Well, no. I’m not actually going to write poetry about dinner. But I am happy to report that I finally got to eat dinner at Urban Hearth, a cute little restaurant found in North Cambridge, Massachusetts. *does a happy dance*
I was there back in the winter for the first time to try out their breakfast/lunch menu, and really enjoyed it. I meant to attend dinner there for my birthday some time ago, but I had trouble planning it when one of my friends headed off to Europe for vacation. Instead of another food-truck-adventure-staycation this summer, my sister suggested that we meet up and have dinner at Urban Hearth.
While Urban Hearth is a cafe with an a la carte menu during the day, it is a fixed price multi-course restaurant when the evening rolls around. You have your choice between 3 course and 5 courses, and you can add a wine option as well. We just did the 3 courses without wine.
Our meal started with an aperol spritz aperitif. Their version of aperol spritz had cava instead of prosecco. I don’t drink much at all, but I did like this cocktail.
Then, the starters came out. Technically, the starters are complimentary bites not listed on the menu. Both my sister and I should have gotten the same starter, but my sister has trouble digesting corn products, so she got an heirloom tomato and mozzarella plate. My plate was a tostada, it was really good and sign of the food to come: elegant and seasonal, but familiar. It had sweet corn kernels, avocado cream, zucchini, tomatoes, cheese, bell peppers, a natursium leaf, and probably cilantro too but very little. (For which I am grateful for as I am anti-cilantro. Sorry, cilantro fans.)
For our official first course, I went with the peach panzanella with seared halloumi, fresh greens, and olive emulsion. It wasn’t what I was expecting at all. It was well styled, and the halloumi was easily my favorite part of the plate, but the peaches weren’t as sweet as I had hoped, and the olive emulsion tasted like a puckerish vinaigrette. The bread part of the panzanella was really torn pieces from a nice loaf of bread that still tasted fresh. I guess I’m more accustomed to toasting cubes of old bread when I make panzanella.
My sister had the seared pork belly with English peas, kimchi, and radish. It was really gorgeous, and the pork had an amazingly dark sear that was probably just seconds away from being burnt. If I hadn’t chosen a meat heavy dish for my main course, I would have picked the pork belly for myself too. I will say that I don’t know where the kimchi was. Looking at the photo now, it looks like the plate had fresh and pickled radish. I guess the pickled radish was the kimchi.
When the first course was done, my sister and I were just chatting and sipping on our aperol spritz (we’re very slow drinkers when it comes to booze as our entire family just really isn’t inclined to any variety of alcohol in general). And then, the kitchen whipped out some steaming shishito peppers that had been seared in generous amounts of oil and topped with salt. Normally, I’m not wowed by shishito peppers (meanwhile my friends love them lots) but these were pretty good.
By the time the entree dish came to the table, I was already nearly full of good food, but I was determined to see the evening to the end. My second course was the beef tenderloin with chanterelles, kohlrabi dumplings, creme fraiche, greens, and blueberry sauce. I wouldn’t have thought to pair beef with creme fraiche and blueberries, but it doesn’t seem strange to me at all. I just never thought to do it. It was fabulous. And the kohrabi dumplings? I loved that too. The dumplings were basically like a potato gnudi except made from kohlrabi. I’m very tempted to try making it at home.
Meanwhile, my sister had the pan seared striped bass with grilled shrimp. She was also supposed to get spoonbread, but since that had cornmeal in it, the kitchen replaced it with kohlrabi dumplings (she also loved them). Not a bad word was had about the dish.
After the entree, we got our last palate cleanser: a little digestive/sugar cookie with elderberry jam fruit. This delicious. The cookie portion was a little sweeter than I personally like but not disgustingly so. I guess the only bad thing about this palate cleanser was that I couldn’t really savor it. It was the size of a two bite cookie, but you really had to one-shot it because the cookie crumbled the minute you bit into it. (Not that I speaking from experience or anything…)
But the dessert plate? That was something I got to savor as slowly as I wanted to.
Starting with my sister’s dessert, she got the chocolate bark. Visually, it was beautiful. I didn’t get to taste the chocolate, but I’m sure that it was good. I did get to taste the olive oil sorbetto, on the other hand. It was a little jarring at how savory it was, especially after the digestive cookie. It was made with a good quality oil, but extra virgin olive oil is a very distinctive flavor. My sister was confused when she first ate it because she forgot that it was listed as olive oil on the menu.
My sister may have picked the better first course, but we agreed that my dessert was the better of the two, which was the huckleberry pie with ginger whipped cream and basil oil garnish.
It was less elegant looking dessert, but the huckleberry mini pie tasted amazing with the ginger hints in the cream. I didn’t know how I was going to feel about the basil oil but I eventually found myself wanting a bit more of it on my plate. Right now, I want to try infusing some ginger into some heavy cream (oooh, and I can too, I have some heavy cream in the fridge this very moment), just so that I can whip it up and served it on a pie. Or a galette. Whatever you want to call it, I don’t care. (puts ginger whipped cream on the to-do-list)
If you are in the area, or ever find yourself in the area, I highly recommend stopping by Urban Hearth. Whether you just want to stop for coffee and breakfast, or whether you’ve got plans to spoil yourself for dinner. My sister and I are already planning our next visit.
