Troquet

We saw the writeup of Troquet (in the theater district) in the _Globe_ a month or so ago, and thought it looked like a good possibility for a "special occasion" dinner, of which, by a fortunate coincidence, we had one coming up.

The short answer: we were right.

The "gimmick" here is that they have a substantial number (25-30, at a guess) of wines by the glass, and the menu is arranged with the wines in the middle, with the appetizers on the left and the entrees on the right, each one lined up with 3 or 4 wines that the chef recommends as good choices with the corresponding dish. In general each dish is matched with a single varietal. (They also have a separate list of bottles, which we didn't even look at.) You can get either a 2-ounce taste or a 4-ounce glass of any of the wines.

This setup is good if (like us) you're moderately ignorant about wine, since it makes it easier to choose, assuming you trust the restaurant's recommendations (and I see no reason not to). I expect it's also nice for a more knowledgeable wine-drinker, who has a lot of choices available, and can mix and match to suit him/herself.

But this is all secondary, right? What about the FOOD?

We were very happy with everything that we ordered, and there were several other tempting choices on the menu. I'm not going to remember all the details here, but I'll do my best, John started with diver scallops in some sort of green pistou, which was accompanied by tiny very sweet fresh tomatoes. (Recommended wines: Chardonnay.) He was very happy with it (I tested it, and I also approve.) I had a salad described as "hazelnut ch�vre tempura" (recommendation: sauvignon blanc), which I ordered in part because it didn't look like anything I was likely to find elsewhere. It turned out to be a fair-sized mound of ch�vre enclosed in a crust of lightly-fried batter, topped with greens and chopped hazelnuts and surrounded with slices of red and golden beet, all in a light vinaigrette. Very nice, and not as filling as one might expect.

John's entree was roast suckling pig with glazed root vegetables (cabernet sauvignon), a meltingly tender and richly-flavored hunk of pork. I was tempted by that, but settled instead on veal loin with porcini mushrooms (merlot). Nice pink tender slices of veal in (I presume) a red wine reduction; not a whole lot of vegetables (a bit of salsify, I think, and something pureed), but, well, my appetizer was a salad.

Is there room for dessert? Yes there is. At our request they delayed taking our dessert order for a while -- we like to wait and let the meal settle. We split a chocolate fondant (to die for) and a frozen almond mousse sitting in a blueberry compote. The latter, although nice, was in my view a slight miscalculation: the mousse was very delicately flavored, and if you got it and the blueberries (or even their sauce) in the same mouthful, the berries dominated completely.

Entree portions were modest in size -- not tiny by any means, but the people who think "value" is measured by how much they're paying per pound would be annoyed. Myself, I like not being served more food than I can comfortably eat.

They also served very nice crusty rolls, one a time but as many as we wanted (that's so rare these days) -- it was nice to have half a roll left to soak up the extra sauce from my veal! Oh, and *unsalted* butter!

The room is fairly small -- long and narrow -- and feels a bit cramped. We had a table right at the front window, facing out onto Boylston Street, which was nice because we were insulated from the rest of the room; I suspect that further back it could be a bit noisy, but we certainly had no difficulty in conducting a conversation, which can be a problem at an awful lot of restaurants these days. Service was good without being obtrusive (although they never filled water glasses -- fortunately we never emptied them); they had enough staff to cover what was essentially a full house the whole time we were there.

One negative, which they really ought to fix: the nice artistic coffee cups whose handles are too small to get a finger through. I found that if I jammed my index finger against the hole and grasped firmly with thumb above and middle finger below I was able to hold my cup steady, but it didn't feel secure. I wish we had thought to mention this to the staff, just in case nobody else has.

It's pricy, but I've been to significantly more expensive places, some of them nowhere near as good. Total for two appetizers, two entrees, four 4-ounce glasses of wine, two desserts, coffee and tea, tax and tip: [John, if you're reading this, avert your eyes]

$170. I'd definitely go back.

Troquet is a great restaurant.  I've been there 3 or 4 times.  On my first visit I had the daily special which was pheasant - it was great - unfortunately it wasn't available on any of my other visits - although the rabbit and veal that I had there were also quite good.  Usually I get the wines by the glass but on one occaison when there were 5 of us we ordered bottles - they had some excellent old wines at very reasonable prices.  The owners used to run Uva which also focussed on the wines.

By the way, I just picked Troquet as my favorite restaurant in the online Zagat survey.