Tuesday Tasting

Last night we went to a wine and food tasting at a new restaurant on Newbury Street called Cafeteria Boston. Cafeteria is an "upscale" establishment that purports to fill the massive void left in Newbury Street culture when Armani Cafe closed down last year (see this review by Boston.com).

Usually these events are designed to showcase the restaurant and build a customer base. Consequently, restaurants tend to lay out a generous spread and put their best culinary foot forward, often at cost or even at some expense to the restaurant in the interest of building business. While the restaurant interior was nicely cool and welcoming on such a hot day, the event was a massive disappointment for several reasons. First, our $19 pre-booked tickets (they were $29 at the door) bought us three tickets to taste wines. You may notice there are four wines on the tasting menu. Second, the guys pouring wine were unbelievably stingy with what we knew to be rather inexpensive wines. On offer were Nobilo Sauvgnon Blanc ($15 retail but we usually find it for $12), Hogue Pinot Grigio ($9 retail), Blackstone Pinot Noir ($18 retail) and Toasted Head Cabernet ($15 retail). They are all nice wines, although it was hard to tell with the whites since they weren't even properly chilled for the first hour or so.

Now to the food. There were some potentially interesting items on the menu: two types of gourmet pizzas, Kobe meatballs, stuffed mushrooms and beef carpaccio all came out hors d'oeuvres style. The stuffed mushrooms were quite good, but the pizzas and meatballs were mediocre and the carpaccio was shockingly bland. We were waiting with baited breath for the shrimp and crab cakes in what by now was a vibrant and crowded room, but only got more of the same. We pulled aside a waiter and jokingly remarked that the shrimp and crab cakes weren't actually going to be served, to which he responded that he had seen no evidence of such items in the kitchen. To be fair, we don't know whether they were ever brought out; since we had all exhausted our three "wine coupons" we left shortly thereafter to move to a place where we could get a full glass of wine and some really special food -- our favorite Spanish tapas joint, Tapeo, which is right across the street. They have fantastic sangria, and currently feature a menu of special dishes built entirely around asparagus.

This event was clearly designed to make a tidy profit rather than to showcase the quality of wine and food at the restaurant. It was part of the Tuesday Tasting Series hosted by BostonEventGuide.com, so we don't know how much of it's underwhelmingness can be blamed on the restaurant itself, but we are not rushing back to Cafeteria Boston anytime soon. Certainly they are responsible for the quality of the food, and their "showcase" hors d'oeuvres didn't do much to excite the palate. Besides, if $19 bought us a total of about $5 worth of wine and a finger-food tasting menu that was incomplete as advertised, what is to be expected for a full dinner? At least we didn't pay the $29 at the door like some poor bastards undoubtedly did.

My restraint is probably unduly generous -- check out Evan's account of the event...