Another delectable dinner with food and wine as luscious as the dialogue, the monthly meeting of the Gloucester Glitterati is the highlight of my culinary and cultural month - and I do spend a lot of time feeding my hunger for these, my life's pursuit of all things delicious and stimulating.This month's dinner was at my personal local "go to" the Franklin Cape Ann. Having worked here as one of many, many stops along the path in my lifetime of food and beverage service, the vibe has always felt right for me here, and the relationship I have with Maria Seniti Figurido, the manager-come-owner, a wife and mother, but once my 25 year old boss regaling me with tales of Boston nightlife as I slid in sideways with the harried look that young mothers never quite shake, I feel like the Franklin and I, Maria, my husband, her siblings, the kids and many of the staff, we've grown up together here over the 13 years the martini glass has hung above their Main Street threshold. I have an affinity for this place.
Maria couldn't be here, presumably because she has these little people now taking the place of her chic city jaunts, yet her attendance and her attention was felt, with all that tricky cosmopolitan neighborhoody familiarity that makes the Franklin a special kind of regulars place.Chilled Ronin Prosecco, compliments of the house, was waiting for us to arrive. The most attentive server, Grace spent her evening waiting patiently for the rare pauses in the absolutely electrified current of conversation about projects, honey, Las Vegas, Julia Child, Cambridge, Scrimshaw, craft beer, power tools, potato salad, teenagers, haircuts and Amsterdam. I'd suggest we do this more than once a month, there's always so much to catch up on, but then, that would take away from the time we need for the "doing" of these things.A crisp and light Sepp Mosser Gruener Veltiner accompanied our choice of Lobster dumplings with an Asian dipping sauce, the zucchini matchstick salad with generous slices of Pecorino cheese (I make this one at home weekly) and toasted almond in a sweet balsamic gastrique and the Franklin's tuna tartar with citron blanc , greens and crisp little toasts which left us guessing about just what makes this such a signature dish - is it miso paste? I'll ask, though I'd guess it's not an answer I'll get.
Between courses we caught up on the amazing projects and adventures of our hip little membership. Melissa is making baskets and endeavoring to make her own scrimshaw from butcher-bought cow bones. This seems that much less exotic and hard to imagine after a few anecdotes about her life in church, as a hippy Eurotraveler and on a boat. We all agreed, she can really do anything, and has already lived perhaps twice the adventures of one person's lifetime.Heather gave us the back story on her recent piece on Julia Child, and delighted us with her own personal moments as a favorite server to the unassuming, positively human and real culinary noisemaker. Julia once introduced Heather, quite casually, to Robert Mondavi, surveying her as to her opinion on how one might successfully convey quality in the craft of wine making when one is able to produce wine at the volume of house Mondavi. She waited, with great interest, for Heather's contribution to resolving this small problem. Just like Julia.
For our entree course we chose the tangy , light and delicately crunchy Franklin fish taco and the creamy cod with oyster mushrooms. This is my idea of the perfect"surf and turf", the pescavor's alpha entree - fish that eats like steak. It's a good thing the dish is generous, because despite the multiple selections that preceded this our final course, the forks at the Gloucester Glitterati dinner table made quick work of the cod.  |
| l-R Jennifer Goulart Amero, Melissa Abbott, Heather Atwood and Laurie Lufkin |
One of the coolest things about being Kelly Larosa is putting on beer events. Beer dinners and tastings are trumping the wine dinner scene over and over and it's not unusual for the pairing recommendations on a restaurant's menu to now include both wine AND beer. I'd say it's a "his and hers" phenomenon, but the truth is, chicks drink craft. There are even women-specific craft beer drinking and discussion groups, like MAPintGirlsNightOut, for example. Hit them up on twitter. I guess we don't have to pretend we are going to book club anymore to get out on a weeknight for drinks with the ladies, because beer is now it's own reason to have a club.
Kelly is an educator and a fireball of an influencer. She knows her beer and she knows how to get people interested in what she's into - and she's a successful Craftwallah as a result. I attended her 6th BrewFest this weekend at the Amesbury Sports Park on Saturday, an event that she manages to double on an annual basis. This year's event had 175 different kinds of beer from the big dogs at Sam Adams some newcomers like Slumbrew and Blue Hills, and some old boys reinvented - like Henry Weinhard's and Narragansett. The displays were first class, vivid and fun, complete with Oktoberfest hats and some atypical Okoberfest tarts (the pictures will explain). And the verdant background of the manicured fields and tubing hill made for gorgeous photos.
Parking was included (sweet), and ticket holders and passersby were welcomed into parking lot come allee' Farmer's Market abuzz with shoppers and live, jammy acoustic bluegrass.. A table outside the tasting tent sold WGBH memberships, event tshirts and nifty canvas shopping bags for carrying your loot both inside the event and outside, when you picked up some of the treats you'd tasted under the tent. Whoever rolled this plan out did it with a real eye for the details. 
Unexpectedly, yet truthfully not hard to believe, we ran into some fellow foodie friends at the entrance to the tent - which translates into more patient-because-in-the-company-of-dudes husband time while wives chat and mill. It also meant triple the number of people tasting and running back to exclaim ," you have to try... ".
Favorites of the day included an amazing Asian inspired free range sirloin with onion relish from Longwood events, a sweet and spicy roasted red pepper bisque from Upstairs on the Square, Pete and Jerry's Heirlooms Egg custard with pear compote - made by the folks at community serving, an organization out of Jamaica Plain that delivers beautifilly presented meals to terminally ill shut ins and their families - giving nourishment and the joy of eating together back to families in crisis.
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