The Heights Food Guide 2016

THE HEIGHTS

Breakfast, C2-3

BOSTON Lunch, C4

FOOD Dinner, C5

GUIDE Dessert, C6

2016

THE HEIGHTS

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Thursday, October 20, 2016

We live in a city traditionally known for its clam chowder, lobster rolls, and Fenway Franks. But Boston has more to offer than those staples. Food colors the culture of the city as much as its instantly recognizable accent does. In the past two years, The Heights took a look at the best the city has to offer both by neighborhood and by style of food. This year, we’ve created a plan to see the entire city in a day. The best of Boston is found in the city’s breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert offerings.

BREAKFAST

Greenhills Irish Bakery helps you start your day with a taste of Ireland.

MICHAEL SULLIVAN HEIGHTS EDITOR

n the wall connecting the counter and the back entrance of Greenhills Irish Bakery, Dermot Quinn has a shrine to his two homes. Some of the paintings and posters up there help Quinn harken back to his childhood in County Offaly. There is a copy of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic right next to the Irish tricolor. The flag has a clairseach—the Celtic harp and symbol of Ireland—on it that designates the 100th anniversary of the Republic of Ireland’s separation from Great Britain.

Conveniently, 2016 represents a big milestone for Quinn as well—this year marks Greenhills’s 25th anniversary.

But other works pay tribute to his new home—780 Adams St. in Dorchester—where he and his wife, Cindy, have run Greenhills since July 4, 1991. Quinn highlights one picture in particular. It’s a panorama of Garvey Park on April 16, 2013.

Quinn was one of many from Dorchester in that picture to attend a candlelit vigil for Martin Richard, the 8-year-old boy who was one of three tragically killed during the Boston Marathon bombings. The Richard family had been regular customers of Greenhills. Quinn remembers seeing Martin’s face every morning, gazing at the array of baked goods displayed in the glass counter.

Inspired by Richard, Quinn has used this year to give back to the community that has given him so much. During every month of this 25th anniversary, Quinn has given $1,000 of Greenhills’s profits to Dorchester charities. In March, one of those checks went to the Martin Richard Foundation.

“We’re not just an Irish bakery, we’re

JULIA HOPKINS / HEIGHTS EDITOR

more of a neighborhood bakery as well,” Quinn said. “We’re very proud to be in Dorchester for 25 years, and we hope to be here for as long as possible.”

The community is just as happy to have Quinn.

Everything at Greenhills, from the bread to the coffee, is homemade. It smells like a Dunkin’ Donuts—but with many other scents vying for attention. At its 10 or so tables, you will find a potpourri of locals: college students, working men, stay-athome moms with babies in tow, and elderly Irish immigrants looking for a taste of the homeland. Usually they arrive at different times—workers and students in the early morning, older residents by noon time. But at 9:30 a.m., there’s a perfect balance.

Regardless of background, anyone who walks in the door greets all who he or she passes—some by name, others with pleasantries. And Quinn could not help but do the same. After all, Greenhills is one big family. Everyone who has come through these doors has ordered a wedding or birthday cake. If you need treats for a family function, chances are Quinn or his staff baked them the day before.

Before each customer, on each table, a different delicacy. If you are in the mood for a heartier breakfast, as many are, Quinn provides two Irish classics. Greenhills makes a sausage roll cooked in the Irish style and wrapped in a flakey croissant-like crust. His most famous is the Irish breakfast sandwich, which was featured on Anthony Bourdain’s television show No Reservations.

On a freshly baked roll, you can get a glut of meat, cheese, and egg. The cheeses and egg are no different from your typical selection

at any diner—American, cheddar, or swiss; scrambled or fried. The meats, however, are truly Irish. Each sandwich has boiled bacon—the real Irish meat, according to Quinn, not the corned beef that you might be tricked into getting on St. Patrick’s Day—sausages, and, of course, black and white puddings. Top it all off with ketchup or Greenhills’s special brown sauce, and you are good to start your day. Just don’t forget plenty of napkins. f you just want the baked goods for which Greenhills has become famous, Quinn has got you covered, too. Greenhills’ shelves are balanced between Irish favorites and American treats. Each cookie puffs up in the middle like a mini, airy cake—the chocolate chip tastes a lot like those Little Bites muffins you would find in your middle school lunchbox, except this time, it’s baked at home. The macaroons have just enough coconut to give you that tropical taste without being overpowering.

Many customers have one of two Irish specialities: barmbracks and scones. A barmbrack is a bread with allspice, a unique fall pastry that often has sultanas or raisins in it. The scones are as good or even better.

They come in several varieties—blueberry, cinnamon, raisin, and more. The traditional scone—the one you are more likely to be familiar with—has a flat top and is soft, resembling a biscuit. Those are the ones that derive from Great Britain. Quinn makes his scones the Irish way: textured, with crispness in every bite, and, of course, big enough to be a meal on their own.

The baking was never something that came naturally to Quinn. When he first came to the United States in 1984, he had

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no intention of opening a bakery. He trained as a French chef in Switzerland and wanted to chase the “big carrot” of fine dining: New York City. His dream changed when he visited his sick grandmother, May Murphy, back in Ireland five years later. Quinn begged his grandmother to write down the recipe for her famous brown bread as a final lasting keepsake. Three and a half handfuls of flour, one and a half handfuls of bran, a handful of wheat flour, pinch of salt, pinch of sugar, enough buttermilk to wet, bake it in a modern oven at 350 for one hour. Quinn still keeps that original recipe in a frame behind a picture of Granny Murphy herself.

And, after a couple of tough months in the States, Quinn decided that Granny Murphy’s recipe might be something other people might want to enjoy. So he began experimenting. It did not exactly work out.

“It came out terrible, it was terrible at first,” Quinn said with a laugh. “The flour was different, I had to use additives like cream of tartar. But after about a month, I had something that was edible.”

So the Quinns packed up their Pontiac Le Mans with 300 to 400 loaves and headed up to the Catskill Mountains in New York.

They sold every last loaf of brown and soda bread, plus his signature scones, for $10 a pop. Not long after, they opened up shop in Dorchester doing wholesale. Dorchester, Quinn said, was the perfect spot because of the longtime Irish influence, and because it was near Gerard’s Restaurant, a former neighborhood mainstay that was Greenhills’s biggest customer.

Cindy’s parents were integral to getting them started. Her mother was a decorator, and used that eye to help the baking newbies

make their cakes visually appealing.

But it’s Quinn’s experience as a chef that makes Greenhills truly unique. ost bakeries open early and close just after lunch. Greenhills is no exception—the lights at 780 Adams Street turn on at 5 a.m. Monday through Saturday, and 6 a.m. on Sunday. But Quinn stays open through the evening rush, not sending everyone home until 6 p.m. most days. That is when Quinn gets to show off that culinary education from many moons ago.

Every day, Greenhills makes honeybaked ham, with meat from the local butcher.

Shepherd’s pie, unsurprisingly, often finds its way into the rotation, too. He also mixes in different specialties: turkey Tuesdays, boiled-dinner Thursdays, fish Fridays.

Combined with typical soups, salads, and sandwiches, Greenhills doubles as the local deli counter that can provide home-cooked meals to bring back when you just do not have the time to make one yourself.

If you are not going to come home with a dinner, the least you can come back with is dessert. Greenhills offers several different kinds of pies—traditional apple (which won Best of Boston, 1996) and pumpkin to custard and rhubarb—along with a plethora of cakes. Quinn’s current favorite is one from home: a sherry trifle. This Irish treat is made from sponge cake soaked in sherry, topped with whipped cream over a bed of fruit-infused gelatin.

And, if nothing else, bring home a loaf of that famous brown bread. One bite and you will experience Boston the way Quinn and the folks at Greenhills do—like the 33rd county of Ireland.

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THE HEIGHTS

Thursday, October 20, 2016

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BREAKFAST

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Breakfast all day, Breakfast all night Nestled in the North End, Bova’s Bakery serves hungry customers with pastries no matter the hour.

JULIA HOPKINS / HEIGHTS EDITOR

ALEC GREANEY HEIGHTS EDITOR etting hungry at 2 a.m. sucks. It’s certainly an ordeal at Boston College, which has dining hall options available only until that time on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights—it’s midnight on weekday nights. And it’s not much easier for those in the rest of Boston, a city that tells its patrons to give out last-call rounds by 2, at least for now.

After that, Bostonians out on the town have to fend for themselves. Even in a restaurant-congested area like the North End, most places lock up their doors by 10 or 11 p.m. on weekends. But if you stumble down the right, tight-knit, horse-carriage street—either Salem or Prince St. will do—in the heart of the North End, just a two-minute walk from the Old North Church, there’s an

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JULIA HOPKINS / HEIGHTS EDITOR

unwavering haven of fresh-baked goods to be found.

Bova’s Bakery is not merely open 24 hours a day, seven days a week—it thrives during those off hours, bringing in the late-night crowds for a bite of a pizzelle or cannoli.

“It’s crazy,” said Michelle Abramo, one of the many family members who keeps the bakery running. “Late night on a Friday and Saturday night, those three hours [from 1 to 4 a.m.] are probably the busiest of the week.”

There is so much business that they have to be careful what they offer during that time. Besides being known for its Italian eateries, the North End remains a significant residential area, too, with people living above and around Bova’s. Since the customers entering the bakery so late at night tend to be unrulier groups, the City of Boston has told Bova’s not to sell anything considered to be a meal. This practice keeps customers moving along, rather than congregating to stop and eat. It also forces them to experience Bova’s in its more original form.

Antonio Bova, the namesake and creator of the bakery, was an Italian immigrant who crossed the Atlantic with the dream of owning his own business.

He began as an apprentice at another Boston bakery, quickly acclimating to his new environment. He opened A. Bova & Sons Bakery just across the street from where it is now, on the corner of Prince and Salem, in 1926, specializing in bread—and only bread—to sell to his predominantly Italian neighbors. Even back then, A. Bova & Sons operated 24 hours a day, serving the taxi

drivers, night-shift nurses, and others who worked at unconventional times.

As the taste buds surrounding the bakery diversified, so did Bova’s selections. The bakery began by converting its space from a diner with booths into its current layout: multiple large, glass display cases, each holding too many sweets to take in at once, with some but not much room to shuffle around in the center. In the 1960s, cookies made their first appearance in the cases. Those were gradually followed by coffee cakes on the weekends, then cupcakes with homemade whipped cream, bismarcks, and donuts, among others.

“What has happened, people are always trying to lower their carbs and everything,” Abramo said. “In the ’90s I’d say, people didn’t want to eat as much bread as they used to. But they still want to eat sweets.”

With the ’90s also came the introduction of more substantial meals: sandwiches, calzones, rice balls, and pizza. And of course, by this time, cannolis.

“When people come to Boston, they want to try cannolis,” Abramo said.

Bova’s gives its customers a variety from which to choose. The bakery prides itself on constantly trying new things beyond the more traditional ricotta, chocolate chip, chocolate-dipped shell. Starting about three years ago, they began experimenting with new flavors: nutella, crème brûlée, pumpkin (seasonally), flourentie (which is nuts, honey, and brown sugar in butter rolled up into a shell), pistachio, oreo, and cappuccino. A new limoncello is next on deck.

But ask Abramo, and she’ll tell you their best treat is the lobster tail. The dessert’s shape and size compare to an actual lobster tail, at first appearing with its flaky shell as an overstuffed, half-crescent croissant topped with a healthy dusting of powdered sugar. A very sweet, tasty combo of whipping cream, mascarpone, and Bavarian cream fills the inside, making the New England namesake a decadent Italian dessert.

If that doesn’t sound like your thing, there are plenty of other directions to take. There are muffins, croissants, bagels, lemon squares, apple squares, rum cakes, cupcakes, chocolate milanos, raspberry turnovers, multiple flavors of whoopie pies, cream puffs, cookies, cakes—the list goes on.

The full array requires a variety of ingredients, some of which—like the cheeses for cannolis—Bova’s imports to get the best flavor. It also requires an extensive staff, especially when the ovens are going at literally all hours of the day. Bova’s has about 10 to 12 people working at a given time, depending on the time of day, with about

40 total employees, some of whom have worked for the bakery for more than 25 years. And others, even longer.

When Antonio Bova included his sons in the name of the business, that meant they worked alongside him.

All five of them took over the business together. Two were bought out after a time, but the other three stayed.

At that point, it was still a tough job that none of them could handle full-time, so they formed a system: one would take a turn at the bakery for six months, baking the bread, managing other employees, and generally running the day-to-day operation. After that, he had a year off while the other two took their turns.

Those brothers have now passed the business on another generation, and they passed their system down along with it. Currently, Abramo—the daughter of Ralph Bova, Antonio’s middle son—runs Bova’s with her brother and mother. Next cycle, a cousin of hers and his brother will take the reins, and the one after that, another cousin and wife. Each remains dedicated to the Bova’s vision of providing quality baked goods all day and night, even while everyone in the family has another full-time career. Abramo is a pharmacist currently working for CVS. Her brother Anthony is a dentist, working in his office just across the street when he’s not baking at Bova’s. Her son has his master’s in health care and a full-time job with Leahy Health, and he works here at night in the back making cookies. Sometimes on weekends he’s up 24 hours straight.

“We try to have our children work here,” Abramo said. “It’s a great life lesson on responsibility, family, how to respectfully treat people. You learn a lot of different things here. And we get to be in the Mecca of the state.”

The bakery’s location in a central restaurant hub also provides the family with one of its biggest challenges: figuring out what will sell. They’ll get the returners, coming back every weekend night to satisfy a craving, as well as newcomers, travelling in from across the U.S. and the world. In other words, they just cannot be sure what their customers are going to buy.

“A lot of the clientele that we get from Middle America, from, say, Virginia or Kentucky, and they might not really be into cannolis, but they’d love an apple square, or they’d love a cinnamon stick, just a more American-type dessert,” Abramo said. “So not everyone is looking for an Italian-type dessert.”

But if you’re someone who really wants that cannoli at 2 a.m.—or 5 a.m, or 5 p.m., or whenever—you know exactly where to turn.

JULIA HOPKINS / HEIGHTS EDITOR

Name a somewhat dirty or distressingly clean food chain location in Boston and chances are I’ve loitered in it. The Panera on Comm. Ave.? Yep. The Burger King on Tremont Street? Check. The Subway on Summer, down the street from South Station? A million times.

A couple years ago, on the morning of the Head of the Charles, I spent hours in the Starbucks on the corner of Beacon and Charles waiting to race.

My teammates and I cycled in and out of the bathroom, waiting in line with moms and babies, getting antsier and antsier until we had to leave and hop in a boat.

We didn’t want to be outside because it was cold, but being in that Starbucks might’ve been even worse, tempted by stomach-binding banana bread and generally getting in everybody’s way with our enormous backpacks piled high and lanky bodies sprawled everywhere.

But here’s the deal: I know a thing or two about getting in everybody’s way. I’ve spent countless afternoons in the city with hours to kill and $14 burning a hole in my pocket, stranded between high school rowing practices.

Back then, and still now, when I’m home, we went to Chipotle what feels like every day, so often that I’ve been to seemingly every one of them in eastern Mass., so often that I can crush two burritos, easy—one isn’t nearly enough, two is pushing a big lunch, if that.

I’m versatile, too: I know where you can get killer bubble tea. I know that Caffè Nero is lame. I know that I could survive a nuclear holocaust in Trident. I know the spots to sit around at, people.

So I’ve embraced and take pride in my vast resume of overstaying my welcome.

And yet, I’m not even technically loitering anymore. Despite allegedly being an adult, I haven’t shaken the feeling I still have when I go anywhere that my presence is annoying.

I haven’t quite processed yet that I can sit around with no fear of being heckled by a cashier or getting a vicious look from a lady who’s just tryna have a coffee when all these loud young people come in and ruin my peace and quiet this is ridiculous. I no longer have hours to kill. I’m just a snacker doing some homework.

I’m allowed in these rooms with these people. And so even though I don’t need to, even though, as would once happen, no employee will associate my face with that group of kids who were a total pain in the ass yesterday, I’m always looking for new spots to try out. It’s a little psycho, definitely. But holy moly, sometimes it really pays.

Do me a favor: take your cute self and a pal down Boylston, bang a right on Washington, and stop at the end of the block. Look where you’ve ended up. Take a deep breath, or six. Go inside, have a seat (nobody will help you—you have to find this yourself ).

What you want, as far as you can tell, isn’t on the menu, so you’ll have to look up and order with your eyes, pleading with the server, inviting them into your soul. “Soup dumplings…?” you’ll say, your heart a drum, nervous, as if Dumpling Cafe can run out of dumplings (but actually though, why can I never find them on the menu?).

They’ll give you a nearly imperceptible eye roll, jot something down, and stroll off.

Wait 10 minutes, not quite agonizing, but nearly so. Out will come a steamer basket, dripping with condensation, its layers locked together in a crisp kind of anticipation.

You’ll have chopsticks and a deep spoon, and when you lift the lid and the steam rises, the dumplings will seem almost to dry and stick together, and you’ll have to be careful with the chopsticks not to tear the delicate dough.

You’ll wiggle and negotiate the dumpling onto the spoon, find a corner to bite off, and get some soup out—it’s salty and rich; you can practically taste the fat; it’ll spill out if you don’t do it right, the dough tearing just like I warned, goodness wasted/paradise lost—and then you’ll work your way to the filling, which is good, yeah, but not why you’re here.

Only together does it all make sense.

You’ll get to the end of the first one and it’ll be annoying, you’ll wonder if maybe this isn’t how it’s supposed to be.

But then you’ll figure it out, and have five more, and they’ll be messy and stressful and who-gives-a-shit good, and then you’ll sit back, completely at ease, having conquered Beantown for the day. Pay, leave, go home, take a nap. You won.

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THE HEIGHTS

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Thursday, October 20, 2016

LUNCH

ASK THE EXPERTS

A PARAMOUNT LUNCH

HANNAH MCLAUGHLIN HEIGHTS EDITOR

“WHAT’S THE BEST BITE IN BOSTON?”

Cai Thomas BC ’15

Ula: 284 Amory St., Jamaica Plain Sweet Cheeks: Fenway Triangle, 1381 Boylston St. “In terms of cafe or coffee, there’s this place called Ula in JP. They have a turkey cheddar avocado sandwich that I love.

My favorite restaurant in Boston is probably Sweet Cheeks. I get wings and mac and cheese and coleslaw there.”

ARCHER PARQUETTE HEIGHTS EDITOR

Nicole Frederick BC ’15

JULIA HOPKINS / HEIGHTS EDITOR

hen an international visitor, unable to speak a word of English, walks up to the counter and points to a picture of caramel and banana French toast on his phone, the staff of The Paramount knows what to do. Their most popular dish draws tourists from across the city and the globe to the Beacon Hill restaurant. In fact, on Saturdays and Sundays, the morning line can stretch up to three doors down the sidewalk as locals and tourists wait for a table. And yet the wait doesn’t seem to deter customers, as the restaurant remains one of the most popular spots in the city.

The restaurant, which opened in 1937 as The Paramount Deli, has served Beacon Hill for years. Two decades ago, in 1995, Michael Conlon and Joe Green bought the restaurant and renovated it, creating the immensely popular breakfast spot of today from the former deli. Conlon’s father, an Irish immigrant, brought him up in the restaurant business after purchasing The Blarney Stone, a Dorchester restaurant. This lifetime of restaurant experience is apparent in the quality of food and service each diner receives at The Paramount.

Going to The Paramount, the first thing you notice is the neighborhood. A block away from Boston Common, located on Charles Street, the sidewalk bustles with activity. Historic buildings line your path.

Inside, the brick walls and metallic counter evoke the historicity of the building and provide the atmosphere of an upscale diner.

The restaurant has evolved with the times and embraced the modern Boston while still retaining its Beacon Hill originality.

When you walk into the restaurant, a sign reading “Order Here” hangs over the counter in the back. Instead of being seated, ordering, and then eating in the way most restaurants operate, customers here walk directly up to the counter and order their meal from the chef, after which they sit and are brought their food. After trying the traditional seating-first method, they found that it was impossible to produce the same volume of food and satisfy as many customers, so they decided to stick with order-at-the-counter, a system that continues to serve the frequently crowded restaurant well.

After ordering, you can take a seat at one of the tables, which evoke a diner

atmosphere alongside the black and white pictures on the wall. When your food arrives, you can be sure that it wasn’t bought frozen. Each dish is cooked from scratch, even the caramel that coats the ever-popular French toast.

They also offer a selection of omelettes, egg sandwiches, and lunch and dinner options. The dishes stand out on the plate, put together in an eye-catching and colorful manner. As Bonnie Owens, manager of The Paramount, said about the chorizo omelette, a fresh-made guacamole and pico de gallocovered dish, “This is one that, when people are in line, they’re like ‘What is that dish?

What is she having over there?’”

The food tastes just as good as it looks, if not better. It’s easy to see why the caramel banana pancakes are the most popular item.

Each slice of French toast is soaked in the homemade caramel sauce, covered in slices of banana, and sprinkled with sugar. This sweet breakfast meal has a unique and addictive flavor not found in most restaurants.

The omelettes provide an equally inventive and delicious option for the less sugar-inclined diner.

Head chef Gabriel Cheung emphasizes the quality of The Paramount’s ingredients.

He has worked at the restaurant for 11 years and said that the restaurant has maintained consistency over the years. If you came to the restaurant five years ago, you’ll remember the experience and the food will be just as good the second time, he said. Over the years, the restaurant continues to purchase the highest-quality food they can to produce the freshest and best meals they can.

The food has proven to be a big draw for the restaurant, which serves up to 500 people on any given day. With consistently heavy crowds every morning, Owens attributes the restaurant’s enduring popularity not only to the food it serves, but the way it is served.

“We know how to do it with a smile,” she said, referring to the staff, some of whom have been working at The Paramount for 15 to 20 years. “This system really forces people out of their comfort zone, so we pride ourselves in taking the extra step in hospitality.”

As customers shuffle between the chef, the cash register, and their tables, it is this extra step that makes all the difference in the crowded restaurant. As newcomers to

the restaurant might be thrown off by the system, Cheung said that “being nice no matter what” is extremely important. He also said the restaurant prides itself on always having a seat open. After standing in line and ordering, the customer doesn’t have to stand and wait for a seat.

With this many customers, Cheung said that the food has to be good and the service has to be excellent. As the restaurant continues to pack in customers every week, this system appears to be working. he Paramount’s popularity has proven so enduring that it has even attracted a few famous faces to the restaurant.

“Table five in the corner, that’s where Lebron and Rajon Rondo had breakfast together about this time last year,” Owens said.

The restaurant has also been host to Jake Gyllenhaal while he was filming Stronger, a movie about the Boston Marathon bombings, and Chris Pine for the premiere of The

curious newcomers.

For students interested in avoiding the lines at The Paramount, Owens recommends coming in the mid-afternoon on a weekday. During this slower period, the line no longer stretches out the door and you can get a late breakfast or lunch without the wait. The restaurant also has a South Boston location that offers the same menu with a reduced crowd.

Even with the crowds, Owens still enjoys her work at The Paramount. As many of the staff members have young children, she praises the flexibility and understanding of the restaurant when it comes to maternity leave and other accommodations. Beyond that, interactions with customers, such as directing a tourist to the best spots in the neighborhood, make the job interesting and rewarding.

“I had a family in from Alabama about two months ago, they had their elderly father with them and he wasn’t feeling well,” Owens

“WE PRIDE OURSELVES IN TAKING THE EXTRA STEP IN HOSPITALITY.” -Gabriel Cheung Finest Hours.

Despite this wide-reaching interest and these celebrity sightings, The Paramount still provides a customer with “the feel of a neighborhood place,” as Owens said. Regulars come for breakfast alongside tourists hoping to try the famous food. One college student, Owens said, shows up every Saturday morning, one of The Paramount’s busiest times, and reads her lecture notes during the wait in line. Right in the heart of the downtown and historic Beacon Hill, the restaurant exudes the bustling atmosphere of Boston through these devoted customers and in the many

said. “So I gave them this table right away …

I didn’t make them stand in the line, I took their order and gave it to the kitchen. They were so happy they sent me a care package in the mail filled with locally made pickles.”

Years of rave reviews testify to customer satisfaction with The Paramount. The food, atmosphere, and experience of The Paramount keep customers coming every week and continue to draw tourists to the small diner with the line out the door.

“Nobody likes to wait in the line, but at the end once they have their food, they’re very happy,” Owens said.

9i\Xb`e^ Dfc[j# Fe\ 9fnc f] IXd\e Xk X K`d\ :?I@J =LCC<I The one feeling I hate most in this world is when I feel trapped in a rut.

When I’m at school during the year, summer and being home in California sound like an alleviating of the monotony of the everyday, weekly schedule that I go through. Once I’m home and start working, I build the same hope about going back to school. Sometimes it seems as though I can never break free from a uniform, cyclical schedule. When I really need to get out of this mindset, though, one solution has always proven helpful.

Pikaichi is the ramen house I venture to when I feel I need to break away from dining hall food or the monstrosities that are my own home-cooked meals.

Ever since I discovered this fabulous little hole in the wall early last year, I’ve been venturing out on the B Line to the Brighton Ave. stop every so often to get my favorite dish in all of Boston: Pikaichi’s Spicy Miso Ramen. The ride might take 20 or 30 minutes, but it’s worth it every time.

While this dish isn’t at all the only ramen bowl that Pikaichi serves, it is far and away my favorite. Built from a miso broth with a hell of a kick, the Spicy Miso Ramen combines scallions, pork slices, nori, special shrimp oil, and Pikaichi’s custom ramen noodles to make a ramen bowl with a wide spectrum of flavors and textures.

Each bowl looks painstakingly configured, almost to the point where I feel sorry for disturbing its aesthetic.

The ramen has the perfect amount of spice to it: just enough to let you know that it’s there but, not so much that it overwhelms the dish. Of course, there are other meals from Pikaichi to recommend, but it has come to point where I don’t even ask for a menu anymore because I already know I’ll be having the Spicy Miso Ramen.

Besides the Spicy Miso Ramen bowl, Pikaichi serves five other ramen dishes and several other meals. Both the Tokyo Shoyu and the Jigoku Ramen bowls have an excellent soy sauce-based broth.

The Tokyo Shoyu bowl has many of

components of the Spicy Miso Ramen, but lacks its special kick, while the the Jigoku Ramen bowl, the spiciest dish that Pikaichi has, might have too much spice for those who aren’t prepared for it.

Also notable are Pikaichi’s Donburi bowls, which are a mix of pork, chicken, or tofu, and rice, eggs, and different types of veggies. Of these, the Spicy Oyako Don is to die for. Its mix of soy sauce and chili mayo almost makes it as great as the Spicy Miso Ramen bowl.

As far as sides go, it’s hard to beat the simple yet flavorful Tatsuta, which is a couple pieces of Pikaichi’s fried chicken and a side of chili mayo. While I usually only come to Pikaichi for a ramen bowl, I’ve always been pleasantly surprised by the other dishes that I stray away from my usual ramen for.

The ramen house is part of a large Asian food conglomerate: Super 88 Market, or 88 Food Connection. One can find little kiosks featuring restaurants like Kantin, Dim Sum, and Lollicup, among a horde of other sushi bars and Chinese, Japanese, and Korean food vendors.

At the back of the building is the Hong Kong Market, a large Chinese supermarket that sells all kinds of Chinese delicacies, like Thousand-Layer Cakes, and a wide variety of soy and oyster sauces.

While I always wander out to the Allston Super 88 Market for Pikaichi, it’s interesting to see the wide spectrum of Asian meals the locale offers, as well as to pick up some more authentic Asian goodies at the Hong Kong Market.

It’s important to break molds every once in a while. If you’re anything like me, the worst part about the school year is getting stuck in the same routine, week after week after week. Venturing out to Pikaichi helps me dull that sensation, as the long T ride and variety of flavors in my ramen bowl shake me out of the academic mindset. For a few hours, I can forget the semester’s nuisances.

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Locco Taqueria & Oyster Bar: 412 W Broadway, Boston My favorite place is LOCO in Southie.

El Jefe margarita and pork carnitas tacos are a killer combination. It’s a fun place to head after work for Taco Tuesday. The restaurant itself has a great atmosphere and is a really fun bar scene.”

Molly McCarthy BC ’14 South End Buttery: 314 Shawmut Ave, Boston Mare Oyster Bar: 3 Mechanic St., Boston “Brunch at South End Buttery. The truffle fries are a must! My favorite meal in Boston, though, would have to be the lobster ravioli at Mare in the North End.”

John Buckley BC ’86 John Harvard’s Brewery and Alehouse: 33 Dunster St., Cambridge “My favorite place for lunch is John Harvard’s Brewery & Ale House in Cambridge. For starters, I like the fried calamari. It is deep-fried to perfection, a little spicy, but never greasy. I also usually get a cup of clam chowder. It is loaded with clams—they don’t skimp!

For my main dish, I like the Harvard Classic Burger with cheese. I know it sounds basic, but it is a good size burger and again, cooked to perfection with a generous side of crispy fries! Very comforting. I like John Harvard’s because it smells like a brewery—and that’s a good thing because it IS a brewery! It is definitely a pub that happens to serve great food. The atmosphere is authentic—lots of dark wood, casual and relaxed with plenty of room at the bar to eat, if you’d like. Oh, and [it also has] great microbrewed beer!”

Judy Stanton BC ’91 Stockyard Restaurant: 135 Market St., Brighton “My favorite dinner restaurant in Boston is the Stockyard in Brighton. The quality of the food is always great. The waitstaff is friendly and accommodating. My favorite dish is the Stockyard Burger, which is always cooked to perfection. The Stockyard is a great restaurant for date night as well as dinner with the kids before a BC hockey game.”

Chris Mario BC ’12

Picco: 513 Tremont Street, Boston “In terms of cafe or coffee, there’s this place called Ula in JP. They have a turkey cheddar avocado sandwich that I love. My favorite restaurant in Boston is probably Sweet Cheeks. I get wings and mac and cheese and coleslaw there.”

THE HEIGHTS

Thursday, October 20, 2016

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dinner

WELCOME TO Boston Burger Co. has put its own twist on an American classic.

BURGERTOWN here exists a restaurant so excellent that a person might go there three times in a week. Maybe they’ll even go two nights in a row. There, the food speaks to your soul in the type of way that you want it every day for the rest of your life. It’s so Instagrammable, though the dim lighting and too-cool atmosphere would rather you didn’t. And oh, the milkshakes— or frappes, as they’re called in Boston.

Boston Burger Company is that restaurant. I am that person. And you will be too, soon enough.

One of the first things that people might notice about the Cambridge location (there are two others, in Boston and Somerville) is the crowd. On a Friday or Saturday night around 7, groups of people stand under its marquee and in the small space between the front door and the hostess’s podium. The tables are all full, and the bar is packed. The only time a seat is empty is when the next party hasn’t made its way to its table yet.

The decor is an amalgam of the hippest things you have seen on Pinterest—chalkboard walls, rustic light fixtures, and tonguein-cheek illustrations of famous figures with burgers—Conan O’Brien, John Malkovich, and John Harvard are replicated on the walls.

The TVs around the restaurant have a little something for everyone, from sports games to Jeopardy and NCIS. No one pays much attention to them, though, since most people come for one thing: the food.

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A burger feels like something very specific: a summer day, maybe Fourth of July, with humidity and grilled hot dogs and the slight smell of chlorine from a nearby pool.

A burger from Boston Burger Co. feels like chaos. The meat preserves its integrity—it’s a hearty piece, and it’s not the blackened patty you might get on the Fourth of July.

The toppings are where Boston Burger Co. shines. My personal favorite, and the favorite of the Food Network’s resident crazy person/meme, Guy Fieri, is the Mac Attack. Piled high on top of the burger is its own four-cheese mac and cheese—cheddar, American, parmesan, and Romano, for anyone counting at home—and two slices of bacon, equal parts crispy and pliable. You can pull your fork away from the cheese for a good few feet without breaking it, that’s how thick it is. It’s gluttony on a bun.

Other burgers are a little more outside the box. The Sophie has probably the most refined ingredients ever to be put on a burger.

Instead of bacon, there’s prosciutto, and your classic American or cheddar is swapped for goat cheese. Candied walnuts are sprinkled across it, and in place of any ketchup or mustard, there’s a good dose of balsamic reduction and arugula in a lemon vinaigrette.

The diversity of textures, combined with the mix of sweet and savory, somehow form a harmonious relationship. It’s a far cry from what most consider to be a burger, but the point of Boston Burger Co. is to use the burg-

AMELIE TRIEU HEIGHTS EDITOR ontrar y to popular belief, vegetarian offerings are not limited to leafy green salads and some version of tofu.

On Walnut Street near the Newton Highlands T station, the aptly named Walnut Grille challenges—and surprises—with its globally influenced vegetarian and vegan fare. The bright earthinspired green and red decor, relaxing music, and welcoming atmosphere hints at, but does not prepare you for, the culinary adventure to come.

It began as a business venture among friends in early 2013. Walnut Grille’s culinary offerings aim to please vegetarians and non-vegetarians alike with its extensive menu and seasonal offerings.

The owners envisioned Walnut Grille as a unique, healthy, “global vegetarian” option for the Newton community.

Newton, to them, was the right location because of the neighborhood’s reputation for health-conscious and familyoriented diners.

“If the vegetarian and vegan menu doesn’t work out, we’ll go for meat,” said Siva Kumar, co-owner and executive chef.

Originally from India, Kumar was inspired by his vegetarian upbringing, culinary training, and experience, as well as his travels around the United States. Prior to Walnut Grille, Kumar co-founded two other ventures—a

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AMELIE TRIEU / HEIGHTS EDITOR

er as a canvas for more delicious things.

A look at the menu shows there are few limitations. There is even one called the King, which—as an homage to Elvis, of course—contains fried bananas, peanut butter, and bacon. The bananas are covered in cinnamon to amp up the sweetness, which should not really go with salted meat. But that is the point—it’s weird, to say the least, but somehow they pull it off. All of the burgers come with either baked beans or coleslaw and a side of housemade chips, almost orange in color and smoky in flavor. Why chips? Well, because French fries are on a whole different part of the menu.

There is a lot that goes into making a good fry, and most of it comes down to personal preference. Some people like the thin, shoestring ones from McDonald’s. Others like steak fries: a little chunkier, more potato than crunchy exterior. The fries at Boston Burger Co. are wedges, the skin still on in some places and heavy. Not in a bad way. In a way that feels substantial, like you could make a meal out of just them. As with the burgers, there are add-ons that only enhance the fries.

The bruschetta ones are covered in garlic, raw tomatoes, basil, and pesto mayo. It’s a mess, like most of the foods at Boston Burger Co. The juice from the tomatoes fills the oddly shaped bowl, and it’s hard to keep the tomatoes on the fries. You’d expect the fry to collapse under all of it, but the toppings only

SHANNON KELLY HEIGHTS EDITOR

JULIA HOPKINS / HEIGHTS EDITOR

make it lighter—it’s better than the crunchy bread of traditional bruschetta.

There are also the pizza fries, which skip the diced tomatoes in favor of sauce. The top is smothered in jack cheese and haphazardly laid pepperoni. There’s a level of strategy in it—because the cheese is so thick at the top, it doesn’t distribute well to the bottom fries, which makes them heavy enough to break apart in your hands. It does little to dissuade people, though. The only fear with eating the fries is that you won’t have enough room for everything else.

And then, if you somehow can take one more thing in your stomach, there are the frappes. Boston Burger Co. appeals to the younger generation, taking photos of its aptly named “freak frappes” for Instagram. Mega shakes have become a trend in the past year, and the restaurant is not one to sit out on the craze. Whenever one enters the dining area, heads turn nearly 360 degrees just to get a glimpse.

There are some obvious favorites—one waitress attests to constructing the bases of several Oreo frappes at a time to accommodate the demand.

“We started ramping up the frappes at the beginning of 2016,” head of marketing Christina Orso said. “They take a few minutes to prep and about five to ten minutes to put together once ordered.”

The cup gets smeared with a thick frosting around the rim (read: nearly half of the glass)

so that bits of Oreo will stick. The frappe itself isn’t white with black throughout, as most Oreo milkshakes are. It is instead a rich brown, with chocolate sauce still dripping down the inside. A mountain of whipped cream fills over the top—instead of coming off as sloppy, it only increases the decadence.

It’s finished off with a thin skewer of two Oreos and a long red straw. For someone short, you have to sit up a little more in your chair to reach it, making you think of a time when a younger you kneeled in your chair to take long sips of a milkshake.

It’s enough for two or three people—I don’t personally think so, but that’s probably not what your doctor would say—so you can order a few different flavors and try them all.

Other favorites include Nutella and a strawberry shortcake frappe, in which a large piece of the cake rests on the top of the glass.

So there you have it. Boston Burger Co. is the kind of place that gives you nothing you expected, but somehow everything you needed, like 70-degree weather in October.

When you leave, you feel full—not in a gross, bloated kind of way, but a content way.

Go on a first date there, so you know more about the person just from what he or she orders. Bring all of your friends from home to show that you have great taste and hang out in cool places. Hell, have your wedding there—it’s supposed to be the best day of your life, right? Just go. Maybe even three times in a week.

Walnut Grille’s dinner will make even carnivores salivate.

are lightly salted and seasoned before they are cooked in the container they’re served in. Paired with barbecue sauce, the sweet potato fries add a sweet and tangy flavor to the fresh and lightly seasoned quinoa tabbouleh, greens, hummus, and cut tomatoes. Meanwhile, the individual wire frying basket add a modern and trendy element to the presentation.

To keep the menu up-to-date, Kumar eats out and reads magazines. Delicious, trendy, and affordably priced, all the recipes are homemade and tested by both the staff and the regulars. The friendly and diverse staff is from over 10 different countries including Portugal, Romania, and Guatemala. The familyfriendly atmosphere is accompanied by a full bar stocked with organic wines and beers from local distributors. Vegan ice cream from FoMu, local teas and coffees, and homemade sangria and organic cocktails also grace the menu.

Catering for small-scale parties and office gatherings is also available.

Their vegan cakes are free of dairy, gelatin, and eggs and are available on-site and by special order. The desserts, much like the appetizer and entrees, surprised my tastebuds. Made with cornstarch and rice flour, these gluten-free desserts are not noticeably different. What appeared to be a simple vanilla cake with a strawberry on top was revealed to be a delightfully light yet savory mango vanilla coconut cake. The chocolate cake was not too overbearing and unusually paired with a green grape. The mint and dark chocolate swirl garnish completed the sophisticated look.

Nearing four years since its inception, the Walnut Grille continues to deliver on its promise of delicious, healthy food and is considering expanding in the near future. What is the secret to the Walnut Grille’s success?

Kumar’s response is simple: “Buy good ingredients, buy local produce.”

traditional Indian restaurant and Red Lentil, another vegetarian restaurant in the Greater Boston area.

The Walnut Grille is open daily for lunch and dinner with a different menu—and kids menu—for each meal.

Daily and seasonal specialties are listed on a separate menu—in fact, the menu changes three to four times a year so that each visit has an element of surprise. As a farm-to-table establishment, seasonal vegetables from local farms are delivered frequently throughout the spring, summer, and fall. This fall, the specials feature squash, root vegetables, pumpkins, and seeds. Diners find this restaurant as a great alternative and choose to come here to try something new or when they want something healthy and fresh.

Fitting of its suburban setting , brunch is only offered on the weekends.

Savory selections like soups, salads, gluten-free omeletts, sandwiches, and burgers are offered alongside vegan pancakes, waffles, and smoothies. Although the Walnut Grille is consistently busy, brunch and dinner Friday through Sundays are the busiest times.

In addition to being one of the few healthy vegetarian places in the area, Walnut Grille combines locally sourced ingredients and fresh produce with a global flair. It is hard to categorize the food, since each dish has a unique flavor and presentation. Kumar acknowledges that although some menu items are inspired by his Indian background, there are also influences from Italy, China, Thailand, and Latin America.

Walnut Grille’s creativity with its innovative global vegetarian menu offerings and dedication to organic and locally sourced ingredients appeal to

families, professionals, and students.

While I am not a vegetarian (and very far from being a vegan), the Walnut Grille most definitely challenged my tastebuds. Out-of-the-box menu items like Drums of Heaven vegetable lollipops, Indian-vegan fusion tandoori tofu, and the farm-fresh Flu Fighter juice also surprised me.

Gobi Manchurian, one of the restaurant’s signature dishes, pleases the palate with its not-too-sweet and just-spicy-enough tomato sauce that complements the crispy texture of the cauliflower florets on a bed of arugula and carrot. Kumar recreates this popular vegetarian Indian dish with chickpea flour to make it gluten-free.

Even classics like beef stroganoff are reimagined. Last Friday’s lunch special was a vegan vegetable and seitan stroganoff. Seitan, Kumar said, is a meat substitute made from wheat.

Since ingredients and meat substitutes like seitan are more widely available here in the United States, it is easier to create vegetarian and vegan versions of meat dishes like stroganoff. In lieu of beef, pan-seared seitan is used in the traditional creamy mushroom sauce.

The egg noodles are replaced with a potato mash, which is on the side, as opposed to being served with the sauce.

With a taste and aroma similar to classic beef stroganoff, Kumar’s deconstructed seitan and potato mash interpretation is modern and one of a kind.

The falafel wrap is served with freshly made hand-cut sweet potato fries in an individual fryer. Even though the crisp and flavorful wrap left me feeling healthier, the sweet potato fries dominated this dish. To achieve its perfect crispy and crunchy texture, these fries

THE HEIGHTS

C6

Thursday, October 20, 2016

dessert

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A SCOOP OF HEAVEN

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I’m in a tiny ice cream shop in a corner of Allston, down the street from the dingy and outrageously popular bars Boston College kids love. My friend and I are leaning over the glass partition in the middle of the store, where an aproned man is using two slabs of metal to chop strawberries and graham crackers into a pool of condensed milk.

His hands move quickly until the puddle in front of him is a pink slurry. “It looks like that thing I did when I was little,” my friend says, “when I used to mush my ice cream around until it turns into soup.” I’m thinking the same thing. I used to take three flavors of Ben & Jerry’s and pat them together with the back of my spoon until the ice cream melted, and all that was left was a brown puddle punctuated with tiny chocolate fish and streaks of marshmallow and caramel.

But now, in Hi B3ear Ice Cream Roll, we’re watching childhood in reverse. Instead of melting, the puddle of milk and sugar is freezing on the white-cold slab. As the man pushes the now-homogenous combination around, it freezes until it’s flat enough for him to scrape it into seven ice cream rolls and put into a cup. But it tastes dry and almost too cold to be sweet, like all the flavor has been tortured out of it. The ice cream of the future is round and tasteless.

The ice cream of the past is a few blocks down Commonwealth Ave. At Emack & Bolio’s in Brookline, parents with strollers, teens on first dates, and groups of students line up under the awning for ice cream that’s been around since 1975. It’s served in cones that drip with layers of Rice Krispy treats, and the ice cream tastes cold and sweet, like it’s the summer you turned 9—you’re at the beach and your parents let you run ahead, shoeless, to that ice cream place to ask for a small cookie dough, please, in a cone—and now you’re 21 and the first taste still reminds you of the sun on your back and the sand on your feet. Everything ice cream should be.

For $5, you can buy yourself a memory.

But for a couple dollars more, at Newton’s ice cream mainstay, you can buy yourself a better memory. The stuff of ice cream daydreams is at Cabot’s in Newton, where every day of the week sundaes come drenched in marshmallow sauce and dark chocolate, with a side of a Belgian waffle, if your sweet child heart so desires. Frappes— milkshakes, for those of us from anywhere besides Boston—come extra thick and giant thick. This isn’t an organic juice bar, with fancy chia seeds and cold-pressed arugula.

No, this is where you go to get destroyed by a crystal bowl of ice cream so big it would make both Ben and Jerry weep with joy.

Let’s make something extremely clear.

I’m lactose intolerant. I once sent myself to Health Services for 24 hours during finals because I ate too much Greek yogurt and couldn’t stop throwing up. Ice cream is the worst thing that has ever happened to me.

Each sugary spoonful makes me feel alive for just one glimmering moment before my body realizes I have just swallowed poison masked as treat. Sacrifices have been made, for my tastebuds and my health.

I don’t regret eating Emack & Bolio’s for dinner this summer, but my body might.

Each memory of a gooey spoonful from Cabot’s is spiked with the ensuing pain in my abdomen. We’re an ice cream family, at home in Maryland. Our spoons are bent by the force of teenage boys who couldn’t wait for a carton to thaw. But then my body rebelled. I think it’s trying to tell me I’ve grown out of dripping cones and layered bowls. I’m not listening.

This summer, one of my roommates was a long time employee at White Mountain, that mainstay of BC first dates and study breaks. Our freezer was stocked with frozen broccoli and chicken—college girl freezer basics—and a leaning tower of ice cream. Vanilla with peanut butter cups.

Chocolate chip cookie dough. At least two specials: apple pie, mint oreo, and always, always cookie monster. She worked almost every day, and by August we had more flavors than Baskin-Robbins.

Sweet, sweet temptation. Here’s some advice, from one lactose-intolerant to the world: Don’t eat half a carton of ice cream before running five miles in August humidity. Don’t inhale Greek yogurt during exams.

Don’t drink a milkshake every day. Here’s some more advice: Eat half a carton while watching One Tree Hill with your roommates. Get the biggest sundae at Cabot’s.

The summer of being 9 at the beach will end.

Stomach aches don’t last forever. Neither does ice cream.

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MADELEINE D’ANGELO ASST. METRO EDITOR

MADELEINE D’ANGELO / HEIGHTS EDITOR

ucked near the upper-level entrance to the Chestnut Hill Mall lies a small gelato shop that a casual passerby might mistake for just another one of those underwhelming ice cream-but-notreally-ice cream shops that seem to be everywhere nowadays. This assumption would be a tragic mistake.

The extent of this mistake gets clearer as soon as you step through Morano Gelato’s glass entrance, where you find yourself faced with a stunning display of flavors that could include everything from matcha or custard, to the more traditional pistachio or fior de latte. Once you get a sample of the gelato—something immediately offered by the friendly staff behind the counter—you finally realize how very wrong your first assumption was. In a world where bigger and bolder is better, it remains all too easy to forget the fact that often, the most straightforward things are the most beautiful.

And this beauty might take the form of Morano Gelato’s gelato—a simple gelato that is unlike anything you have ever tasted. Maybe it is artfully spooned into a crispy cone, or stuffed in between two fluffy pieces of brioche, or even simply presented in a cup alongside a crunchy wafer cookie. But at the end of the night, it is a single flavor perfectly captured within a cold, creamy mixture that might even go beyond beautiful—it might be closer to heavenly.

Although Morano Gelato’s Chestnut Hill location only opened in 2015, it began in 2010 when Morgan Morano first began selling her homemade gelato at a Hanover, N.H. farmer’s market when she was just 25. But the story of Moran’s love affair with gelato began long before that. After a childhood in the restaurant industry—Morano’s father was an entrepreneur

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who opened several restaurants—Morano spent a semester abroad that set her down the path toward what would become Morano Gelato. Taking advice from her brother, Jordan, Morano decided to take a chance and spend her semester abroad in Florence. Once there, she not only fell in love with the local culture and cuisine, but also with a Florentine man—a relationship that helped pull her back to the city during the following years. “[Florence is] still just this city that is overwhelmingly beautiful,” Morano said. “It was definitely unlike anything I’d ever seen, and I’d grown up in New York to a certain extent, and had seen a lot of food in New York City, but Florence was something else. It really awakened my senses, and I really started thinking about a food business for sure.” fter graduating from the University of Connecticut, Morano made a beeline for culinary school in New York City, where although she received a comprehensive culinary education, she maintained a focus on the pastry arts.

Given Morano’s love for food and deep commitment to using ingredients of the highest quality, she explained that she had no interest in entering a business where alcohol sales would serve as the largest source of profit.

As Morano traveled between Italy and New York, working in kitchens in order to save up money that she could use to fund her exploration of the culture she loved, she eventually made a discovery that changed everything while wandering through the streets she loved.

“I do think it was fortuitous—that I met Antonio Cafarelli, who owns this gelato store,” Morano said. “I was literally on my way to see

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MADELEINE D’ANGELO / HEIGHTS EDITOR

an apartment, so I wasn’t even thinking about finding a job, and I saw this gelato store that was advertising Sicilian granita, and I’d never seen that before.”

Unable to resist the allure of an unknown dessert, Morano soon found herself inside the shop, and once she tasted the granita, all thoughts of the apartment tour were completely forgotten. The granita, a dessert Morano describes as a creamy and artisanal slushy, was so unlike anything she had previously tried that she could not help but return the next day.

It was then that Morano met the shop’s owner, Cafarelli, one of the few gelato chefs in Italy who still makes gelato through the traditional hot process—a pasteurization technique during which the gelato base is quickly heated before being cooled. After the two collaborated on a peanut butter flavor, Cafarelli offered Morano a job, which she quickly accepted. As she worked with Cafarelli, Morano not only learned the art of gelato-making, but also realized that it was an art form completely absent from the American culinary landscape—and so gelato became the business opportunity Morano had been searching for.

Once back in the United States, Morano began experimenting, balancing the skills gained in Italy with her knowledge of American ice cream in order to eventually create the perfect gelato, unlike any other in the world.

The texture, which somehow remains light while still being dense and creamy, works in perfect combination with the flavors that Morano has carefully developed over the years with her meticulous palate. Morano cites this palate, along with a healthy dose of creativity, as what separates “really good chefs from decent chefs.”

But a palate alone cannot create spectacular gelato, which is where Morano’s creativity and commitment to serving her customers with the freshest possible product come into play. Unlike almost any other ice cream—let alone gelato—shop in America, the gelato served in Morano Gelato is made fresh every single morning. For a shop serving a relatively small customer base, this approach is essentially unheard of and results in extremely high labor cost. But Morano didn’t want to offset these costs by selling a shockingly expensive product, so she worked hard to develop a system that allows her to sell competitively priced gelato—especially when it becomes clear from the first bite that the price does not reflect the high quality of the gelato.

The daily preparation of the gelato goes

hand in hand with Morano’s determination to use only the highest quality, freshest ingredients. This means that the selection of flavors that customers can find in Morano Gelato—usually between 12 and 14 a day—depend not only on the mood of the chef and customer requests, but most importantly on the season. n addition to its freshness, elements of the gelato’s preparation set it aside from many Americanized equivalents. Despite its creamy texture, many of Morano’s gelato flavors are actually water-based. This technique allows eaters to perceive the flavors more strongly, since the palate is coated with less fat than it would be if they were eating American ice cream. Morano also ensures that her gelato is served at a slightly warmer temperature than many other Americanized gelato stores, and pays careful attention to serving gelato traditionally—with gelato spatulas, never ice cream scoops.

And Morano’s careful attention to and love for her gelato is something that she has instilled in the close-knit staff of Morano Gelato’s. Sam Hicks, the manager, has worked with Morano since she opened her original storefront in Hanover, and his passion for gelato and the success of Morano Gelato is obvious.

“I’ve been excited [about working here] for the past five years,” Hicks said. “[And I am hoping to eventually see] Morano Gelato everywhere. East to West Coast, and eventually global … Franchising is picking up, definitely, and it’s really exciting to have been in Hanover in the beginning. [The Chestnut Hill] shop was a giant step.”

And it was a step met with inarguable success, as Morano Gelato begins franchising and opening three more shops along the East Coast within the coming year, with even more coming on the horizon.

“One of the greatest things about this company is that I do things so counter to what everybody else tells me to do,” said Morano.

“One of the most valuable things I’ve learned is that most people who change things, never go with common wisdom. Because that’s how things change, that’s how society changes, you have to go against conventional wisdom in order to change.”

As Morano Gelato continues going against conventional wisdom and changing with growth of the coming years—there are ideas of traveling Morano Gelato carts, and Morano’s own summer granitas in the works—we, the happy eaters of this spectacular gelato, will watch with excitement.

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