Franklin Cafe

Astute readers may have read the previous post and wondered, “I don’t get it; how is Edith’s attending a Red Sox game proof of Notarius’s love for her? It seems like the Red Sox game was about her showing love for him.” Astute readers, you are correct. But I haven’t gotten to the next bit, which is about things more Miss Edith’s style.

Some ten-ish years ago, when we were young and flighty, Notarius and I had a very pleasant and romantic evening at the Franklin Café. In its infancy at the time, this place was a tiny restaurant in the middle of a mostly-residential street. It was very dark and narrow and loud. One side of the place was a bar with maybe ten or fifteen stools; the other side of the room had maybe ten booths. We ate meatloaf, I remember, sitting side by side in one of the booths, and thought we were in heaven.

We haven’t been back to the Franklin Café in, as I say, a very long time. We stopped spending time in Boston. But we thought about the place a lot, and when we were planning this mini-vacation in Boston, the two things Notarius wanted to do were see the Red Sox and go to Franklin Café.

So after the game ended Thursday night, even though the weather felt angrily cold, surprising for May, we went back to Franklin Café. It was maybe fifteen minutes’ walk from our hotel, which would be nothing in fine weather, but this night I thought, “If the place is crowded and we can’t be seated immediately, I’m going to kill Notarius and then order a pizza to be delivered to the hotel room.” Franklin Café serves dinner until something crazy like two in the morning, which is great, but means that you can show up late – at eleven o’clock, like we did – and worry that you might not be seated for quite some time…

However, Epicurean gods smiled upon us; we walked in the door and were immediately seated. Soon we were gorging ourselves on one of the best meals we’ve had in a long time – and Notarius and I eat, on the whole, really quite well.

We each had a drink: Notarius had a beer of some kind, and I had a Pimm’s Ginger Beer, which was extraordinarily good; we ate the bread given to us, served with a little crock of really garlicky hummus. And we were served our starters. Notarius had ordered matchstick zucchini, which was served under these delicate wedges of Pecorino and sprinkled with almonds – very nice and light; he said he could have eaten a troughful of the stuff. I had roasted mussels, which were fat beauties with this really unusual sort of smokiness from the roasting. Through some miracle, they weren’t even the tiniest bit rubbery or the tiniest bit raw. The chef manages to scoop them off the heat with perfect timing. I did eventually hit one mussel that’d been cooked too much, and had shrived down to the point where it looked like a very small pecan, but it tasted wonderful. And one ouf of all those mussels – it must have been forty mussels in that appetizer – is nothing to be ashamed of.
Our entrees matched: we’d both ordered the steak frites, which was out of this world. We seldom cook red meat, but we eat it happily when we’re out in a restaurant – we trust strangers more than ourselves at being able to cook it right. Oh, does Franklin Café do right by red meat. It was just wonderful. A large fat coin of Roquefort butter was melting over the beef and some of the potatoes as the plates were set down before us, and it reminded me that I always mean to make compound butters and freeze them for future use; I never do this, but plan to get involved in this kind of thing this week.
We ate and ate and ate, and declared ourselves full, still with food on our plates. Had we been returning to a room with a refrigerator afterwards, we’d’ve taken the leftovers home, but that wasn’t an option, and we are greedy; so we ate some more.
Franklin Café does not do desserts, so we didn’t have to feel bad that we weren’t leaving room for some chocolate mousse or something. In a way, that’s a real saving grace of the place, but I have to admit that part of me always wishes, wishes, wishes that they did do desserts. Think of what these people could do with a chocolate mousse, or a crème brulee, or even just a chocolate cake. (As you can tell by my fantasies, my perfect desserts seldom involve things like fruit tarts. Though I will make an exception for coconut cake, which can be the best thing ever, in the right hands.) If I were getting married to Notarius again, I think we would have to serious consider having the reception at Franklin Café. It’d be a noisy reception, and none of the pictures would come out well because it’s so dark in there. But with food like that – and toasts drunk with Pimms and ginger beer – I don’t think I’d really give a shit. It’d be worth it.
Franklin Café. Please go.