Boston: The Blue Room

In the interest of making Friday night's excursion as rich as possible, I made a reservation at The Blue Room, 1 Kendall Square, for dinner before seeing Neil Gaiman's and Dave McKean's Mirrormask (Michael's review here). I'm hard put to say which part of the evening was better. The food was superb, and the movie was magical.

Appetizer: One Perfect Cheese -- served with an apple compote, and it was absolutely and truly tasty. An aged cheddar and I wish I'd written down what our server said it was because I would love to eat more of it. I reluctantly had the mundane version from my 'fridge today and it didn't even come close to that pervasive rich and almost-nutty taste.

Entrees: I ordered two more appetizers as it happened - the fisherman's soup, which had a lovely texture with pureed fish and saffron and other rich flavors, and a blue squash and feta tart, which had a very light and flaky crust and a contrasting taste that offset the soup very well. Michael had the shrimp and chorizo, which was scotch bonnet marinated (that was a lovely little kick in the taste-buds) and came with crispy yucca.

Dessert: We were tempted by the lemon-goatcheese cheesecake but couldn't resist the molten chocolate cake with the raspberry sauce.

The restaurant itself is very cosy, a long narrow space bisected by the bar. When we first got there it was fairly quiet, but by the time we left, it had gotten much busier, and the low ceilings and exposed brick, while visually appealing, didn't make for the best acoustics in that respect. Still, it had an air of sophistication, but not to the extent that it seemed it was over-impressed with itself. There were nice touches, such as pouring the wine at the table and allowing for a brief tasting first. I must say that our server was outstanding. Everything was well-timed, and we made it to the movie on time even though we were just over half an hour late for our reservation due to traffic.