Uni – No.1
January 14, 2020
Uni – Boston’s top restaurant according to Boston magazine 2018. The end of our journey and actually our final top 50 meal in Boston before our departure two days later. We couldn’t leave without going to Number 1 – they describe themselves as a contemporary izakaya, which is a Japanese bar that serves drinks and small plates. How can a Japanese restaurant that serves raw fish and street food be number 1? I was sceptical. What do they do to make it that special.
One dish I was determined not to miss was the Uni Spoon – a dish on a spoon which included caviar (Osetra – the good stuff from sturgeon), quail egg yolk and yuzu; yes, that’s it, and at $17 for one mouthful it’s very extravagant but had to be done. Brilliantly rich and yet refreshing with very satisfying bursts in the mouth from both the caviar and the yolk. This was a great start to the meal and completely different from anything we’d ever had before.
I’ve mentioned Clark and spare ribs, so no surprises that we ordered Uni’s, with spicy kabayaki (the sauce normally on eel sushi) and peanuts. I enjoyed them, but the connoisseur says they were not succulent enough but the flavour was good. We sampled several other dishes including Chiang Mai Duck carnitas on scallion pancakes – delicious, can we have more please; and Wagyu beef dumplings which were served in a cheddar dashi (broth). Japanese food with cheddar, who knew that could work. We were certainly not disappointed with our choices at this point.
Two more dishes I have to mention. I’ve always wanted to try Uni (sea urchin) as I’ve heard it’s a delicacy. As the name of the restaurant is Uni I thought this was a good opportunity. We ordered the Maine Uni served with oyster butter, parsnip and n’duja (a pork salami from Italy). This was a great dish, but I have to say I still don’t think I’ve really tried uni – it was a little hidden amongst the other ingredients. Oh well, another time. Our last dish was the Spicy Tuna and Foie Gras Tataki (lightly seared fish) – I love spicy tuna and I love Foie Gras (I know it’s controversial, but it’s so good) and this was fantastic – my favourite dish of the night…and look how pretty it is.
Number one – done.
Boston’s Top 50 – almost. We visited 42 restaurants in one year. Three had closed down and the other 5 we missed because we ran out of time!
What a year we’ve had in Boston (more on that later) and one made all the better for our Top 50 Challenge. We were genuinely excited before every restaurant we visited and we always had something new to look forward to each week.
Do we agree with the order of the Top 50? Well….no, but as the magazine said “that’s part of the fun”. See the next post for our personal top 10 (and why we’ve chosen them) and our most memorable dishes.
