prosecco

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The food is certainly art, and there were a couple of tasty plates, but overall I found the highly acclaimed (and priced) o ya to be a disappointment. I would say it was fine, and nothing more. Maybe it was an off night, maybe we were just tired, I just hate when I really look forward to a meal and end up feeling meh about it.

o ya is located in Boston’s Leather District, just outside South Station, and is in an old brick building. They have painted the beams to look like wood, and the inside is sleek, clean, and quite lovely.

o ya Boston image

Our reservation was at the 17 seat chef’s bar. I really enjoy watching food being prepared, and o ya’s chef’s were quite the scene to see. The kitchen and front cooking area were pristinely clean, and we got to see a lot of torching, slicing, and dicing.

o ya chefs bar

To start, I ordered a glass of Sorelle Bronca Prosecco, and my husband had Poochi Poochi Sparkling Sake, our first Sake experience. I didn’t care for it, but he loved it.

While we waited for our variety of dishes to come out, I couldn’t help but take photos of the food waiting for others on the bar. It was artfully prepared, and very photogenic. Tastespotting and Foodgawker, maybe you will like one of these? 😉

o ya

o ya

After peeking at everyone else’s food, we started on our own:

SALMON o ya mayonette, wasabi tobiko, shiso

This was a very bland little dish. The salmon was nicely fatty, but with that fat I would expect something spicy or acidic to contrast with it.

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HAMACHI TARTARE ginger verjus sauce, spiced chile oil

The texture and quality of the fish was perfect, but I was hoping for a bit of spice with the chile oil. Instead, it was overwhelmingly salty.

o ya hamachi

SHRIMP TEMPURA bacon truffle emulsion, chive oil

This was definitely the star of the night. The truffle emulsion was delicious. You can never go wrong with truffles, and the tempura was light and crispy. A bowl of the shrimp tempura, please.

o ya shrimp

SOFT SHELL CRAB

This was also a favorite. o ya does tempura very well.

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CHICKEN YAKITORI celeriac puree, perigord black truffle

While the other dishes we had were, overall, nothing to write home about, it was the chicken that really turned the night. While we understand that it was Poulet Rouge, meant to have a pinkish hue, I doubt that the chicken was supposed to have a giant vein running through it. I am definitely off chicken for awhile. . .

To their credit, o ya took this off of our bill after explaining that many people are put off by the Poulet Rouge. I feel like this is something they should mention when it is ordered. To the untrained eye, it appeared to be nearly raw chicken. The peanut sauce was like any garden variety jarred sauce.

o ya chicken

I expected to and wanted to fall drooling at o ya’s door on my way out. Instead, we left a little hungry and unwilling to try anything else. I don’t like writing negative reviews, but I feel like we hyped up our visit to o ya so much, I couldn’t NOT write about it.

Have you ever had an experience that was the opposite of what you expected?

Don’t forget to enter The Secret Ingredient cookbook giveaway! And I have been without a Friday guest post for awhile. The Friday Foodie Feature doesn’t seem to wrangle up much interest, but I am still interested in sharing a weekly post from a blogger or reader!

Tags: Food, o ya, prosecco, restaurant, sashimi, wine

Have a good Saturday? I hope so! I certainly did. It involved sleeping late, Mad Hectic overnight oats, dog walking at the MSPCA, lunch at Bukhara with an old friend, shopping at Trader Joe’s and Prosecco on the deck. Not too bad for a hot and sunny day, no?

Today I am up on the Cape in Truro attending the Coastal Wine Trail Kickoff event. I love local wine, and I have literally been looking forward to this event since last year.

So today’s post involves a little bit of this and a little bit of that. I hope you don’t mind 😉

First, a favorite, refreshing summer thirst quencher, strawberry-lemon water. Not lemonade, this spa-like drink is literally a pitcher of ice water with slices of strawberries and lemon. The flavors infuse the water, and then you get to eat the strawberries at the end. This is also delicious with cucumbers and lemons. Water infused with some natural flavor is a summer must-have in our house.

strawberries and lemons  

Speaking of summer beverages, I have so many summer wine recommendations that I thought the weekend before Memorial Day would be a perfect time to get started. There was of course my Duca del Frassino boxed wine from Wednesday’s post. I stand by my post in that I think that this is a perfect wine for your Memorial Day barbeque.

If you are looking for a good red that goes well with barbequed meats and the like, I love Zinfandel. I am a red wine drinker year round, and Zinfandels offer that ripe, jammy, fruit forward flavor that has some good body but is still light enough to have with summer dinner. My favorite Zinfandel is from Zichichi Vineyards in the Dry Creek Valley of Sonoma.

Here’s a not so great photo from our last visit to Zichichi. It is a great winery to visit if you are ever in the Dry Creek Valley of Sonoma. I don’t think Zichichi wines are available outside their winery, but I also like Rodney Strong Knotty Vine Zinfandel and DeLoach Forgotten Vine Zinfandel.

Zichichi Winery

2008 Zichichi Old Vine Zinfandel Dry Creek Valley Villa Carlotti Prosecco from Trader Joe's  

I also just discovered a value Prosecco, Villa Carlotti Prosecco, at Trader Joe’s last weekend. Yay for free samples! This Prosecco is about $5 a bottle, and while it is certainly no Veuve Cliquot, it is a yummy bubbly that pairs perfectly with chopped strawberries. It would be perfect for a girls’ night in or a summer brunch.

Prosecco and Strawberry Cocktails   Prosecco and Strawberry Cocktails

I have a bazillion other wine recommendations for summer wines, but I will spare you constant wine chatter. . . for now.

Back to food.

As I mentioned in Friday’s post, part of the Healthworks Blogger Bash swag bag of magic was a bag of Mad Hectic oatmeal, something I have seen around the blog world, and I was SO excited to try it. I am JUST back from an oatmeal hiatus. I really overdid it last year and couldn’t look at oatmeal for awhile! But right now I am loving cool, overnight oats. I mixed about 1/2 cup of my regular oats and grains with this Mad Hectic almond pecan oats mix, soaked it all in some organic milk, and the next morning had overnight oat perfection, which I topped with cacao nibs.

I love the flavor that the Mad Hectic oats brings to the mix! It was nutty and a little like butterscotch! Really yummy, and 840 mg Omega-3 per serving doesn’t hurt either! This kept me filled up through dog walking, all the way to lunch at Bukhara, and I am rarely full. Overnight oats it is!

Mad Hectic Oatmeal Mad Hectic Oatmeal nutrition stats

Finally, I present you with last night’s dinner. We thought about going out, but decided that Prosecco and strawberries went quite well with veggie burgers on “British Muffins” (Trader Joe’s name for them!) and salad topped with tomatoes sauteed in reduced balsamic. Sometimes a relaxing night at home is what a blogger needs.

veggie burgers and salad

After the Coastal Wine Trail kickoff, my night will be devoted to the final episode of Lost.

Who’s with me? What do you think will happen, or what do you want to happen?

Tags: easy meals, Food, oats, prosecco, salad, Sonoma, summer, veggie burgers, wine, Zichichi, Zinfandel

Hello lovelies! It is once again Sunday evening, and instead of sitting at home dreading work, I am out with my hubby at Ten Tables hopefully having a great dinner. I am so tired today, and after walking dogs this morning, am spending the day working on the blog and writing copy for my big work catalog. In case you missed my post on Friday, I joined Twitter, and you can now follow me here:

http://twitter.com/TraveleatloveMM

I need to work on my page, but one thing at a time! I am officially a Twitter addict, and I spent most of the car ride home from Newport on it. Speaking of Newport. . .

We drove down at around 9:30 yesterday morning to make it in time/early for the 12:00 start time of the Food & Wine Magazine sponsored Grand Tasting at the Newport Mansions Food and Wine Festival. On the way, we stopped at one of our favorite bakeries, Green Hills, in the Adams Village neighborhood of Dorchester. If you are looking for real Irish scones, go here. They are amazing and taste just like the ones that we get in Ireland. They make a great cup of tea and a bunch of other delectable baked treats too.

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We arrived in Newport at Easton’s Beach at around 11:30. The festival was so well organized and provided free off site parking and a shuttle bus which made everything easy. It was a GORGEOUS day.

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I was very glad that I wore a jacket in the evening. Brrr!

The Grand Tasting was held at the Marble Mansion, which was only incredible. I can not even imagine the decadent lives that the residents of these mansions had. They are straight out of The Great Gatsby and The House of Mirth, two books that I love.

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The tasting was out back under a giant tent with the most amazing views ever. Table after table featured wine, food, cocktails, event planners, you name it. I was in heaven and a little overwhelmed. Luckily my foodie friend Jill was there too. We started with bubbly, then made our way around for whites and then reds. I had some Mumm Napa which brought back memories of our recent trip. Then stopped for a nibble of cheese. I had a couple of delicious cheeses from Champignon North America, including a creamy, rich cambazola.

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We got a couple of classic St. Germain cocktails and decided to sit outside to enjoy the view for a little bit, and to pace ourselves at this incredible feast.

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Can you even imagine this being your lawn? I could certainly get used to it. . .

After resting for a bit, we went back inside and continued tasting. Overall I would say I tried about 15 wines, ate 3-4 small plates of the most amazing lobster macaroni and cheese ever, a few cups of tuna tartare with a delicious, gingery, chili flavor to it, a few bites of cheese from Kerrygold and Cabot Creamery, some chocolate from Pure chocolate, and a cup of hazlenut gelato from Gelato Giuliana. Oh yeah and a couple of shots of delicious, black coffee from Pierce Bros Coffee. Everything I had was in small portions, perfect to get just a taste. . . or in the case of our repeat visits for the lobster mac and cheese, a few amaaaaazing tastes!

One of the really cool things about the event was the Celebrity Chef area, where Jacques Pepin and Joanne Weir were both stationed at one point or another. I enjoyed browsing through Joanne Weir’s cookbooks while she talked to another event attendee about how great Julia Child was and how much she missed her! It was amazing. . . I can’t even imagine what it must have been like to know and be a colleague of Julia Child.

I grew up watching Jacques Pepin on public TV, and seeing him brought a tear to my eye. I really can remember loving food and cooking SO long ago and watching Jacques and his daughter in the kitchen

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Not the best photo of him, it was crowded!

At the end of the day we discovered the Mionetto table which ended up being our very favorite. For some reason it was not at all crowded, and we got to chat with the helpful and knowledgeable rep while tasting all of the prosecco that he had to offer. I really fell for the gold label prosecco, and I will definitely be hunting it down very soon. It is a really affordable, ultimate celebration bubbly with a nice fruitiness that I think guests with all palates would enjoy. It is very easy to drink 🙂

After the event was over, the hubs and I ended up walking back to get the car, a nice 15 minute walk which led us back to the beach. I was feeling carefree and took my shoes off to walk in the ocean. It was SO warm!

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I just love that space between summer and fall in New England where you just have to be outside, and it is just perfect. I would have gone swimming if I had brought a swimsuit.

We walked on the beach for  bit, saw a wedding about to take place as sun was going down, got a little weepy at this, oohed, aahed, then got in the car for some water and a Pure bar. The Healthy Living Summit swag bag just keeps on giving! 😉

We drove back into town to the hotel where our friends were staying and decided on sushi for dinner. We walked a very short walk from the hotel to the Newport Tokyo House. I had a Kirin Ichiban.

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And then a LOT of sushi. We had this, times two.

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In addition to tempura vegetables and bowls of salted edamame. Honestly, I was still a little hungry after we were done! It was so good, especially the spicy tuna which was given to us in abundance and was very spicy. It was the perfect way to end a day full of culinary delights! I will definitely be attending this event again next year!

Don’t forget about my Get Well Stay Well giveaway which will stay open until Friday evening. Have a relaxing night!

Tags: cheese, chocolate, coffee, Dining out, Food, foodie, Newport, prosecco, sushi, wine

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