Donato Enoteca

I love happy accident discoveries! We were on our way to another restaurant... when we found out it was closed on Sundays (why do restaurants do that? They're just killing their business). We were determined to eat ASAP, so we Yelped furiously and found a place nearby.

Our first appetizer was grilled calamari--remember, if you want fried calamari, it's "calamari fritti" in Italian. I really liked this--it's so tender--but they cooked it so that the calamari's juices stay inside. This makes it taste like the ocean, which I love, but it can be really fishy.

Our second appetizer was braised wild boar bruschetta, which was basically a really gamey pulled pork. The boar was really cooked really simply--with a lot of tomato--and it was very tender, but I wish the bread was thicker and a little bit charred, so it would be a little tougher. The bread was slightly toasted but way too soft, and got really soggy from the boar.

I got the bigoli pasta with oxtail. I love the texture of this pasta--it's like tagliatelle, but thicker and coarser. This super dense texture is so unusual, but I wish more restaurants would use it! The oxtail was really tender, but it was all in shreds, so you get smatterings of its flavor throughout the pasta. Although it might not be as satisfying without big chunks of meat, it makes the dish a lot lighter, but you still get just as much flavor.

My boyfriend got the buckwheat pasta with mushrooms. The pasta is in large ribbons, which really accentuates the grittiness of the buckwheat--it's hard to grind buckwheat very finely, but the grit wouldn't be very apparent in thinner noodles, like soba. The mushroom flavor was good, but I didn't find that it was really different from that of other mushroom pastas.

Apparently this is how my boyfriend takes food photographs.
It's "artistic."

I was really torn between two desserts... the tiramisu and chocolate fondant. I think I made the right choice! All tiramisus are really flavorful, but a big problem I have with a lot of them is that the cake gets really soggy from sitting in the espresso all day and then it all becomes all one moist, too-soft texture. This one, though, wasn't soaked through with espresso, and each layer was nice and separated.

Donato Enoteca
1041 Middlefield Rd
http://www.donatoenoteca.com/

Martins West Gastropub

Whenever my boyfriend and I go to dinner, we do this thing where we pretend we're Gordon Ramsay in Hell's Kitchen--we say things like "It's dry!", "Touch it! It's raw!", and "It's rubber!". However, we have been to Martins West quite a few times, and we can never say anything really bad about the food here. They have a perfect track record; we've gotten scallops, three types of fish, chicken, duck, beef, and pork, and everything is consistently perfectly cooked. This is so rare, but because I have tried so many things from this restaurant, I can say with confidence that you'll love whatever you try. Just keep in mind though, these dishes are quite small, so three entrees are just enough for two people.

A "gastropub" is a pub/bar with good food, as opposed to greasy, disgusting burgers and wings. Martins West is supposed to be Scottish--they serve dishes like Scotch eggs, fish and chips, and sticky toffee pudding--but I would classify it more as New American, just because of the lack of ethnicity of most of the dishes. The Scottish aspect of their dishes come in their choice in grains (lots of oats and barley, because it is too damp in Scotland to grow wheat) and cured meats.

Our mini appetizer was Scotch eggs--quail eggs wrapped in thin slices of sausage, then fried. So, basically, three of the best things ever.

Our first entree was scallops with pork belly. The scallops were perfectly cooked, but it's not the best scallop dish I've ever had. I liked the pork belly (although it might be too fatty for some people) but I thought it was strange to pair it with the scallops--if you ate them together in one bite, it would be half fat and half something really lean and a little sweet, the idea of which is really disgusting. Underneath the proteins is a cabbage and mustard seed slaw, which I felt like went well with both proteins, but it still didn't make sense to put them together on one plate. Either way, all the components of the dish were well cooked and it tasted really nice--I was just confused.

Our next dish was salmon with zucchini. I found this dish to be really balanced; the salmon was a little saltier than I would've liked, but the zucchini and squash puree were very sweet and creamy. What I really like about Martins West is the quality of their ingredients; fish skin acts as a barrier between a fish's body and any surrounding pollutants, so it's bound to trap some nasty stuff. But the skin on this salmon was just fatty (and salty from the seasoning), without the usual bitter flavor, which really points to high-quality ingredients sourced from responsible, sustainable farming practices.

We were still hungry, so halfway through the meal we ordered steak too. The meat was cooked to a perfect medium rare, and I like that it's a small, manageable portion, as opposed to a large, 16-oz. slab of meat. It's garnished with artichokes and the most perfect potato wedges; so crispy, moist inside, and really strong potato flavor.

In my previous post about Incanto, I mentioned that I am really critical about desserts; if I'm going to pay for something, I want it to be amazing and something I can't make myself, and I think Martins West really sets a high standard for desserts. Our first dessert was sticky toffee pudding. Unlike the one from The Smith (which was really, really bad), this one was more like a cake, and a little drier and fluffier. It's not very sweet, but it does have a rich toffee and date flavor, which was absolutely perfect.

My boyfriend got olive oil poundcake with strawberries. The cake itself was perfect; rich, dense, and buttery, and the crust was really crispy. It comes with strawberry sorbet (homemade), which was really light and fruity--not overly sour, like store-bought sorbet can be.

I highly recommend Martins West for really good food and desserts that's more reasonably priced than other restaurants that serve similar food. It's also the perfect place to test how much your boyfriend loves you, because there's a TV that plays basketball--if your boyfriend can stand to not check the score for the entire meal, congratulations, he loves you a lot.

Martins West Gastropub
831 Main Street
http://martinswestgp.com/