Foodie Asshole

Current Italian Restaurant in Boston Ranking: #2

A friend who'd never been to Boston before was coming to town, and as a matter of course I wanted to take her somewhere in the North End. Neither of us is rich, so I asked around for recommendations for good reasonably priced places. The best-sounding recommendation was for a place called The Daily Catch.

You can see how the bread and oil and wine were served.

We started with the Clams Casino $9.75. They were delicious in the way fried and breaded clams can't help but be.

Aglio Olio - $10.50 for the "Appetizer Portion"

My friend and I were sharing everything of course, and so we decided to get two appetizer portioned pastas, and each, if anything, was more than anyone would need to eat for a meal. This ground squid with garlic and olive oil on squid ink pasta was delicious. The density of flavor in squid ink pasta makes my head shudder with the memory of compacted pleasure. It's just so drenched in olive oil.

Putanesca - Another $10.50 "Appetizer Portion"

This one is pureed olives, anchovy butter, mushrooms, onions and peppers. It was good to get some vegetables in with all the pasta and oil. The pureed olives spread flavor around and cohere all the other flavors together into joyous experience. Also, with this one you get olive oil AND anchovy butter, just in case you were getting tired of only one delicious fat in your pasta. Seriously, the anchovy butter is the shit. Anchovies have redeemed themselves for me in the form of butter, which most things in life could probably do.

I just had to take a picture of the Honey Nut Cheerios box I spied on the shelf back there. When all is said and reviewed, we had a great meal, but I preferred the experience at Giacomo's. The whole cash only/tiny place/anti-fancy dinnerware thing might make some people feel like they're having an "authentic" experience, and I haven't been to that many Italian places in Boston yet, but Giacomo's is also cash only (the Italian places seem to basically have a collective agreement on this point), is bigger, and has nice wine glasses and plates and is in the same price range. For any of these places, you've just gotta go right when they open so that you don't have an hour long (or more) wait.