $1 shuttle about 2 miles outside of town seemed to be a good idea. We circled the main strip of Rockport a few times until we found a great, great parking spot. Once we were parked, we walked around looking at all the shops and sitting on the rocks.






As much as I hate to do it, I have to give props to Phantom Gourmet for letting me know about Roy Moore Lobster Company. I've seen Roy Moore on various episodes of the purple reviewer's show and was always intrigued. It's not really a restaurant, most people ordering their lobsters to go and there is no formal dining area. You basically order up a lobster, they steam it right there and after a few hacks with a knife you are given some butter and handi-wipes and that's it. There are seats in the back on their deck and a sink that you can use to wash up.




Now I'm not normally the biggest fan of lobster. I think it's expensive and too much work, preferring the cheaper crab. But I was in Rockport and at $12.95 for 1 1/8th pound of lobster seemed like a great deal. Plus, a place like Roy Moore, you just don't pass up.

Here's a pic of me with the lobster prior to eating:



We dig in and I was able to get the whole claw out without losing any meat. I dipped in in the butter, and BAM!!!!! Unholy goodness entered my mouth. That was when I knew that this dead crustacean was the tastiest of it's kind I will ever know. I quickly devoured the claw and went to the tail. After ripping it out with some of the yellow and green gooey bits on it, I dipped and again was just amazed at how good it was. The yellow and green gooey bits were even better that I could imagine. I opened up the carcass and looked for any more meat, picking at it like a vulture on a dead animal. It was incredible! Finally, we decided there was nothing more edible on the poor, tasty beast, we cleaned up and told the workers at Roy Moore how incredible our experience was. They seemed happy to hear that, even though I'm sure they hear it all the time.

Here's a shot of me after our lobster snack:



My thumbs up and huge giddy smile says it all. Roy Moore Lobster gets a 5 out of 5!

Oh, after we walked around a bit, we found a nice spot on some rocks away from others and I asked Abby to marry me and she said yes.