Sauciety

Last Thursday Alli and I went to Sauciety, a new restaurant in the (also new) Westin hotel by the convention center in South Boston.

The restaurant concept is intriguing: they offer a range of entrees (somewhat limited), and a large range of sauces / dressings / accompaniments, and you pick the matches you want. Not our favorite style of eating, as we usually prefer an expert like, oh I don't know, the restaurant's chef maybe, do this pairing and matching job. But still worth trying.

We also happened to go during restaurant week, so the entree selection was even more limited than usual. We got some skewers (steak and chicken for me, steak and shrimp for Alli) as appetizers, and they came with romesco (green, mole-looking, chilled) and chili (red, warm, mildly spicy) sauces. The skewers were decent, romesco mediocre, chili good, presentation nice.

For our entrees Alli got a chicken thing (just OK: looked good, decently juicy, big portion size) and I tried a swordfish steak (very good, although swordfish is a usual selection for me, as I mentioned they had few entrees to choose from). We each picked a couple of different "sauces:" caramelized onion and something else (not good enough to remember) for Alli, green peppercorn and mushroom (good) and 5-mole (very good) for me. I'd actually asked for a spicy black currant glaze, not the 5-mole thing, but the server messed up and the mole was good enough that we wanted to keep it.

Which reminds me of the service, which was strange. Our server was pleasant, very nice, and the busser was good. That's the good stuff. But she (the server, not the busser) forgot a couple of things, mistimed one or two others, didn't bring out our dessert until she came by with our check and we told her we hadn't gotten dessert yet, and generally seemed a somewhat incompetent.

Dessert was actually pretty good, maybe better than all the rest of the food. Alli got a trio of creme brulees (lemon, espresso-ish, and something else I don't rememer right now, maybe vanilla), all of which were very good. I got a chocolate cake thing with some vanilla ice cream and a frappe-ish chocolate sauce on top, very light, pretty tasty.

Probably the best part about the meal overall was the wine. They had a decent selection, but (it being a weeknight and us having been drinking a good amount in the past few weeks) we opted for a half-bottle of Mt. Veeder 2002 cab. It was ready to drink, and boy was it fun: all the good characteristics of a good full California cab. The 2000s and the Reserve cab from Mt. Veeder are apparently even better -- I may order a bottle or two online, it's certainly worth trying.

All in all, Sauciety is fun, but no rush to go back there or go there at all: it's not in the top 50 places in town by any stretch.