A while ago I asked one of my coworkers what her favorite restaurants were, the one immediate answer was Stella in the South End – so I had to make a trip to check it out. I read some reviews on Yelp and they seemed pretty good, the menu also looked great and it would be yet another place to cross off on my restaurant list.
The decor inside is ultra hip/modern – it looks like a Apple store and the atmosphere reminded me a lot of Lime Brunch from my trip to San Francisco. I got to Stella’s at 5:30 and it was like the party had already started. There was an excellent vibe to the entire place, probably because of the super friendly bartenders that went out of their way to start a conversation and get to know everyone’s name. People over here were regulars and spoke on a first name basis. It seemed like everyone that walked into the restaurant knew the people working inside.
I had come here for restaurant week but found out that thy don’t serve that menu on a Saturday (I should have checked). Didn’t really matter, in my experience the desert dish is usually a throwaway and the prices were not too expensive. I decided instead to make it a two course meal and pick an app and a entree.
For the appetizer I choose the steak tartare – recommended to me by the bartender. The steak tartare was served with a poached egg on top and consisted of raw meat combined with mustard, onions, cornichons and capers. The dish was accompanied by toast points and a few extra cornichons on the side. The dish was excellent, the capers in the tartare added a good sour kick to the entire dish and breaking the yolk made a nice creamy mush that went well with the toast points. If it were socially acceptable I probably would have licked the plate clean…
I chose the Linguine pasta dish as my entree, according to the menu it consisted of asparagus cream, thyme, truffle and a poached egg – there’s no way I could go wrong with this. The pasta was actually a fairly large portion and the sauce was rich and filling, as promised by the bartender. All the elements worked well, but there was one that was desperatly missing – the truffle. This dish was excellent but it would have definitely get a notch above if there was more of a truffle flavor to it. To be honest I tried hard to find any hint of truffle – even going as far as tasting individual flecks found in the dish. Nothing. Truffle is a pretty pronounced and aromatic ingredient, a little goes a long way so I felt like it probably could not have been used in the dish. Even if truffle oil were used in the sauce it would have been noticeable. Still the dish worked, I even debated if truffle might over power the flavor combination already present. My bartender offered a chardonnay sample to go along with the dish, I asked not to have him fill the glass – but too late. Here’s the kicker, the guy was pretty good about it and just said to not worry and enjoy the wine – he poured a full serving.
Service does count and everything I read about the place was true – the food was great but the atmosphere and the friendliness of the staff makes everything click together. Definitely worth the trip.