Wednesday, October 21, 2009. Boston. The Oldest Restaurant In America? A Salty Waitress. Bad Karaoke. I wonder why it takes twenty hours to sail from New York to Boston. It did last time we took this cruise, too. It must be a long way around Long Island and Cape Cod.
But that schedule works perfectly for me. I had my usual shipboard breakfast of fruit, pastry, juice, and coffee, then got to work on today's Menu Daily newsletter. By the time I sent it off through the ship's pokey internet (it goes through a satellite, is the problem), it was almost two in the afternoon. I disembarked into a cab to Faneuil Hall, and started walking around.
Last time we were here, Mary Ann was in charge of the port activities (she always is). We walked for miles on the Freedom Trail. That takes you to all the historic sites: the Old North Church, Paul Revere's house, that sort of thing. A red stripe on the ground tells you where to go. The stripe slides through a neighborhood of oyster and lobster houses, including the Union Oyster House. That was my target for an early dinner, along with a bunch of people with the group.
On the other side of the now-underground expressway, the trail runs through a concentration of Italian restaurants that could only be matched in Italy. If they don't have a hundred Italian trattorias, bakeries, and meat markets in Boston's North End, then there are two hundred. What's more, they all looked enormously inviting.
But I've had my share of Italian food for the nonce. And I had my heart set on the Union Oyster House, which claims to be the longest-running restaurant in America. It opened in 1826, fourteen years before Antoine's. But for much of its history, it was just what it says: an oyster house, not the full-service restaurant it is now. It's also changed hands a couple of times, unlike Antoine's.
But never mind. About two dozen of the sixty-seven Eat Clubbers took my suggestion to eat here. It was hard to tell. The dining rooms of the old, low-ceilinged building are dark, and the tables are in very private booths. There was no way we could have sat together in groups of more than six or so. But we did plenty of damage to the Union's stock of oysters, as well as their lobsters, clams, scallops, sole, and haddock.
I was with four other people, in the back of the second-floor dining room, near the kitchen door. We drew an unusually colorful waitress. She looked like Dottye Bennett, the long-time waitress at Charlie's Steak House. Like Dottye always did, this lady wanted to nudge us along. One couple ordered the large lobster for two, broiled. "You don't want that broiled," she said. "Get it boiled." The man next to me wanted the sole, grilled. "That's too thin to grill," said the waitress. "Get it broiled or fried." The man replied that the menu cl;early stated that grilled was an option. "I don't care what the menu says, get it fried or broiled!" said the waitress. The man's wife asked for haddock, broiled. "No. Get it pan-sauteed," the waitress shot back.
But, but--"Listen," said the waitress. "Do you want something you're going to love, or do you want what you think you want?" By this time, it was clear that she didn't mean this in a rude way, and was at least halfway joking around with us.
My turn. "How about the seared scallops with pasta?" I said, steeling myself for her alternate suggestion. "Great dish," she said, and wrote it down. What? That's it? "What can I say?" she said. "It's a great dish. Great sauce!"
When she brought the food out, however, what she had for me was a bed of rice topped with a row of scallops and shrimp. She looked at it as she was about to put it down. "This isn't what you ordered, is it?" she said. She leaned over to the ordering computer and frowned. "I must have hit the wrong button," she said. She still held the dish in her hand. I felt my mind being invaded by a powerful force. "Is that any good?" I asked, against my will.
She wheeled back around with a smile. "It is good!" she said. "Same sauce as what you ordered. But I'll tell the kitchen to make the right dish if you want."
I wanted to say, yes, you do that. But I didn't. "Maybe you pressed the right button," I said, "and it was me who ordered the wrong thing!" I said, not believing the words that were coming out of my mouth.
"That's what I was thinking!" she said, and the shrimp and scallops were on the table in front of me. The shrimp were overcooked. The scallops were fine. The sauce was very rich.
The lobster-eaters were all happy. The sole was beautiful and the man who had it said it was exactly what he had in mind. The haddock was less good. Some of us (myself included) had raw oysters as a starter. They're the same species as Louisiana oysters, but smaller, and with a different flavor, owing to the different water environment. And, at $13 for a half-dozen, twice as expensive as New Orleans oysters.
It was dark outside by the time we finished. We got a van at the cab stand to take seven of us back to the ship at five bucks a head. The driver was full of information, pointing out the hotel where John F. Kennedy had assignations, where the Boston Tea Party was held, and where the No Name Restaurant was. "The worst restaurant in Boston!" I said, remembering an uninteresting dinner there three years ago. He laughed. "I'm glad you know that!" he said.
I was back on the ship at seven, about a half-hour before it sailed. That's cutting it close for me; if Mary Ann were here, she'd be trying to check out six or seven other things. But she's not here. I went up and took a nap. I awakened in time for the first karaoke session of the cruise. The crowd was sparse, and only two other people got up to sing. I can see why. The catalog of songs was very heavy with contemporary numbers, most of which I didn't recognize. The audience averaged out to about my age. So where was the Sinatra catalog?
I started with "Harbor Lights," and came back later with "I've Got The World On A String." A young woman with a good voice did two songs, too, including a nice reading of "In My Life." That's the best song John Lennon ever wrote, and I was reminded of the night he was killed, and a disk jockey on WTUL played the song over and over for a few hours. Even more amazing than that is that I kept listening to it. It's that good a song.
After karaoke shut down, a band I thought would play jazz came on. In fact, it was another manifestation of one of the great mysteries of cruise ship entertainment. Every ship I've ever sailed has featured a small Filipino group performing American pop hits from the late 1950s and early 1960s. Always with skill, but not much passion. Always the same songs. "Oh, Carol," Neil Sedaka's love letter to Carole King, is unavoidable. I've heard it twice already. (I think there may, in fact, be two Filipino oldies bands on the Jewel.) What is the explanation of this eerie uniformity?
