5 Craigie Circle
Cambridge, MA
617.576.5444
www.tentables.net
The Boston area, seafood mecca that it is, is tough for vegetarians. So I was excited when this well-regarded Jamaica Plain restaurant opened in Cambridge, and that it had a vegetarian menu. I wasn't so excited after eating there.
The restaurant, which has just ten tables in Jamaica Plain but about 20 in Cambridge, offers a "surprise" vegetarian menu for $28 most nights of the week. (Call first to find out which nights.) It must be ordered by the whole table. My companion and I went for it.
For our first courses we each received a different salad - a roasted beet salad with maytag blue cheese and frisee, and mesculun greens with marcona almonds and shaved manchego. Both were delicious, and I was thrilled to think we might each receive different dishes through each course, giving us the opportunity to try twice the number of plates. Unfortunately, this started and ended with the salads, causing my companion to suggest it appeared more likely they ran out of the blue cheese to make two of the same.The next course was squash soup (above). Tasty, although a bit bland. The soup was followed by ricotta cavatelli with delicata squash, sage, porcini broth, and Parmesan (below). Overall the dish was good and flavorful (pasta was a bit too firm), but with the squash soup proved to be too much emphasis on one vegetable. Again, we wondered if this was a thought-out vegetarian menu, or something pulled together from what was on hand.
Our final course was a chocolate terrine with "Thai basil" (actually regular basil) ice cream and sea salt. The basil overwhelmed the ice cream and did not complement the chocolate. I enjoy sea salt in chocolate, but it has to be done in the right amount so it does not overpower the chocolate. In this case, all I tasted was salt.Service was less than stellar. The sparkling water we ordered never arrived. The check was delivered face up with the dessert.
By the reviews I've read of Ten Tables, it seems to delight a lot of people, but a good place for vegetarians it's not.
