A "smack" in the wallet

BESITO
46 S. Main St. (Blue Back Square)
West Hartford

As an upscale Mexican franchise, Besito is a restaurant not entirely in keeping with the spirit of this blog. Our aim has been to discuss restaurants that are off the beaten path, and Besito, newish, trendy and almost always crowded at its West Hartford Center location, certainly isn't that. However, the opportunity arose for us to go, and we decided to appease our public's clamoring for a new post. (Wink, wink.)

The bar at Besito

Although neither of us had been very impressed by previous experiences at Besito, we tried to approach this most recent visit with an open mind. And walking in the front door is indeed pleasing: the simple white walls, heavy iron chandeliers, and flickering candlelight are classy. At around 8 pm on a Saturday night, both the bar and the restaurant were bustling with a well-dressed clientele whose ages appeared to range from mid-twenties to early sixties. Besito is easy on the eyes, for sure. However, we were then immediately put off by the service staff greeting us with "Hola" and heavily pronouncing the h. It's probably worth mentioning that one of us is fluent in Spanish and something of a professional appreciator of Hispanic cultures. We're trying hard not too be snobby about this, but we think we're justified in saying that this cutesy and phonetically dubious welcome didn't reflect the rustic elegance of the restaurant itself. The music--Caribbean salsa and bachata, not the classical guitar one might expect given the ambience or indeed Besito's website--also struck an off-note. Then, once we were seated at our table, our waiter continued the pseudo-Hispanic shtick, addressing one of our party as "señorita" and asking for her ID when she was obviously the most senior of all present. Nor did we appreciate his transparent attempts to upsell us by recommending the costlier items on the menu, before he asked us what we actually wanted. This superficially unctuous service grated on our nerves for most of the evening, particularly because we felt that more important details were overlooked. We were ready to order our dinner within five minutes of being seated, but we were made to wait twenty minutes to actually place the orders, trying to find space on the table to put our huge menus. The division of service among staff was also strangely rigid: the ingratiating waiter was apparently there to take our order (though not in a timely fashion) and annoy us, while a second, rather saturnine server made guacamole tableside, another brought us our drinks, still another brought out our dinners, yet another brought our second round of drinks (but did not clear the empty glasses), and a sixth person bussed our empty dishes. The result was many interruptions and odd lapses in service that could have been avoided with a smaller but better-trained service staff.

Blue corn and crab-crusted grouper

The food was good enough to prevent the mediocre service from infecting our otherwise enjoyable evening. Besito's menu is kind of nouveau Mexican: fresh guacamole made tableside, tamales, enchiladas and tacos are all given a makeover, and the ingredients, from what we could taste, are fresh and high-quality. We felt that the menu was superbly balanced; there was a variety of new and unusual (for Connecticut) dishes that would tempt adventurous eaters, but also enough familiar dishes on offer to make most diners feel comfortable. The guacamole was delicious (grumpy masher aside), and a tamale de elote (corn tamale with seared shrimp) was a mouth-watering combination of sweet, succulent shrimp and savory, creamy corn. The enormous house salad was surprisingly good--the blood orange vinaigrette and crunchy jicama saved it from being ordinary--and fed three of us. For dinner, we chose a lobster enchilada in a delicately sweet tomato cream sauce; tacos of beef short ribs; and the star of the three dishes, blue corn and crab-crusted grouper with both a corn sauce and a pumpkin seed sauce. The portions were generous and the flavor combinations were very good--creamy, savory, sweet and spicy were well-balanced in all of the dishes that we tried. Besito's drink menu is worthy of mention as well: standouts were a house Patron margarita with pomegranate and tangerine juice, a tequila mojito, and a lager cocktail with tabasco, worcestershire sauce and lime juice. We were too full to order dessert, but our cravings for sweet to end the meal were satisfied by churros (fried dough sticks with sugar and cinnamon) served with the check and on the house.

$12 guacamole

And about that check. This meal for three people, with three appetizers, two rounds of drinks and three entrees, came to $178 before tip, or about $60 per person. We at Hartfoodie don't balk at paying triple digits for an excellent meal; however, was Besito that meal? The guacamole was excellent, but was it $12 worth of excellent? We feel that, in the end, Besito doesn't offer good value. The food was very good--but if you have a craving for good Mexican food, you could head down Farmington Avenue to Monte Albán and spend a less than a third of what we spent at Besito. We feel that most people, when they spend nearly $200 on dinner, expect a near-transcendent culinary experience, with exceptional, professional service and outstanding food that should be remembered long after the evening is over. Our dinner, though enjoyable, was not that experience. 

Shish-ful thinking

Shish Kebab House of Afghanistan
36 LaSalle Rd., West Hartford

We keep forgetting to bring our camera 

with us--pics are from a cell phone. Sorry.

I dimly remember going to the Shish Kebab House of Afghanistan in West Hartford on a high school field trip. My overwhelming impression of that first encounter with this restaurant was one of utter embarrassment as my classmates behaved like animals. I have no memory of the food, and had even forgotten that the restaurant existed until it was suggested that we go there for dinner. And even though this Afghan restaurant has been on LaSalle Road in West Hartford Center since 1988, and we've walked by it hundreds of times, it had never occurred to us to eat there and no one we know had ever said, "Hey, let's go get Afghan food." So we figured that, given its longevity, maybe the Shish Kebab House was a gem hidden in plain sight.

When you first walk in to the restaurant, you have to go up a flight of stairs to get to the bar area, which is pleasant in its way, with high ceilings, ornate chandeliers and atmospheric sitar music. The main dining area is set well away from the bar (the space is deceptively large and multi-leveled). The decor, while dated and not particularly chic, is muted enough to be inoffensive, and the many rugs on the floors, seating areas and walls give the expected "exotic" air. (Are they Persian rugs? We don't know. We do food.) We were amused, in the way that only over-educated people can be, by a plaque announcing Hartford Magazine's "Best of Hartford" award to the restaurant in the category of "Ethnic (Other)."

The menu promises much. The drink list is impressive. We appreciated the unusual martini and mixed drink list featuring exotic-sounding homemade syrups, and we were surprised to find wines like Malbec, Carmenere, Blanc de Blanc and even sake on the menu. The dinner menu also gave us much to think about. We were tempted by the descriptions of spice-perfumed meats and herb-laced vegetables, but a little disconcerted by the offerings of salmon and swordfish on a "traditional" Afghan menu... isn't Afghanistan a land-locked country? We can't speak with much confidence about anything Afghan, but we can say with almost total certainty that salmon is not a food native to the culture. After much debate, we decided to sample pretty much everything that caught our eye: pea soup, ashak (spinach and onion dumpling covered with chopped beef, yellow lentils, tomato and yogurt), beef shammi kebab, leg of lamb kebab with brown rice and spinach, and a vegetable platter of pureed pumpkin, potato in tomato sauce, eggplant with yogurt and mint, and spinach rice.

As we waited for our food and drinks to arrive, we munched on a flat bread--again, we don't know what this is called--that had a naan-like texture and a tang reminiscent of sourdough. Our drinks disappointed slightly: the Dark and Stormy was mostly dark and not enough stormy, and the homemade cardamom syrup featured in the voluptuously named Scarlett Johanssen was overpowered by sweet pomegranate juice. The appetizers were very generously portioned--probably their most redeeming attribute. The pea soup was vaguely tomato-y and insipid, and the unfortunate-looking shammi kebab, although it did come with a fresh-tasting sauce, had a sinewy texture. The ashak was arguably the best of the three due to its unique combination of flavors: a savory spinach filling contrasted nicely with a bright, tangy yogurt, complemented by the slight sourness of dry mint.

Ashak

Shammi kebab--hard to see, because it was dark,

but it kinda looked like a turd.

Our entrees were also hit-and-miss. The lamb kebab was nicely seared and full of lamb flavor, but we felt it needed more spice or marinade to kick it up a notch; the spinach that we ordered with it looked and tasted like it came out of a can. On the vegetable platter, the pumpkin puree was too sweet and not savory enough, while the eggplant was cooked to near-mush and the potato was completely forgettable. However, the spinach rice was delicious, with a tender, moist texture. The brown rice was similarly textured but somewhat less flavorful.

Up until this point, we hadn't paid much attention to the service, which usually means that the waitstaff are doing their jobs adequately. But as we waited for over 15 minutes for a server to clear our plates, we reflected on other, smaller oversights--a tardy welcome at the host station; a waitress forgetting to clear our appetizer plates before attempting to serve our entrees; an obtrusive filling of water glasses; the noticeable absence and, later, apparent disappearance of our main server. By the time she brought our check, we were anxious to leave.

Perhaps our hopes were too high. But between inattentive service, mediocre food and questionable value (we paid almost $100 for this meal), we are left wondering why the Shish Kebab House of Afghanistan is still in business--especially in a city where so many other great restaurants can be found.

Pho sho

PHO 206
206 Park Rd., West Hartford

On an idyllic late summer evening, one of us had a craving for pho, the Vietnamese meat and noodle soup. (We should say right here that we are not experts in pho, or in anything else food-related; we just like food. So if we're not accurate in our descriptions, and it bothers you, um, too bad. Write your own blog. Or just refer to Wikipedia for a more detailed definition of pho.) So we went to Pho 206, knowing nothing about it except that it was the closest Vietnamese restaurant in the area.

Walking into Pho 206 is kind of like walking into someone's living room--wood paneling, dated carpet, lots of plants (cacti, bamboo), melon-colored accent paint, and a small fish tank in the back where enormous fish fight each other for food. We should point out that we found none of this off-putting. It looks exactly as a neighborhood pho shop should look: comfortable, unpretentious, and homey.

And the food--oh, the food! We ordered shrimp fresh rolls, wrapped in cool rice paper with basil and sprouts. The accompanying spicy, smooth peanut sauce gave them heat and a delicate savory-ness that complemented the sweet freshness of the rolls. Next, we ordered beef pho, one regular and one spicy, which arrived with the usual plate of condiments: basil, sprouts, chili pepper, and lime. We added hoisin and sriracha from the tray of sauces already on the table (which included fish sauce and soy sauce as well), but the pho really needed nothing to boost its flavor. The broth was fragrant with ginger and basil, light and perfect on a cool summer evening; the tender beef and deeper notes of umami in the broth, rich, satisfying and almost indescribable, had us both thinking that this would also be the perfect dinner on a cold, dark winter night. The spicy version of this pho had all the same virtues with more intense heat that cleared our sinuses and left our noses running (in the most pleasant way possible). Next to these harmonious flavors, we almost didn't notice the rice noodles, which were perfectly cooked and added structure to the brothy mix--even though they did cause a little chopstick trouble for one of us. We were so excited about the pho that we didn't remember to take a picture of it until we were almost done with it... so, no visual aid here, sorry.

We were so enthralled with the pho that we almost forgot about our next course, but the waitress was kind enough to wrap our leftover pho for us so we could move on to our grilled pork noodle and Vietnamese chicken pancake. The pork was the star of the first dish: tender, marinated to perfection, and hitting all the right notes of salty, sweet and hot. Next to the pork, the rice vermicelli, basil, lettuce and peanuts seemed a little uninspiring, but we remedied this by adding a sweet carrot sauce, hoisin, and sriracha.

Grilled pork noodle

The pancake seemed more like a fritter than the crepe we were expecting, but was quite satisfying nonetheless, filled with seasoned chicken, sprouts, and onions. The pancake's crispy outer layer added a new dimension of texture to the meal and absorbed the carrot sauce without losing its crunch. Needless to say, we ate it all.

Chicken pancake

The restaurant is small and quiet: at one point, the only noises we heard were slurps, sniffs and low moans of pleasure from the few other diners as they enjoyed their pho. The meal was an incredible bargain, coming in at less than $40, not including tip, for five generously-portioned dishes. The service was swift and polite--our server was gracious but not servile or overbearing, and the food came out of the kitchen quickly. Given its value and convenience (safe and abundant on-street parking is also free), we'll definitely be coming back to Pho 206 soon... pho sho!

We talk with our mouths full.

We love food. We love to cook it, we love to eat it, and we love to talk about it. But we live in the suburbs (barely) of Hartford, Connecticut, and the restaurant offerings around here are slim, compared to New York and Boston. Right? Well, no--we think Hartford has a lot to offer for those willing to venture off the beaten path (i.e., the Max franchises) in search of gastronomical delights. So, because we were both born and raised in the Hartford area and love it in spite of ourselves, we decided to create this blog to record our adventures in eating the local fare.