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So keep walking until Hanover Street ends at the waterfront, turn left, and wander into the Waterfront Cafe. The restaurant/bar sits on the edge of the North End, where the city meets the sea, and has won quiet accolades for its simple Italian-American dishes and relaxed atmosphere. That's exactly what owner Rocco Zagarella envisioned when he opened the 49-seat place six years ago. The North End has plenty of white-tablecloth restaurants with eye-popping wine lists, exposed brick, and pricey entrees, but Zagarella wanted a place with Italian food and pub grub, where ''you can watch the game, shout with your friends, and do what you want to do." Not a bad combination, really. We started with the spicy fried olives ($8), 10 deliciously breaded olives stuffed with gooey cheddar cheese and bits of peppers and mushrooms. Fried olives are a tricky thing; the pungent taste of olives can clash with the doughy breading. But not in this case. The olives weren't overpowering, and the crunchy breading contrasted well with the melted cheese inside. A plate of ring-shaped calamari ($9), however, tasted more of the breading than the squid. Chicken parmesan ($11) came with a thick slab of chicken sauteed with salt, pepper, and virgin olive oil, cooked until golden brown. It was rich and filling and came with a heavy blanket of mozzarella cheese. The accompanying tomato sauce was hearty and homemade, having simmered on a stove for three hours. Another chicken dish, the chicken skewers ($9), were more like chicken breasts on sticks than the thin, jagged pieces of meat you typically get with a dish like this. Zagarella said the meat was dipped in a teriyaki sauce and heated on a grill, but my companion thought the dish was dry and needed some barbecue sauce to liven it up. The French fries with the dish, though, tasted just like potatoes -- which sounds obvious, but think about how many bad fries you've had that tasted of nothing -- and came encased in a light, crisp coating. Waterfront Cafe's 18-inch pizzas ($10, toppings $1 each) are gems. We stuck to the simple stuff -- pepperoni, mushrooms, and green peppers -- and devoured almost all of it. The base of the pizza was thin, not Sicilian-style and thick, and the toppings were among the freshest we've seen. The mushrooms looked as if they had just been sliced, and the green peppers were juicy. Lobster ravioli ($13) came with shredded lobster stuffed in ravioli pillows, swimming in an orange-pink cream sauce with tiny bits of haddock in it. The ravioli was stuffed well, but my companion reported an occasional mysterious crunch. (Zagarella reports that the ravioli comes already stuffed from a supplier.) Skip dessert. It changes with whatever the restaurant has that day. On our visit, we had a fudge chocolate cake ($4) with airy, homemade whipped cream and what tasted like Hershey's chocolate sauce. Service was friendly and low-key, and we knew almost every song on the Top-40 style soundtrack. The restaurant is a good place to watch sports, with 10 televisions and various pub-style oddities: Pictures of famous boxers, life preservers from the Coast Guard station across the street, and neon message boards that scroll menu items and prices. If you're lucky, you can sink into two leather armchairs near the windows and watch the passersby. It's not Hanover Street, but it doesn't need to be. |
Strolling through the North End in search of a place to eat can be a daunting experience. After just a few blocks down Hanover Street, the menus begin to blur, and the lines out the doors are intimidating. The neighborhood serves up some of the city's finest cuisine, but sometimes all you want is a freshly made pizza, a pint of beer, and the Sox game on TV.