Restaurant Week Foray #1: The Left Bank

Restaurant week is upon us on once again in the Boston area. It is nice to check out more places "on the cheap". This time, we traveled out of the city to a place called The Left Bank located in the Stonehenge Inn in Tyngsboro, MA close to the border of NH. It is positioned as one of the hidden restaurant jewels in the area. It boasts a large wine selection and a Wine spectator award of excellence. We have friends that live close by, so it seemed like a good choice.

They have a very extensive wine list of primarily "A" list wines. The wine list seemed more "vertical" than usual. They have all the usual big name suspects from California and Bordeaux. The red Burgundy selection was very small for some reason. The Spanish selection was also a little light. The Australia section seemed ok, but I can't remember. In the interest of being fair, I looked at the red wine selection only. Their while wine list might have been different.

If you are looking to do a vertical tasting of many high-end wines, this is the place to go. If you're looking for lots of variety and some of the new players, you will probably not find it here.

The RW menu consisted of either Ceasar salad or potstickers for the starter, Steak, Salmon or Fetuccini for the second course, and Sorbet or a Banana spring roll for dessert. Out of the four of us, three stayed with the RW menu, and one went off-menu. I went for the Caesar salad, the steak, and the spring roll.

The salad course was very good. The truffle oil gave the salad an extra bit of earthiness to go with the Parmesan cheese. I'm not a big fan of Romaine lettuce ribs, and they kept them to a minimum. The Steak was undercooked on all three cases. We ordered medium-rare, medium well and medium. Every single one of them came one-notch back (medium-rare was rare, and so on). The accouterments were very meager for the amount of steak, which was a little disappointing. Being a "veteran" of RW outings and this is the one part where restaurants don't skimp. I wasn't looking for buffet portions, but something that matched the amount of steak would have been nice. It just seemed odd.

The other thing that was a disappointing was the wait staff. They simply disappeared in between . The place seemed busy, but not full by any means. Maybe they're not used to having that volume of people at a given time, or maybe they thought that we were not going to order anything else since we ordered from the prix fixe menu. They probably would have done more drink business with us if they stopped by from time to time. Their loss, I suppose.

Would I go back? sure. It is tough justifying the trip for me having similar places in the city, but if you live in the area, it is certainly a good place to visit.

Later,