Thumbs up: Cambridge 1, The Red House, and Centre Street Cafe

Since it seems like all I’ve been doing lately is complain about restaurants, I thought I’d just throw together a quick post about some places that we’ve actually had good experiences at.

In contrast to the dismal service at Chris Lutes’ Miracle of Science (as recounted in the immediately preceding post), the service at Cambridge 1 (27 Church Street, Cambridge) in Harvard Square has always been friendly and attentive. The food is also quite commendable: a small menu featuring pizzas with robust flavors. The casual ambience (the back overlooks the peaceful Cambridge Cemetery) tops it off to make us happy to be regulars there. [Actually I just noticed that they opened a second location in the Fenway (1381 Boylston St, Boston) in August of 2007. The review in The Globe of the new location isn't too complimentary, although I agree somewhat that the quality of the food in the original location has gone down some since it first opened in 2002; but certainly not enough to put us off from going there.]

Last week was a week of exploring, and we hit up The Red House (98 Winthrop St, Cambridge), also in Harvard Square, for the first time. We went on a whim for lunch one weekday not expecting much, and we were pleasantly surprised. The food was much better than average: I had the artichoke pasta, which was surprisingly flavorful, and A had the “breadless club sandwich”, which turned out to be the insides of a club sandwich on four skewers. The service was great, and the dessert turned out to be a real find. We were torn between the tiramisu and the cake-like dessert with berries and red currants (and Chantilly cream?), but we chose the latter and it was easily one of the best desserts I’ve had in Boston in a very long time. We’ll definitely be making a trip back just for that. The reviews on Yelp are less encouraging and may indicate a lack of consistency, but we’re keeping our hopes up.

Lastly, A and I happened to eat at Centre Street Cafe (669A Centre Street, Jamaica Plain) two days in a row, once for brunch and once for dinner. The place is a small, casual, neighborhood restaurant that is completely unassuming but serves honest and unfussy food with friendly service. Such a place should be far more common than it is, and we were won over. If we lived in JP this would be a great place for a laid-back meal.

Just a sampling of some good meals recently. This post serves as a good reminder to myself that yes, there are still good dining experiences to be had in Boston, both old and new.

Miracle of Science = A miracle if you get served

Jumping to the top of the list of places to avoid like the plague is Miracle of Science (321 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge) near Central Square. I used to go there a fair amount when I was in school, but I don’t remember the service being nearly as bad as it’s been for quite some time now. The slow and inattentive service has been so annoying for so long that I’ve been avoiding it more often than not, but last weekend was the last straw.

A and I went in last Saturday and there were only a few people already seated, so we were looking forward to a quick and easy lunch. But alas, it was not to be. We ordered, and then we waited … and waited … and waited. By the time we realized we’d been waiting for almost half an hour and noticed that the waitstaff and cook had just been pretty much standing around chatting all that time, we finally got up and asked what was going on. Some guy, who I presume was a manager or something, told us there’d been a mistake and they’d lost our order. When A pointed out they could’ve told us when they realized what had happened instead of just letting us wait even longer, rather than apologize or offer us some compensation the guy just got defensive and started blustering that it was “just a simple mistake” and that our food was on its way. Okay, I can understand a place that’s busy if it makes a mistake, but when there are three people handling waiting duties at a small place like the Miracle of Science and there are only three tables to attend to, I’d like to think that any half-decent place would notice if one of those tables was still waiting for their food. By that time we were ravenous, of course, and we just couldn’t be bothered to wait even longer, so we just got up and left.

It’s a mystery how service can be so bad in a place that otherwise has a lot going for it. The owner, Chris Lutes, also owns Cambridge 1 which always has fantastic service, as well as Audubon Circle. The food at Miracle is definitely not worth the shoddy service, and it’s too bad that this experience has tipped us over the edge since it’s pretty much fine as a bar. Maybe their main problems are with their lunch staff. But in any case we’re never going to go there again; there are more than enough places to go with good service that Miracle certainly won’t be missed.

Boston Ballet’s Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes Centennial Celebration

I thoroughly enjoyed Boston Ballet’s Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes Centennial Celebration last week. I saw the final performance, and here’s a quick run-down.

In Balanchine’s “Prodigal Son” Jared Redick gave an assured and athletic performance as the Son, although I didn’t find Melissa Hough’s performance as the Siren to be nearly as characterful as the role requires, perhaps due to a sort of restraint overall. Also, the middle section involving the troupe of layabouts called “The Goons” started off appropriately comical, but then lacked any hint of sinister or violent intention, making the Son’s defeat and crawl back home curiously uninvolving.

James Whiteside was simply superb in Fokine’s “Le Spectre de la Rose”, despite what Macaulay, in his review in The New York Times, describes as “a dismal headdress”, haha. I’d thoroughly enjoyed his performance as the Bluebird in BB’s The Sleeping Beauty, and his performance in “La Rose” was technically top notch and a superb depiction of the light and graceful yet still masculine incarnation of a young girl’s dream of love.

Roman Rykine imbued his Faun in Nijinsky’s “Afternoon of a Faun” with an adroit blend of disdain, irreverence, and ego, and Lorna Feijóo was a suitably serene Nymph.

Choreographing anything to Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” just seems like you’re setting yourself up for failure since several ballets to that score already exists, and resident choreographer Jorma Elo did just about as well as one could expect. None of the reviews I’ve read seemed at all taken with it, although there’s plenty of technical virtuosity on display. Macaualy says, “The harder I tried to concentrate on any notion of story, relationship, theme or even style, the more diffuse and self-contradictory this work looked.” But for the story, or lack thereof, I’m going to have to side with The Phoneix’s Gantz on that one:

But Elo’s storyline is clear enough. Yanowsky (in a dark-red metallic top — the other men are all bare-chested) is Elo’s Chief Elder, Lorna Feijóo (who sometimes dances with the men) is his Old Woman of 300 Years, and the two of them keep cornering and manipulating Ponomarenko as if she were Stravinsky’s Petrouchka. Hough is Ponomarenko’s BFF, Varga her would-be lover. At the end of part one, the villagers swing Ponomarenko aloft and she bicycles in a vain attempt to escape. Hough rescues her and shoos everyone else away, but in part two she too is manipulated by Yanowsky and helpless to intervene. Ponomarenko has the last word, however: she bourrées off and Yanowsky becomes the Chosen One, the villagers chopping him down to size.

Which isn’t to say that the story makes the work much more interesting. I found the motifs to be drearily repetitive instead of thematic, and I also grew weary of the dancers standing in single file and repeating the same movements in sequence down the line. The latter combined with the sparkly red outfits helped leave a strong impression of high school/college dance teams, which was unfortunate to say the least. On the plus side, the orchestra, led as usual by Jonathan McPhee, sounded better the whole evening than I’ve ever heard them.

Along with The Times and The Phoenix’s reviews, here are The Globe’s review and The Patriot Ledger’s. Also, BB has some photos on their website. Overall a nice finale to the season. There isn’t anything in particular that’s grabbing me for Boston Ballet’s next season, though, but I’m sure I’ll end up checking out something or other.

Cantata Singers at Jordan Hall: Britten and Vores, plus The Boston Musical Intelligencer

In lieu of a review of the Cantata Singers concert from this past Friday I thought I’d just put up a quick post linking to The Boston Globe’s rather perfunctory review and a more in-depth review on a site I just came across called The Boston Musical Intelligencer.

The latter is well worth exploring. Along with in-depth reviews, they also have an exhaustive calendar of upcoming events and news items and features including a 50-page scan of a work called “History of Music In Boston” written by a John Sullivan Dwight in 1881. According to Wikipedia, Dwight was “America’s first influential classical music critic” and founded Dwight’s Journal of Music which “became the most influential musical publication of 19th century America”. Conceived by Lee Eiseman, program chair of Harvard Musical Association, The Boston Musical Intelligencer has taken Dwight’s journal as its inspiration, and it looks like it’s been up since around last August. With the ongoing slashing of local arts coverage by local publications, particularly classical music, it’s encouraging that enthusiasts are helping fill the void.

William Morgan’s The Cape Cod Cottage

I keep intending to write some slightly more off-the-beaten track Boston-related arts posts (as that was one of the blog’s original intentions), but I keep getting sidetracked. But here’s a quickie.

An architect friend of mine was working on an entirely new house (hers, actually), on the Cape, where she grew up. A and I got to see it in its almost final state a few weeks ago and were thoroughly amazed. I haven’t been to the Cape enough times to have the look of the architecture really soak in much, but our friend used the classic Cape Cod architecture as a starting point, and one of the references she used was a book called The Cape Cod Cottage by William Morgan. I flipped through her copy and then picked it up from the library to look into it in greater depth.

In the accompanying essay to the slim book (96 pages, published by the Princeton Architectural Press in 2006) Morgan begins by stating (and I paraphrase) “a child’s first drawing of a house is essentially a Cape Cod Cottage”, basically: a triangular roof on a rectangle with a door in the middle, windows on both sides, and a chimney on top, also in the middle, with some homey smoke coming out for good measure. He explains that the colonists’ original design was born out of function, as a smaller house was more suited to the cold and windy conditions of the Cape and the central chimney helped heat the rooms. He gives a broad overview of the house’s evolution, including its takeover of America where Capes were mass manufactured and built all over the country, as well as its revival in more recent years. He mentions some of the endless variations (e.g. Greek columns, porches, gables, garages), although it’s clear he prefers the Cape in its purest form. Similarly in the book’s photographs he includes a generally chronological sampling of Cape Cod houses, most from the New England area, including a few from Middle America to illustrate the popularization and variations of the form; there are some historic photographs included as well.

There are only a couple of interior shots, but the book is clearly intended to be more of an art book than a comprehensive study. The photography is quite excellent, and it certainly has whet my appetite for a more in-depth look. If you’re looking for more info Wikipedia’s article is pretty shabby, but About.com has a more extensive article as well as a small gallery. Lastly, this article at CapeLinks.com is also an interesting read. It’s certainly given me a greater appreciation for the architecture of the Cape, and the rest of the country as well.

Upcoming for May

I’ve been trying to manage my outings a bit better. Not sure if I’m succeeding or not, but here’s what I’ve got on my calendar for May:

Friday, May 8 at 7:30 p.m. at Jordan Hall: Cantata Singers’ final concert concluding their Benjamin Britten season. Featuring songs written by 4th grade classes at a local elementary school and the same songs worked into Andy Vores’ “Natural Selection”. The full program is as follows:

Britten: The Company of Heaven
4th Grade Classes, Neighborhood House Charter School: 2 songs
Andy Vores: Natural Selection (premiere)
Benjamin Britten: Psalm 150
J.S. Bach: Cantata BWV 50, “Nun ist das Heil und die Kraft”

Was going to catch Junior Boys and Max Tundra at The Middle East Downstairs, but it’s this Friday and so it conflicts with the Cantata Singers concert. Drat. And now it looks like Certainly, Sir is opening for them. Ah well.

May 11-17: Boston Ballet’s Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Their description says: “This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Ballets Russes, established in 1909 by the Russian impresario Serge Diaghilev. Boston Ballet celebrates with classic works by Balanchine, Nijinsky and Fokine. Resident Choreographer Jorma Elo will premiere a new work, his sixth for Boston Ballet, to Igor Stravinsky’s ‘Le Sacre du Printemps’”. I’ll probably try to get 1/2-off tix through Goldstar.

May 27-June 1: Guerilla Opera premieres Boston composer Marti Epstein’s Rumpelstiltskin.

Boston Ballet’s The Sleeping Beauty and a look at The New York Times’ chief dance critic, Alastair Macaulay

I like to try to catch Boston Ballet at least a couple of times a season, and after reading a great review in the New York Times I decided to check out their production of The Sleeping Beauty last night. Alastair Macaulay’s reviews have proven to be extremely reliable, which has led me to do a bit of reading about him. He was appointed The New York Times’ chief dance critic a bit over two years ago, and at the time there was some controversy over the fact he was British and not American, let alone from New York. This blog post from that time gives an overview of the reactions and this interview with Macaulay from the same time period takes the form of a mild rebuttal as well as a more-than-convincing laundry list of his credentials. It is rare that I encounter a critic who shows such good taste, breeding, and intelligence as to so completely align his opinions with mine, so I’m looking forward to reading more of his reviews in the future.

Macaulay does a great job of setting the production in an historical context. Like Macaulay I was struck by the precision but also the character of the corps de ballet’s dancing. I also agreed that the Aurora I saw, Larissa Ponomarenko, danced extremely well, but she seemed to lack any real tenderness. He also praises James Whiteside as the Bluebird (why do I keep wanting to write “Bluebeard”?? Ha ha.) and Kathleen Breen Combes as his partner Princess Florine, whose dancing I also found to be highlights of the production, along with all three members of the Pas De Trois (Jared Redick, Megan Gray, and Heather Myers). Mindaugus Bauzys was a suitably dashing Prince Florimund, although I’m not sure if he’s still a principal dancer of the company or if he was brought in to help cover for the injured Prince from last week. Misa Kuranaga was the Aurora who he favored, and I was sorry not to see her in that role after seeing her sparkling and flitting (and all too fleet) performance as the Songbird Fairy.

The sets, by the late David Walker, also deserve special mention for perfectly setting the stage. I also agree that the sound system at the Wang is far from ideal: it tends to mute the brass and bring out a raspy quality in the strings. And I too found Jonathan McPhee’s conducting, while precise and focused, to be much more functional than characterful. I’ve noticed it before in general and at the Boston Ballet in particular, but I’ve come to expect orchestral dance conducting to be rather wooden more often than not, given the constraints of having to keep to a completely regular tempo.

Karen Campbell’s review for The Globe praises McPhee’s conducting, and does mention that the score provides opportunities for the soloists of the orchestra to shine, all of whom excelled. She found Larissa Ponomarenko’s Aurora to be “a marvel”, and also praised Whiteside and Combes’ performance of the Bluebird pas de deux. In the role of the Lilac Fairy she thought “[Erica Cornejo's] presence seemed a little lightweight for a character of her power and import”, although I disagreed with her there and found Cornejo to be a compelling performer.

The production ends tomorrow, so see it while you can. Additional reviews can be found on BB’s press page here.

Even though I was feeling a little balleted out yesterday, I think I still want to see their last production of the season, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes Centennial Celebration which looks like it’ll be a great collection of classics plus a new work by Resident Choreographer Jorma Elo. Goldstar has half-price tix for the final performance. W00t.