The Brasserie and the Beehive

"In food-song and travel-story the scene, the characters, and the opening dialogue are familiar enough: the inn is humble and is situated close to the banks of the radiant Loire. (In legend the Loire is always radiant. Quite often it actually is radiant...The inn, ever-humble, of French cookery fable is, on this occasion, archi-humble)." – Elizabeth David, from "Pleasing Cheeses"






Brasserie Jo, Boston

The plates, you have come to hope, look like these – the simplicity of the very standard of French cookery, steak frites, done medium, and so delicious you could just as easily swear this is dessert.  A Salad Nicoise lined by tuna so ruby red as to nearly glow and looks another species. A Boston Bibb salad a la Francaise and at the fourth corner of the table a deep red burgundy bowl of Coq au Vin, lardons deep and meaty, mushrooms, onions, garlic by bits at the top.  The Frites and Coq create a

sort of French country hearth aroma that carries through the air between the table and the bar so that those who are seated closer to the server station do not necessarily have to look at what the three waiters are bringing at this hour to the tables but guess by the trail of smells made by the menu itself. There is in the background a hint of French music; enormous bottles of Madame Cliquot surround the tables; the waiters, precise, pleasant, they are ambassadors for the food. Outside, later, walking across Huntington Avenue, the night shade mixed by the waxy signs of the storefronts and the thick hum of traffic still nudging toward Fenway, you see this isn't the Loire at all but the next best thing.


The Beehive

The brownstone neighborhoods that line West Newton, Concord, Canton streets from Huntington to Tremont, something out of an illustrated children's book where days – you wonder enviously as you walk-by – pass warmly under lilac and maple at the courtyard wrought iron gates.  These are side streets, streets for patrons, dads pushing strollers, a nightingale swinging languorously at the hedge. The further we move from Huntington, main artery road, one part of Boston gradually fades to

muffled noise, replaced by another... hushed tones of neighbors at their doorways, small shops, barbers, ice cream vendors sunken downstairs of the brownstones and guarded by miniature gardens.  Restaurants flowing outside their front entrances onto the sidewalks, we come onto the Beehive Restaurant and walk into its dark web of corridors and rich fabrics.  Here, oysters on the half-shell and a Duck au Poivre and Schmaltz friend rice is as succulent as it is rich – the laced curtain behind the table at the stage backlit by old time silent movies and time here moves as if by a lull in the French countryside Zephyr wind.