Ten Tables Cambridge - Josh

Last night Jess and I went to the new Ten Tables that just opened in Cambridge. The original Ten Tables (in Jamaica Plain) is really a pretty unique and perfect restaurant, and we’d go to it way more often if we could ever get reservations. As the name implies, it’s tiny. It makes excellent French countryside food at a price that’s lower than any even moderately fancy restaurant in Boston ($9-10 for appetizers <$20 for entrees), and it teems with perfect design choices and small shows of generosity. Unlike almost every other restaurant in Boston, they start each meal with an amuse bouche[1] (typically a light, flavorful soup), and last time we went, their $45 tasting menu included that, three savory courses, a tiny cheese course (goat cheese on a toothpick with a hazelnut), sorbet, and desert. The service at JP has always been low-key but precise, and watching the balletic efficiency of the 4-5 people who work in the restaurant at any time (2 chefs in the (very) open-kitchen and 2-3 servers/hosts on the floor) is always an impressive side-show. The original Ten Tables is a very very good restaurant that becomes a great one by the way that all the little pieces fit together to provide an experience that transforms something well-done to something wonderful. 

 

This is all in the way of trying to explain why the new Ten Tables in Cambridge was so disappointing.[2] It seemed like a generic good restaurant instead of something special. This was more due to service and setting than to food. Interestingly, the restaurant took over the space of another one we’d been to before (Craigie Street Bistrot, which has gotten bigger and nicer digs on Main Street), so it was neat to see the same space done a new way. Craigie Street Bistrot had very subtle plain decoration (beige walls, a couple of rustic French framed posters). Ten Tables seemed more formal and felt more deliberately designed. Dark wood, dark walls, lots of candle-light (though not on the tables). I liked the orchids they had as centerpieces for the tables, but I didn’t like how little light was in the restaurant. It felt like they were trying to force a romantic feel that they didn’t quite achieve.

 

The restaurant has only been open for seven weeks and the waiter seemed inexperienced. Within ten minutes of sitting down, he asked us twice if we were ready to order. The second time we said we were interested in the four course tasting menu, asked what it was (they won’t tell you), and said we’d like to do it if Jess could have hers without fish (which she doesn’t eat). He told us he’d have to check with “Chef”[3], which we were surprised by given that they also offer a vegetarian tasting menu (which would seem to make substitutions pretty easy). He came back and told us that the fish couldn’t be taken out and immediately asked if we were ready to order. Later, when Jess wanted a Diet Coke, he reported that Ten Tables (apparently takings the pretentiousness of its Cambridge locale to heart) doesn’t serve soda and only offered an alternative when Jess asked (they only have iced tea). All small stuff, but it definitely removes the charm from Ten Tables Cambridge and reduces the appeal to the well-priced food, which was very good but not really spectacular.

 

I started with a fluke crudo (with chives, fennel and grapefruit). I thought this was well-done but unexceptional. The raw fluke had a subtle, clean taste, and the chives and grapefruit were a good combination (particularly with the olive oil), and the dish looked very pretty. At the same time, I thought the dish was a bit bland and could have used some salt.[4] My second course was the best of the night: boudin blanc sausage (basically a combination of chicken and pork, as I understand it) with earthy veggies (I think turnips and carrots) and little doughy pieces that must be spatzle and deliciously soaked up the flavors of the dish. I also like how Ten Tables sausage tends to be coarser grained and looser than what you can find pre-made, because I think it’s a neat texture. I think that type of rustic, earthy deliciousness is what Ten Tables does best, but for that to really stand out as exceptional it needs a perfection of ambiance that wasn’t present when we went.

 

To accompany those courses, we had a wine that, to say the least, didn’t work out as expected. It was a half bottle of a Rex Hill pinot noir from Oregon, and we couldn’t figure out whether it was corked and had gone bad or if we just didn’t like it.[5] The final course I had was the chocolate terrine with Thai basil ice cream and sea salt. I’d had it the last time I went to Ten Tables (with Jess and our friends Britney and Greg); I basically never get the same dish twice, but the first time I had it I thought it was basically perfect and worth getting again. I loved the idea of basil with chocolate (since I thought it was just a more exotic version of combining chocolate with mint), and the gooey texture of the terrine (somewhere between a cake and a ganache) went perfectly with the crunch of the sea salt, and the harsh saltiness of the salt, the richness of the chocolate, and the funky vegetableishness of the ice cream were perfectly balanced flavors. The Cambridge version was good, but a bit off. There was very little salt, and too little ice cream for the chocolate, so it didn’t quite have the same balance (though it was still pretty good nonetheless, which basically sums up the meal -- good, not great).

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[1] Perfect from a kitchen perspective because they’re so easy to ladle out and cheap to make; perfect for me because getting something unexpected, tasty, and free makes me happy to a completely irrational extent..

[2] Disappointing compared to my high expectations of the original. If I had never been to Ten Tables JP, I would have thought the new restaurant was perfectly good (not great) and would probably never get around to going back to it (always somewhere new to try or great to go to). As is, I’ll give it another shot since it’s so convenient and the original is so good.

[3] I hate that affectation; I feel like it’s somewhat goofy when high school football players say things like “Coach told me to run ten laps for dating his daughter; that’s typical Coach for ya,” but I find it completely annoying and pretentious when a waiter says, “I’ll have to ask Chef about substituting out the fish course.”

[4] This was actually true of all the dishes I had at Ten Tables, including dessert (it’s not me being crazy, the dessert listed sea salt as one of the ingredients and had like five flakes).

[5] Jess took the first view and I thought the second. She’s probably right, but I didn’t think it was that terrible, just a little thin, astringent, and unsubtle. My understanding was that you would definitely know if you had a corked bottle of wine, but embarrassingly, maybe I’m just really dumb and unobservant.