Tatte: rich, buttery, aloof

There's a bakery around the corner from my office that looks so immaculate, it makes me feel I've walked in on a movie set by mistake. Tatte, on Beacon Street in Brookline, is tiny and light-filled, and half the store is taken up with an oversized table holding a minimalist selection of perfect pastries.



Tatte's dessert selection is limited, but the star seems to be the nut box, shown above in the grande variety. The smaller one is equally pretty.



It's basically a pastry shell filled with nuts. Doesn't that sound lame? Okay, how's this: the pastry is so butter-loaded that it's practically shortbread. The nuts (pecans, pistachios, hazelnuts) are covered in a not-too-sweet caramelly coating. For a handful of nuts and a bit of pastry, it's amazingly rich.

I also picked up a ricotta-spinach brioche, which was likewise decadent, rich and buttery (but it had spinach, so it was healthy. Really).



And I had a fresh pear juice, which has a subtle note of cinnamon and caused co-worker Sarah to say, "Wow, it makes me wish it was fall already!" I don't love the sentiment, but I know where she was coming from.

So Tatte creates lovely treats (albeit expensive: my three purchases cost me $13). And yet I'm hesitant to recommend it. Why?

Because the counter staff at Tatte are decidedly unfriendly.

Now you know me: I'm a pretty laid-back, thick-skinned gal (and, allegedly, a bit of a ham). So it doesn't offend me personally if people are restrained or reserved. What does bug me, though, is when people who work in customer-service positions cop attitudes of superiority.

The salesgirls at Tatte were unsmiling and aloof. When I asked whether it would be okay if I took photos, they looked at me as though I'd asked if I could gut a fish on the counter. And then one said, "Well ... I suppose so," and the other said (though not to me), "The Phoenix sent a photographer round last week."

I don't often feel uncomfortable around other people, but here I did. So I picked up my change from the counter (because she wouldn't put it in my hand) and scuttled out.

And then I started wondering whether I was being paranoid. But cube-neighbor Nikki said, "No, the South End Buttery is exactly the same; they're very obnoxious. Plus their cupcakes are terrible."

I don't want to suggest this is a trend: the staff at Sweet on Mass Ave are lovely, as is the owner of Kickass Cupcakes, so there's no direct correlation between bakeries and bitchiness.

But I'd be interested to know whether there are other examples of posh pastry shops with poor personalities. Or, for that matter, places where the service is as sweet as the confectionary.

Anyone?

A hearty (New) English pub lunch

As part of our goal of not wasting yet another summer sitting around (and then spending the fall bemoaning the fact that we did nothing all summer), The Boy and I came up with a plan to take a few day trips and see some new places.

Our first ride was back to Portsmouth, NH. Okay, that wasn't a completely new place, but I hadn't been able to get the scotch eggs out of my mind. So the real point of the trip was to have lunch at the Coat of Arms pub.

The Coat of Arms is a pretty fair approximation of the real English pub experience: it's a dark room with a long, solid bar, a snooker table, dart boards, footie on the telly and the pervasive odor of stale cigarette smoke. It also has a good selection of beer on tap, including Old Speckled Hen, McEwans, Courage and Tetley.



And, of course, our main reason for visiting: a menu that includes such traditional, artery-clogging delicacies as scotch eggs,



a surprisingly good steak and kidney pie,



a sausage, fish and chips basket meal that renders future visits to the rather overpriced A Salt and Battery in NYC unnecessary,



and a treacle pudding and custard that wasn't quite perfect--the treacle had soaked into the sponge instead of sitting on top, and the "homemade" custard tasted suspiciously like the canned Ambrosia version--but certainly nostalgically lovely enough under the circumstances.



It's probably not the healthiest thing to be an hour's drive from such greasy, stodgy, salty temptation. But it's good to know that, when the urge strikes, there's a place to indulge occasional cravings for the food of My People.

Why does Starbucks elicit such fury?

When Starbucks announced it would be closing 600 stores in the US, there was a sound akin to a victory howl from an apparently passionate slice of the world's population.

"Well who wants to pay $5 for a cup of jet fuel. It's about time this overrated chain met its mark," wrote a commenter on USA Today's version of the story.

"I have a family member who worked for Starbucks in Seattle, but I don't feel bad seeing this greedy corporation hit its limit," notes a Boston Globe reader.

Am I missing something here? What is it about Starbucks that causes bile to rise in the throat; that excites people to heights of vitriol?

I know, I know; the same reasons come up repeatedly: the barista "gives them the evil eye" when they forget the secret language and accidentally order a small coffee (has this ever happened to you? No, me neither); coffee is $4 (though my daily latte with soy milk and a shot is less than that, bizarrely enough); there's a branch on every corner. Yeah yeah yeah. Yawn.

This isn't about preferences of taste or brand loyalty. It's much more personal: Starbucks customers, it seems, are sheep, blindly throwing money at an evil corporation that has performed mass hypnotism on a dumb demographic.

At first glance, it seems that the main driver behind this fierce over-reaction is some kind of reverse snobbery; a suspicion that Starbucks is, in some insidious way, responsible for gentrification, political correctness, global warming and gay marriage. (See the second post on this Globe thread, for example.)

But why is Starbucks singled out? If the main issues are that it's expensive and elitist, surely there are plenty of other products just as deserving of hatred?

And yet no one blows a fuse at people who prefer Perrier to Poland Spring. No websites throw venom at Häagen-Dazs in quite the same manner as they do at Starbucks. It's perfectly acceptable to spend $8 on a bar of chocolate, even though good ol' Hershey's is readily available. And while some people like to claim organic food is a crock, no one is likely to be, well, pelted with Monsanto tomatoes for buying pesticide-free heirloom varieties.

In other words, it's considered acceptable to spend your money however you choose when it comes to luxury food, as long as you're not wasting it on Starbucks coffee.

Leave it to the Macedonians to put this ridiculous storm in a coffee cup into perspective.

Actual contents may vary

You know I like to photograph my food. And I also love seeing how other people do the same, whether that's creating an encyclopedic resume of bento boxes or a record of a decade of inflight meals.

So I was majorly excited by an article on the Guardian's food blog about a German project to compare the images on food packages with their contents.

Not only has journalist and author Samuel Mueller photographed 100 food items—packaging, plus the dish itself—he has gone to the trouble of posing the latter to mimic the former. So if the illustration on the packet shows a chocolate snack bar plunging into a refreshing glass of milk, Mueller approximates it in real life as best he can:



While some, like the above, look relatively similar to their artistic rendition, others suggest someone is pulling the wool—or in this case, the herring salad with beets—over someone else's eyes:



Of course, part of the humor comes from the fact that everything's in German, which means one shouldn't be surprised at the appearance of the contents of a can labeled Mischpilze hell or the congealed gloop that comes from the Würstchen Lunch line.

Surprisingly, German packaging must legally include the phrase Serviervorschlag in the same way that, in the US and the UK, images on food packages carry the phrase "serving suggestion."

Of course, sometimes this makes no sense at all.

It's all pie

I've long held that pie makes life better. And, increasingly, worklife in particular.

In my last job, feeling snacky one busy day, I was debating the merits of running across the street to pick up a brownie (bad, I know) when I suddenly remembered something very important: we'd had an office party the day before! There were leftovers! Specifically, pie in the fridge!

So "pie in the fridge" became a way of referring to a project that suddenly came together; those (rare! Ha!) times when apparent obstacles disappeared with the realization that resources or solutions were already sitting right there.

Think of it as the flipside of "pie in the sky."

And then today, lovely co-worker Sarah and I were talking about how we were looking forward to Friday's post-work socializin', and how it was something to think about to get us through the rest of a busy week.

Sarah started, "Just keep your eyes on the ..."

"Prize?" I said.

She paused. "Actually, I was going to say 'pie'."

And I realized that was perfect. "Eyes on the prize" is so ... melodramatic. It suggests cold awards, soulless statuettes, heavyweight championship belts.

Whereas pie is ... well, it's pie. A warm, juicy, yielding, completely worthwhile goal.

Still not convinced? Okay, try this: next time you're having a crappy day at work, check out these blueberry pie images from Flickr. (It's okay; I'll explain it to your boss.) And then tell me you're not feeling better.

As a wise man once said:

A few final food-related vacation highlights

Our Montreal vacation now seems so long ago (two whole weeks; time does fly when you're, um, back at work). But I can't move on without mentioning a few more tasty highlights from the trip.

1) Breakfast at Eggspectation, Montreal
From the outside, this place looked like a sketchy chain diner. But after the previous day's Ritzy $100 breakfast for four--which worked out to about $10 per fried egg, plus juice and coffee--we were up for something (anything) cheaper.

Inside, it was cool and funky, all alterno-hip waitstaff, college radio music and exposed bricks and ductwork.



Eggspectation's menu is mostly, um, well, ovo-centric, with unusual takes on classics and some of their own creations. But there's also a plethora of carbs: bagels, waffles, crepes, French toast. And smoothies, including one of fruit and granola, which would make a sufficient breakfast by itself. (I, of course, ordered it as well as more solid food, and realized I couldn't manage the whole thing.)

The rest of my meal: Brioche Beauty, which was actually two sizable cinnamon rolls covered with yogurt, honey and almonds, served with a fresh fruit salad.



This, to me, is the epitome of breakfast: 50% healthy and nutritious, 50% sweet and decadent.

I'm so used to "fruit salad" that turns out to be awkward chunks of under-ripe melon with a few grapes thrown in; here, the strawberries had flavor, the kiwi wasn't sour and there were slices of mango and papaya.

Eggspectation is a Canadian franchise, with only a handful of locations in the US; our closest is South Portland, Maine. (They're in one other country: India.)

I'm not saying I'd want to make a trip north solely to eat there, but if we were in the area ...

2) Hotdog and poutine, Cité Souterrain, Montreal

I really don't think this needs an explanation.



3) Turkey dinner at The Parson's Corner

We were on our way back from Montreal, somewhere close to Nowhere, when we realized it was time for lunch, and took the next available exit off Rte. 91: Barton, Vermont. The pickings were slim--an ice-cream place, a Chinese resto called Ming's (which is always a dubious name to the English) and The Parsons' Corner, a pretty house that claimed to be a restaurant.



They stopped serving lunch at 2:30. It was 2:15. We hurried inside, and found a full-on diner counter, a guy slinging hash and the living- and dining-rooms converted into booth space.



I went for a straightforward grilled cheese sandwich; The Boy chose the steak and cheese sub. His dad ordered a burger, and his mom decided on the day's special: turkey dinner.



Everything was good, but the dinner was the winner, getting big points for nostalgia (canned peas! Gelatinous cranberry sauce!), for the silky mashed potato and gravy (doubtless both reconstituted, but who cares) and especially for--because there's no way you can fake this--the tender, moist, thick slices of roast turkey.

4) Scotch eggs in Portsmouth, New Hampshire
The last leg of our return trip included lunch in Portsmouth. We wandered the streets for a while and decided on the Portsmouth Gas Light Company, which has a look and vibe much like the Miracle of Science. The food was lovely, fresh and interesting.

But this isn't about that place. It's about the place I wanted to go, but which didn't open for another hour: The Coat of Arms, a British pub whose menu included not just yer usual faux-Anglo fish 'n' chips and bangers 'n' mash, but also a ploughman's lunch, sausage rolls, treacle pudding and custard and (gasp!) scotch eggs.

After lunch, as we were heading back to the car, I ran a quick errand.



I probably should have ordered them uncooked; they came hot, and they warmed my lap for the rest of the ride home. Sadly, we were too full to eat more, and didn't get to try them until the next day, when they were cold and a little tough and chewy: not at their best.

This just means we have to go back. And also try the treacle pudding.