Boston Common - Niche Media - A side of Boston that's anything but common.
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TASTE back to the future TOP RESTAURANTS ALL OVER BOSTON ARE EMBRACING THE NEW NEW ENGLAND CUISINE. BY VICTORIA ABBOTT RICCARDI At City Landing, chef/owner Bill Brodsky has exploded the chicken pot pie. "All cooking is cyclical, and to look forward you often need to look back." 70 Dinner at Moxy in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, has been rebooted to include grass-fed beef brisket, Napa cabbage wraps, crisp potatoes, and pickled carrots and onions. "This trend is in part driven by the local-producer movement," says Frank McClelland of L'Espalier and Apple Street Farm in Essex. "People are taking more time to understand food, and the Internet has provided more information about ways to source ingredients from the backyard, woods, and farm." Indeed, when it comes to cooking with quality ingredients, New England has extraordinary seafood, farm animals, cheeses, and produce, and this cutting-edge crop of chefs is using these heritage ingredients to offer diners a taste of the past, but with a modern, signature spin. Deconstructed "Chicken Pot Pie" "I wanted a cool way to do roast chicken that would be comforting yet sophisticated," says City Landing's Brodsky. His revamped chicken pot pie includes a crispy rectangle of pressed, seared chicken set in an herbal chicken gravy dotted with multicolored beets and carrots, Brussels sprouts, and fingerling potatoes, garnished with a puff pastry square. City Landing, 255 State St., 617-725-0305; citylanding.com continued on page 72 PHOTOGRAPHY BY BILL BRODSKY I ronically, the most progressive restaurant trend involves embracing the past. Heston Blumenthal (of The Fat Duck fame) is reimagining old British cuisine at his newest restaurant, located in London. Sean Brock is reinterpreting Southern classics at Husk Restaurant in Charleston, South Carolina, and Grant Achatz has channeled Auguste Escoffier in 1906 at Next in Chicago. Boston is no exception. Using a Pilgrim's pantry, many of the city's top chefs have popped the collar, so to speak, on Yankee classics, creating fresher, lighter, more personal versions of Fanny Farmer favorites like fish chowder, New England boiled dinner, johnnycakes, and brown bread. "All cooking is cyclical, and to look forward you often need to look back," says Bill Brodsky, chef/owner of City Landing. "As a modern-day —BILL BRODSKY chef, it's always fun to pay homage to those nostalgic dishes but in a creative way." At Island Creek Oyster Bar, the oyster stew gets an aromatic boost with the addition of leek, fennel, and chives. Bondir ups the grainy goodness of its johnnycakes with Rhode Island white flint cornmeal, while the New England BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM 070-073_BC_SC_LocalFlavorTrends_Spring13.indd 70 2/12/13 11:57 AM