North End
Adventures in Raw Food – Boston’s Grezzo, part 2 of 2
If you didn’t know any better, the pamphlet on the tables at Grezzo in the North End might scare you off. It lists 40 reasons to eat raw, ranging from something like “It makes your skin GLOW!” to somewhat dubious ones like, “Cooking kills off 50% of essential enzymes in food.”
Nothing is heated above 112 degrees, so if you order tea, the water is warmed, not boiled.
Health claims aside, the creativity required to make conventional dishes is mind-boggling. Pasta becomes ribbons of squash. Bread becomes dehydrated sheets of vegetable pulp. Brownies are made out of mashed dates. Dairy is redone (surprisingly successfully) as macadamia or cashew pulp.
After tasting some raw home cooking in Mary’s kitchen, I’d been itching to try a restaurant version. Grezzo, as far as I know, is the only all-raw, easily accessible place in the Boston area. Prices are reasonable – in the low 20′s for entrees, 10-12 for appetizers, but definitely a splurge for a college student. The nice thing is that their portion sizes are large, plus eating a lot of creamy nut paste is not a joke. You’ll definitely feel filled up.
I was introduced to Grezzo originally from my friend Mark, who insisted on renting a ZipCar to transport us there. We ended up getting really lost several times and arriving an hour late. The space is pretty small – about 20 seats altogether – and I got seated next the door which blew in gusts of arctic air.
I left my camera at work, and had a mini panic attack as I contemplated eating a meal without photographing it. The horror!!
California Maki Roll - quinoa "krab" salad, cucumber, avocado, spicy mayo
We decided to get two appetizers each rather than entrees. I sampled the California maki (“krab” salad, quinoa, avocado), which was stunning – creamy, intensely flavored, and far preferable to run-of-the-mill avocado roll. There’s no way that soy sauce was raw, however. The spaghetti carbonara was dense, rich, and creamy, with uncooked peas adding a pleasant crunch. One of the interesting things about raw food, I’ve found, is that raw food flavors are much more intense than their cooked counterparts. Particularly for things like onions, garlic, and greens, they’re actually naturally spicy.
Mark, during the course of dinner, convinced me not to run for a position on the Crimson.
Then they massively messed up.
Food porn: sfogliatelle and a cappucinno from Modern Pastry
Whenever I think of Italian, I actually think of Giada. I remember the first time I saw her – it was in paper version of the New York Times. I mean, who even reads the paper version of the Times anymore? Nobody. They’re bleeding cash. Anyway, it was the cover of her book. She was wearing a blue shirt that matched her eyes, and it was the kind of photo that takes your intestines and whips them around with an eggbeater. There’s a certain cheesiness to how attractive she is – an obviously exploitative quality that always makes me feel awkward about staring. When she’s cooking while I’m at the gym, I’ll watch her whip up a cheesecake, or some stuffed shells, or whatever it is she is making. She narrates her motions with a eager, wide-eyed zeal that ever-so-slightly feels scripted. Then she’ll replace the “real” parts of food with words: oh, it smells amazing! Mmm, this is delicious. It’s funny how on TV, chefs are forced to be self-congratulatory to compensate for you not being there.
Getting fat again
So I use “fat” in a tongue-in-cheek way. But I definitely spent the last few weeks watching what I ate, which meant no crazy banquet dinners, dinners of scrambled egg whites and vegetables, and the occasional helping of cheese dip, heaped high with guilt.
As a result, my stomach became a cast iron tank. My collarbone and ribcage took greater prominence. When I lay down, I marveled at how my skin stretched over my gently jutting hipbones. It felt like a lesson in skeletal anatomy.
So on my first day back on Planet Girl, I felt totally free to go on a carb-and-calorie rampage. I was going to eat EVERYTHING and ANYTHING I could possibly ever want to eat. I was going to ignore stomach pains. I was going to consume whatever was put in front of me, especially high in simple starches, sugar, and fats. I was going to try to undo whatever I had done to myself.
The night before, I’d made good work of a ginger-and-scallion lobster dish, a beef/pepper/pineapple stirfry, and a salt and pepper fried squid at Peach Farm in Chinatown. The verdict: the cooking was a bit rushed, and the quality suffered as a result. My dad commented on how slapdash the dishes seemed to be put together, although the beef stirfry was meltingly tender and delicious. Then I topped it off with a half a red bean bun as I stalked around on my 5 inch clear heels, bronzer still caked on my stomach, legs, and arms.
North End Scallops, Porter Sushi, Audio Slideshows: A busy weekend
FRIDAY
12:15pm: decide to drop Macroeconomics. Now I’m only taking four classes!
1:15pm: Run off with Crimson photographer to Second Time Around, Oona’s, and Great Eastern Trading Company to get audio and video for a slideshow. Photographer is unexpectedly hiliarious; storeowners are sometimes crazy/unstable.
4:30pm: Makeovers at the YWCA. Turns out the women are more impressed by my French manicure skillz than my artful eyeshadow application. I administer white tips on nails ragged, chapped, and worn down to their nubs. The women are very sweet. I am embarrassed by the state of my makeup collection, which is smeared in spilled bronze eyeshadow.
6:30pm: Stop at Kickass Cupcakes in Davis Square for some uh, kickass cupcakes as a birthday gift. I order four, with an extra for myself. I wolf down my mojito cupcake walking back to the T stop. The cream cheese frosting is cut the tang of lime and the center is soaked with rum – enough to warm my throat.
Kickass Cupcakes
10:30pm: Drop off birthday present. Present recipient is inebriated and proceeds to throw up twice, after which she feels better and munches on a corner of a Super Chocolate cupcake. The rest go in the fridge.
12:30pm: I am shooed off the table of of The Advocate by the DJ, who reminds me that it collapsed last time. Time for the Kong!
1am: Mmm, scallion pancakes and scorpion bowls. How much more classic can you get?
SATURDAY
2pm: Time to research in the North End for the Unofficial Guide. I have lunch at La Famiglia Giorgio, which is not really worth the shitty cellphone pictures I took of it. I nosh on lobster ravioli smothered in pink vodka cream sauce and scallop giorgio.
4:33pm: Woah, the Freedom Trail! Woah, tourists! Paul fucking Revere! This feels wrong, somehow. Kind of like touching John Harvard’s foot, you know?
Japanese love their tentacles
8pm: Valentine’s dinner, spontaneously found in Porter Square Exchange Mall at Blue Fin. Stop at Kotobukiya, a Japanese grocery, first.
Kotobukiya
Monkfish liver, duhhh (Does cooking use only mean that it can't be an organ transplant?)
Then, the actual meal, which was expansive, adventurous, and lovely.
Sashimi on a bed of natto (fermented soybean with a bizarrely sticky nature - picking it up results in cobweb-like strings trailing from bowl to plate)
Unagi, my favorite!
Valentine's day sushi platter... the rose stem to the left of the image was secured in a base of wasabi.
Donburi bowl, the roe is fun to eat.
SUNDAY
10am: Work out at the gym, which I’ve failed to do for longer than I’d have liked.
Noon: Do some hair and makeup for the Identities fashion show photoshoot. The nice thing about doing makeup, I’ve realized, is far from making you see all the flaws you should cover up, it makes you see all the little things that make someone beautiful.
Near the end, I hold down the fort while the models are off doing their hip hop shoot. I take photos of myself with my hairspray-assisted hairstyle.
Photobooth: sometimes better for boredom than Facebook.
2:30pm: Off to the Garment District and The Closet for more audio and photos for the audio slideshow with another photographer. This takes way too long.
Me standing in front of the Garment District's shocking pink storefront.
7pm: Crimson exec dinner. People give silly gifts, I watch passively, feel lonely, go back to Crimson and finish editing slideshow. It’s BALLER. Me and the editor do the crossfade. We add background noise. I do voiceovers. He records me screaming “fuck a duck!” incessantly. We laugh. We cry. We mock the interview subjects.
12:45am: Exit the Crimson. Finally.
Here is the fruit of my labor (plus 3 other dedicated people).
This took, uh, 10 solid hours of my life.