Whether it’s riding a bike to work all year round, or building a menu with seasonally available ingredients – Steve can always be counted on to set a good example when it comes to being green.

Click here to watch the video!

Steve Johnson on NECN with Billy Costa

Guided by chef Steve Johnson’s dedication to local, sustainable ingredients, Rendezvous wine director Nicole Bernier puts an emphasis on organic and biodynamic options from the West Coast and Europe. But the kicker here is value: Most bottles fall below $50. We also appreciate that Bernier introduces us to small producers, labels, and even varietals that you won’t see copied on lists all over town.

On Tuesday, July 26th, WCVB Channel 5 Boston’s local news magazine, Chronicle, featured chef/owner Steve Johnson in his Westport River houseboat kitchen.

On weekends during the summer months, Steve enjoys a change of pace from city life and the hustle + bustle of the restaurant to savor the simplicity, beauty and community on the river in Westport, MA.

Click here or go to http://www.thebostonchannel.com/video/28675109/detail.html to watch footage from the show and to see Steve foraging for littlenecks and creating a super-fresh “clam red” with bucatini pasta.

In staying true to New England waters, Steve Johnson of Rendezvous Restaurant in Central Square, Cambridge, courageously puts fish on his menu that  – oh no!  – has bones.  Mackerel.  Grilled to a charry crispness, dripping with olive oil, delicate filets lifting off of eight inches of spiny vertebrae, mackerel.

In Italy, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Denmark, just about anywhere but here, a serving of fish means a pile of bones on the plate.  Residents of these countries make beloved meals with sardines, anchovies, pike, mackerel and herring.

If we only learn to embrace the beauty of a fish spine, we, too, might upload healthy doses of phosphatidylserine, a phospholipid and part of the cell membrane, responsible for everything from making golfers tee-off better to improved memory to helping children with ADHA.  Mackerel has tons of it.  In a list of phosphatidylserine sources, cow’s brain is number one at 713 per 100 grams, but given the risk of bovine spongiform encephalopathy who wants to eat that?  Mackerel is number two at 480 per 100 grams.  Chicken breast is 85.  A potato is 1.

To eat mackerel is also promising great doses of big, rich omega 3 fatty acids.  Boston Mackerel – also known as Atlantic Mackerel -  is almost twice as high in omega 3 fatty acids as salmon and it’s very low in mercury.   It’s the most common of the 10 species of mackerel so there’s plenty of it.

In the world of gastronomy, before a chef opens their restaurant doors, they are required to state party affiliations:   On the seafood section of your menu will you be saving the fish or the fishermen?  Or are you an uncommitted Independent only interested in keeping mild, white, boneless filets on the menu because Americans expect fish that doesn’t smell, taste, or look like fish?

Johnson walks the Sustainability Walk without making a big fuss about it.  He recycled a Burger King, for heaven’s sake – for five years now he’s been serving local foods prepared with North African and Southern French inspiration from a kitchen in Central Square that once assembled Big Macs.

The Rendezvous menu is faithful mostly to the New England coastline.  By offering fish caught in local waters, Rendezvous keeps their seafood choices strictly seasonal without the environmental and financial costs of shipping, and supports local fishing industries in Portland, Gloucester, New Bedford and Point Judith, RI.  Right now what’s running off the New England coastline is represented in Rendezvous by gray sole with early summer greens, capers and sage brown butter and bluefish with charmoula and cucumber salad.  Scallops, squid, clams, and oysters stay reliably on the menu as they’re fished locally all year.

Chef, cookbook author and National Geographic Fellow Barton Seaver describes the best way to think about sustainable fish choices like this:   Imagine the ocean as a diving board.  At the start of the diving board are phytoplankton.  In the middle are filter-feeders like oysters and clams, and then small to medium-sized species like mackerel, herring, and sardines.  At the far end are the large species like swordfish, salmon, and tuna.  Jump hard on the far end, and you send everything else flying.  Jump on the middle of the diving board, and each end jiggles a lot; you lose some but not everything.  Seaver says it’s important to eat from the middle of the diving board, and to step gently at the front.

One commercial fishing site I looked at described Boston mackerel as “the fish that gives us something to catch when there’s not a lot else going on,” perhaps a vernacular translation of what Barton Seaver is trying to say; they’re a lot of mackerel, and we should learn to enjoy them. Yes, there are bones, but there’s also more flavor in mackerel than a lot of other species.  As mentioned, Johnson grills them to a crisp, black crust and serves them with an Asian cucumber salad, a cool balance to those grilled omega 3’s.

Generally, the higher the fat content the more quickly a fish breaks down, so Johnson stresses it’s important to find a source of very fresh mackerel.  Mackerel run in New England in the spring and fall, so Johnson promises this cucumber salad would be delicious today with grilled bluefish fillets treated the exact same way.  But, save this recipe for September when the mackerel are running again, and they’re fat from feeding all summer on whitebait and grass shrimp, or else think of them as even richer in phosphatidylserines and omega 3’s.

When Chris Schlesinger wrote his first cookbook on grilling, The Thrill of the Grill by Chris Schlesinger and John Willoughby, he included this recipe from his good friend and fellow chef Steve Johnson. Steve was a caterer at that time, and this was one of his favorite dishes because it never failed to attract an audience while he was at the grill making Clams Johnson. When people saw the clams sitting in the broth they would of course want to try one and he would offer.

You can make the presentation a little more elegant if you wish, by serving on a fancier plate or removing the clams from the shells. What is most important, however, is that when you are standing at the grill and making the dish, be ready to offer anybody who wanders over a clam because it is hard to look at these and not want to try one.

Chris and Steve have reunited in this video to make Clams Johnson, but the exact recipe from Steve seems to have evolved over the years. We can show you the original recipe and in this video you can see how it has changed.

Chef shows in a small space what matters most

In summer, Steve Johnson, chef-owner of Rendezvous in Cambridge, lives on a boat with a small kitchen. He concocted a similarly small space to demonstrate to a class how to grill clams, saute mushrooms (pictured), and make vegetable stew. (Josh Reynolds for The Boston Globe)

Read “Serving up Sustainability” a feature in Edible Boston’s Summer issue with excerpts from an interview with Steve and featuring his recipe for
GRILLED MACKEREL WITH SPICY CUCUMBER SALAD

Written by Erin Byers Murray

“Is this sustainable?”

Restaurant chefs are faced with the question regularly, especially when it comes to seafood. But as most of them are learning, there is no easy answer.

Depending on what’s on the plate (salmon, sea bass, tuna or lobster), the answer might be yes—with the justification that it’s caught or farmed in a way that maintains healthy fish stocks; that it keeps the ocean floor intact; and that harvesting it results in limited bycatch. All three, if true, would be valid answers, at least on the surface. But look deeper into any single species and the chef might be falling into murky territory.

Take Atlantic bluefin tuna, for example. Right now, this local species is one to “avoid” according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch list. This list uses what the aquarium calls “science-based, peer reviewed and ecosystem-based criteria” and many restaurant chefs rely on it, or others like it, to determine what to put on their menus. Bluefin has been on the list for several years and in November 2010 the Center for Biological Diversity, a group that campaigns to protect endangered species, initiated a “bluefin boycott,” asking chefs to pledge to avoid serving the species and diners to pledge to avoid restaurants that serve it.

But if a chef were to talk to a small day boat fisherman working out of Plymouth or New Bedford last summer, he might reconsider the boycott. Fisherman working in and around those waters found the tuna to be considerably abundant, so much so that guys were hitting their season quota in just three or four days.

Buyers were heeding the watch lists and avoiding bluefin altogether so the fishermen found that the wholesale demand had dried up. yet the tuna fishery in Massachusetts is closely regulated so while landing a tuna might not have been considered morally correct, it was (and is) still very much legal. In light of the boycott and a dying market, would a fisherman throw the tuna back? Why, when landing a large one might bring him a large profit—a profit that would help his business, feed his family and put money into the local economy?

Looking at it that way, the chef’s choice is easy: he’s buying tuna from a local fisherman who caught the product legally and within regulations and in turn, he’s showcasing a quality fish on his menu, which he likely got for a great deal because the market has pushed prices down.  he realizes that he can turn a nice profit on the plate with that bluefin tuna—and what’s more, despite the boycott, people are going to order and eat it. So what if he’s going against a watch list and an industry ban: Can the chef afford not to put that bluefin on the menu?

The answer is probably no. Restaurants all over Boston, no matter the size, shape or concept of the restaurant, will tell you that they have, in fact, put bluefin and other species like it on their menu—and that customers continue to order it.

It is, undoubtedly a complex web of issues that chefs struggle with every day. And because there are as many types of restaurants as there are fish in the sea, each chef will handle the situation differently. In the end, each chef needs to create his or her own definition of sustainability.  Is it about the restaurant’s bottom line? Is it about the fisherman’s livelihood and buying local? Or, is it maintaining the population of a species?

It’s about all of the above, and more.

The good news is that in Boston, many chefs weigh their buying decisions carefully. They study watch lists, they discuss options with their distributor, they ask questions of local fishermen. Sometimes, they make compromises. Other times, they draw a hard line and refuse to cross it.  Either way, putting sustainable seafood options on their menu is a job that chefs have started taking very, very seriously.

DEFINING PRIORITIES

Chef Michael Leviton, who owns Lumiere in Newton as well as the newly opened Area Four in Cambridge, is well known for focusing on sustainable practices across his menu. (This spring, he was named the director of the board of overseers at Chefs Collaborative, a nonprofit dedicated to sustainability education.) When it comes to seafood, he defines sustainability through three different domains: environmental (a species that is caught or farmed using low-impact methods but also doesn’t have to travel thousands of miles); economic (micro in terms of “can he afford that fish?” and “can he put it on the plate for an amount his customers will pay?”; macro in terms of the economics of our state and regional fishing industry); and social diversity (maintaining a 400-year-old industry). he also adheres to a strictly local policy by only using seafood from waters between the Chesapeake Bay and northern Canada and prides himself on knowing the name of every boat his fish comes off of, which he gets directly from purveyors.

“I drew the line at a certain point,” Leviton says about his seafood choices. he long ago cut salmon from his menu altogether due to the environmental impact of shipping fish from thousands of miles away.  “So as long as there are other alternatives that are equally good I don’t think it’s an issue,” he says. “The first rule of running a sustainable restaurant is to keep your doors open. I am no good to the sustainable agenda if I don’t have my pulpit,” he adds.

Leviton’s practices might seem extreme but they resonate with other like-minded chefs. Steve Johnson, chef-owner of Rendezvous in Central Square, maintains a similar philosophy: Sourcing locally actually helps narrow his seafood buying decisions.

“It’s made it easier for me to develop a very focused approach, which is that almost all of the species we serve are north Atlantic,” he says. His priorities start with healthy fish stocks, so migratory species that are carefully regulated such as striped bass and blue fish, are served in season while a species like squid, caught off of Point Judith, Rhode Island, are on the menu year-round.

But Johnson admits that certain factors have to fall to the bottom of the hierarchy. Catch methods, for example, are less of a concern for him. While he’s aware that squid and scallops caught with nets may have an impact on the ocean floor, he justifies purchasing them, saying, “I have to believe that someone is working to improve the technologies so that we can have fewer issues environmentally.”

In general, small restaurants that can update their menus frequently seem to have an easier time with local options. Fish Market, a tiny sushi restaurant in Allston, forgoes exotic species from Japan in order to utilize local species. Chef and co-owner Kin Chan says about 70% to 80% of his menu is locally sourced. “There are plenty of options here: mackerel, sea bass, fluke, sea urchin,” he says. “I’d rather get it here than something that’s been on a ship from Japan for two weeks. It’s very important to me.”

On the other end of the spectrum, larger seafood restaurants like Summer Shack have as many as five locations and serve several hundred diners a day.

Summer Shack owner Jasper White says their seafood orders are tremendous. But White, who advocates strongly for the Boston harbor advocacy group Save the harbor/Save the Bay still puts sustainability at the top of his priority list—and in his eyes, sustainability does not come down to watch lists. “I question everyone. I question the integrity of some of those groups. I don’t think they have much concern for the humans involved,” he says. After opening his first Summer Shack in Cambridge, he became so frustrated with the regular seafood supply chain that he launched his own wholesale company.  Run by former commercial fisherman Max Harvey, Summer Shack’s wholesale arm supplies all of White’s restaurants along with a few other select accounts. Because of Harvey’s fishing background, he chooses to get information directly from the men and women who are out on the water every day. From his vantage point, he says he’s seeing good change: “There’s been a lot of work done to rebuild certain stocks.”

GATHERING INFORMATION

Determining where to look for trustworthy information takes practice, most chefs say. While some use watch lists as a guide, others dig deeper.  Leviton speaks to his distributors—Kim Marden of Captain Marden’s Seafood in Wellesley and Ingrid Bengis, a seafood purveyor out of Stonington, Maine—almost daily to learn what’s coming off the boats. Others go directly to the fishermen themselves.

“I get as much of my information as I can from the people who are harvesting, growing and catching the fish,” says chef Jeremy Sewall, a partner in Kenmore Square’s Island Creek oyster Bar who not only works closely with oyster farmer Skip Bennett of Island Creek oysters but also with his own cousin, Mark Sewall, a lobsterman up in Maine.  Those direct relationships have given him connections to other commercial fishermen who are helping him grasp what should or should not go onto his menu. So not only is he getting information directly from the source, he’s also asking questions of his purveyors and others in the industry in order to get a well rounded look at what is happening on the water. In some cases, he finds that he’s the one educating his purveyors—a role that more and more chefs find themselves in these days.

All of that information gathering gives Sewall the unique advantage of being able to read the market daily. “You’re seeing different species become more popular out of necessity rather than creativity,” he says.  he brings up the examples of fluke and sea trout, which are both delicious fish that have been scattered on menus for a long time but have recently become more popular now that some mainstream species (Atlantic halibut, cod) are showing up on watch lists. “one fish is taking the pressure off another, which means fishermen have had to go to alternative species to fill the void of things they just can’t offer like they used to,” says Sewall.

In Gloucester, restaurant owner Mark McDonough is located close enough to the docks that he can literally have conversations with fishermen every day. And he does. his restaurant latitude 43 buys directly from the smaller, family-run day boats that come in and out of Gloucester harbor because, he says, “we believe that if we buy local, we’re safe.”

Chris Parsons, the chef-owner of Parsons table in Winchester chooses to take it even one step further: he discusses many of his seafood buying decision with two marine biologist friends from Rhode Island.  “They opened my eyes to the larger story,” Parsons says, explaining that they’ve given him in-depth background information on what goes into salmon farming. That knowledge has helped him shape a plan for buying from farms that use low-impact methods. “I’m not an expert,” he admits. “I could read some articles online and base my decisions on a little bit of research but that won’t give me the full picture. Working with these guys really helps me cut to the chase.”

FACTORING COST

Making responsible choices is just part of the equation. Most chefs will admit that ultimately what they serve comes down to price. “There will always be critics that say farm-raised salmon is bad. And yes, I think wild king salmon is the top of the line in terms of a well-managed species but it is ungodly expensive,” says Jeremy Sewall. “It’s hard to put a piece of fish on the menu at $44 per plate. Your guests aren’t going to feel like they can come in every day and order it.” Instead, he says, the farmed salmon he uses, farmed salmon from the Faroe Islands, “has a minimal impact on the environment and they’re pretty responsibly raised.” And he only charges $26 for it.

For other chefs and restaurants, dollars and cents equals out to more than just the final tab. Karen Masterson, a co-owner of nourish restaurant in Lexington, considers the cost to the fishermen themselves. This spring, she started working with Cape Ann Fresh Catch (CAFC), a community-supported fishery, on a pilot program that incorporates restaurants into the community-supported model; Cape Ann now delivers weekly shipments of fish directly from Gloucester day boats to her restaurant kitchen. (CAFC is looking to launch the program at other restaurants, including Dog Café in Gloucester, this summer.) The setup is risky in that Masterson never knows what she might get (whole yellowtail flounder one week, cod filets the next). But once she receives the shipment, her kitchen staff comes up with specials and that’s what she serves through the weekend.

While it is undoubtedly more expensive than working with a traditional wholesaler, she’s chosen this route because CAFC provides a direct conduit to the fishermen. So instead of spending money with a third party week after week, she’s paying slightly more to receive fish directly from the boat—and her dollars are going right back to the fishermen.  “It’s a truer cost of our food. From my perspective, that’s a more just purchase,” she says.

THE HOOK

Even while chefs struggle with making sustainable decisions, they do it knowing their efforts are part of a larger movement. For Steve Johnson, that means keeping his dollars in the local economy. “People in our own community, in Gloucester, are suffering. In this small way, I know I can keep my money here,” he says.

Michael Leviton sees a larger impact. “Part of doing what I do is the hope that there is this eventual trickle-down in sustainability,” says Leviton.  “That it just becomes the way we do things so that everyone can afford it.”

RECIPES

GRILLED MACKEREL WITH SPICY CUCUMBER SALAD
courtesy of Steve Johnson
Rendezvous, Central Square, Cambridge

Erin Byers Murray is a Boston-area freelance writer who focuses on food and sustainability. Her first memoir, Shucked, about the year-and-a-half she spent working on the flats with the team at Island Creek Oysters, will be published by St. Martin’s Press in October. Erin can be reached at murray.  erinb@gmail.com.

Written by Heather Atwood on April 19th, 2011

There really is something called the Sardine Diet, which I discovered while having coffee and sitting around googling “sardines” with Steve Johnson, the chef and owner of Rendezvous in Central Square, Cambridge.

I had arranged a visit to talk about the delicious fresh Rendezvous sardines – pilchards actually -, which I’d ordered after listening to the Barton Seaver “eat from the middle of the diving board” lesson:

The front of the diving board is phytoplankton.

The next section is filter feeders – mussels and such.

The next section is small to medium fish like mackerel, bass, pilchers, sardines.

The far end is big fish like swordfish and tuna.

When you jump hard on the far end of the diving board everything on the board goes flying.  Jump in the middle and the board just jiggles a lot, but nothing falls off.

By the way, after a little more googling I discovered it’s also possible to eat from the front of the diving board – all out of Krill Oil? – http://krilloil.com/index2.html.

Full of omega 3’s, protein, calcium, Vitamin D, and phosphorus, a species able to keep the diving board steady, sardines are also low on the food chain, and so less likely to be contaminated with mercury.  As the Sardine Diet claims, the Clupiedae family should be encouraged.

Canning sardines was invented in Brittany in the mid-19th century, and Brittany is still France’s sardine capital. Like anything French, there’s rigamoral around their sardines.  La Queberonnaise milleseme (vintage!) sardines, from the Brittany port of Queberon, are considered – what else? – “la foie gras de la mer.”   The French sardine police make certain these fish are harvested only from May to June when their fat content is ideal.  They’re packed in iron cans, not aluminum, which are marked “limited edition.”  And, just like a good wine, the cans go into a cool, dry place and are turned occasionally for the next months, as it takes a year for the oil to properly penetrate the little fish body.  After two years of aging they are more delicate and refined, finally worthy of the Savenierres to be poured with it.

But it wouldn’t be bad for the oceans and for our omega 3 levels if we borrowed a little sardine extremism from the French.

Steve’s serving them two ways right now:  broiled fresh pilchards (larger sardines) in a salad with hard-cooked eggs, butterball potatoes and an anchovy vinaigrette and fresh pilchards grilled on a wood fire so they get all crisp and brown, their fat drizzles away, and then dressed upon a salsa verde with anchovy and parsley.  The latter is the sardine dish I had the night I wandered in after Barton Seaver’s talk.  Steve hadn’t even heard the plank lecture, but my friends and I could feel all diving-board friendly ordering fresh skate and sardines from his menu.

Sipping his cappuccino on just one more rainy Cambridge day, Steve told me the inspiration for his fresh sardine courses came from a really great can of sardines which he took on vacation to Costa Rica, and from which he invented some delicious meals for his friends.  After my coffee with Steve, I went to Formaggio Kitchen and stocked up on the reported brand, Cole’s.

This afternoon I made an arugula salad, sprayed with thin red onion slices  and chopped scallions, a couple of slices of pear, three plump Cole’s sardines, all drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar.  My lunch guest swooned.  The salad had just the right balance of fat to spicy greens, sweet balsamic and pear to spring onion bite.  I haven’t had “la foie gras de la mer,” but the unctuous Cole’s could convert the sardine non-believers.

Steve Johnson is quietly one of my favorite chefs.  He rides his bike to the restaurant everyday.  He raises a fair share of the restaurant’s herbs and produce in boxes up on the roof, which he farms himself, and irrigates with leaking air-conditioner water.  (The cardboard boxes wick the water up into the soil.)  What he doesn’t grow himself he picks up at the Cambridge Farmer’s Market.  He’s not shouting about all this from the mountaintops.  He’s at his restaurant almost every night; I usually catch him finally sitting down at the end of the bar, tucking into the Rendezvous roast chicken and a glass of wine about 10:00 at night, chatting to a customer dining at the bar beside him, waving to departing clients.  I mentioned the restaurant to another devotee recently, and they said, “I was at Rendezvous last week, and Steve wasn’t there!  That’s never happened before!”

Steve’s been quietly cooking from the local, sustainable column for years.  Committed to the North Atlantic fishing seasons, the Rendezvous fish menu operates from this calendar:

Spring: halibut, smelts, mackerel, tautog, lobster, scallops, oysters, mussels, clams, squid, shrimp

Summer: striped bass, bluefish, lobster, octopus, squid, haddock, blue crab, clam, fluke, mussels

Fall: bluefish, swordfish, mackerel, fluke, lobster, oysters, mussels, smelts, sardines

Winter: skate, cod, squid, oysters, mussels, bay scallops, lobster, Maine shrimp, Maine crab

Ok, these Pilchards are from Portugal, because Steve says he’s tasted a lot of them, and he likes these best.  And since eating sardines of any sort seems to represent virtue, the gastronomical version of driving a Prius, it maybe doesn’t matter where they come from.  (Where is my Prius made?)

Steve Johnson is the real deal, walking the walk, riding the bike.  His vacation home is a houseboat on the Westport River.  When he started blogging about cooking on the houseboat, The New York Times came running; Steve and Boat were that week’s food section centerfold.  Top Chef is for wannabees; Steve is doing a houseboat cooking demonstration at Formaggio Kitchen June 9th.

Here are the two recipes from Rendezvous.  As mentioned, the anchovy vinaigrette attends a salad of broiled Portuguese sardines with hard-cooked egg, butterball potatoes, mixed bittergreens (escarole, frisée, spinach) and shaved French breakfast radishes.  Steve says the fresh sardines can be baked in the oven ahead of time, cooled down and then the meat carefully picked from the bones and skin.   If you can’t find fresh sardines, I’m guessing Cole’s sardines could stand-in nicely.

The Salsa Verde is background for the grilled sardines, which are drizzled with olive oil, salt and pepper and cooked on a medium fire for three minutes a side.   Although sardines are the point, I see grilled trout with this pungent spring sauce, too.

Rendezvous Anchovy Vinaigrette

2T            capers, rinsed and dried

6            anchovy fillets

2            cloves garlic

5            sliced shallots

1T            fresh thyme leaf

1t            fennel seed

1/2t            red pepper flakes

1C            lemon juice

2C            extra-virgin olive oil

1C            canola oil

salt and pepper

Mince together the capers, anchovy and garlic.  Put them into a bowl with the shallots, thyme leaf, fennel seed, red pepper flakes and vinegar.  Whisk in the olive oil.  Season with salt and pepper and adjust the balance of flavors with some extra lemon juice if necessary.

Rendezvous Salsa Verde

(makes about 3 cups)

1            onion, peeled and diced

8            anchovy fillets, chopped

2T            salted capers, rinsed drained + patted dry

6C            flat leaf parsley, washed and drained (add spinach or mint if desired)

1/2C            lemon juice

1C            extra virgin olive oil

kosher salt and ground black pepper

Put all of the ingredients in the food processor and purée until smooth.  In order to achieve the right consistency, you might want to add a few drops of water.  Season to taste with the salt and pepper.

Notes;  red wine vinegar can be used instead of lemon juice, or blended with it.  A large pinch of smoked paprika or maras pepper can be added to the sauce for a little kick.

Posted by Liz Bomze, December 30, 2010 on Serious Eats

[Photograph: Liz Bomze]

Of all the restaurants that sit on my to-eat list for months or years before I get to them, the one I most regret waiting on is Rendezvous in Central Square. I don’t have a good excuse for the delay; the best I can come up with—and it happens to be the truth—is that though the praise I heard for the place was consistent and enthusiastic, there was also a lack of pomp and fanfare that kept its reputation relatively low key. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I simply got distracted.

(Put another way, Rendezvous is like that that quiet friend you had—the one who was always overshadowed by your more boisterous, attention-grabbing comrades, but who turned out to be the most down-to-earth, interesting, and unaffected of them all.)

At least, that’s the thought I walk out with every time I finish dinner there. (In my effort to make up for lost time, I’ve dined at Rendezvous about six times in the past six months.) Chef/owner Steve Johnson couldn’t be more gracious, and his food hits that remarkable combination of smart, well-executed, totally unpretentious, and just a bit out-of-the-ordinary.

Prime example: His inspired take on meatballs with pasta, which Johnson considers one of the restaurant’s signature entrées ($25). It’s a riff on a toasted orecchiette dish that he ate at a small mom-and-pop restaurant in Puglia, Italy, more than 15 years ago, where the key technique turned out to be frying the “tiny ears” of pasta in olive oil until crisp-chewy and golden brown around the edges.

Johnson, a self-described “tinkerer,” says that he’s successfully applied the pasta-frying technique to multiple dishes over the years—the Italian original included chickpeas and tomato sauce—but that he finally hit upon a winning combination when he matched it up with the restaurant’s braised pork and veal meatballs. The house-ground meat is fattened up with a little bacon and fatback, tenderized with a classic milk-and-breadcrumb panade, and lightly spiced with coriander, maras pepper (Turkish style paprika), smoked Spanish paprika, and allspice—a nod to the years he spent living in the North African enclave of Montpellier, France

their respective flavors and textures meld into one of the most brilliantly crafted dishes I’ve ever had

Then, to finish the dish, he adds sautéed maitake mushrooms, frilly kale leaves, a ladle of full-bodied roasted chicken broth, and grated piave cheese. As the elements soak together, their respective flavors and textures meld into one of the most brilliantly crafted dishes I’ve ever had. (The enriched broth makes perfect dipping fodder for the terrific crusty bread he serves.)

Word to the wise: It’s a very hearty portion, and if you’ve already filled up on appetizers (try the sautéed bluefish cakes, vegetable antipasto, and Moroccan spice-crusted scallops), have the leftovers packed up for next day’s breakfast and indulge in a helping of the seasonal fruit crostada with bitter caramel sauce and honey-lavender ice cream and/or the totally awesome lemon-buttermilk pudding with huckleberry sauce.

Featuring our bar manager, Scott Holliday

By Julia Rappaport
Wednesday, December 8, 2010 Boston Herald

“You may talk of brisk Claret, sing Praises of Sherry, Speak well of old Hock, Mum, Cider and Perry; But you must drink Punch if you mean to be Merry.”

So goes an 18th-century ditty David Wondrich quotes in his new book, “Punch.”

At no time of year do these words ring more true than at the holidays.

“It’s great when everybody’s sharing more or less the same drink,” said Wondrich, James Beard Award-winning author and Esquire magazine cocktail writer. “It gives you a little bit of a communion and a focus to your party. We’re all coming together to share. Plus, it lets you do the work in advance and be the host.”

Not so crazy about punch? Try a traditional eggnog or spiked hot chocolate. Add festive flair with decorations, large ice cubes that keep drinks looking cool, or a grating of fresh nutmeg for a zesty finishing touch.

Sip and savor the following recipes, and you’ll most definitely be merry.

SCOTT HOLLIDAY’S BOOZY HOT CHOCOLATE

1 1/2 c. whole milk

1/2 c. heavy cream

2 oz. Taza Guajillo Chili Chocolate, chopped into small bits

5-8 oz. liquor, drinkmaker’s choice

Heat the milk, cream and chocolate in a heavy saucepan while stirring frequently. When the mixture is hot and the chocolate well incorporated, take off the heat and stir in the alcohol. Holliday, a bartender at Rendezvous in Central Square, prefers Green Chartreuse, but says anything goes – from bourbon, rum or brandy to Creme Yvette. Pour into teacups.

Serves 4.