Thursday, March 27, 2008

The Elephant Walk, Boston

Last Saturday night my mother, my sister and I voyaged to The Elephant Walk on Beacon Street in Boston for a pre- Easter family dinner. It is not often that we are all in the same area to dine together, so I definitely treasure it when we are. My sister and my mother had both dined at Elephant Walk before, but were anxious to go back, and I was excited to try it for my first time. The cuisine is a mix between Cambodien and French, and the menu features selections from both. I was intrigued by this. Often when you go to a "fusion" type restaurant they actually attempt to fuse the two cuisines together into each dish. It was exciting to me that their form of fusion was just different sections of the menu.

To start we had Rouleaux which were Cambodien style spring rolls with ground pork mixed with peanut, and a variety of vegetables and noodles and then wrapped and fried. These are served with a tuk tey (a soy based sauce) on the side and with lettuce leaves, basil, mint and sprouts for wrapping around the rolls. The sauce was very light and not at all over powering. The mixture of basil, mint sprouts and lettuce with the crips spring roll was a delightful combination, however the actual filling of the rolls I found to be lacking in flavor. The filling was basically just a brown mash of ingredients with no discerning flavor shining through.

I selected to also have a Cambodien style entree as well, called Coquilles St Jacques au Gingembre. It was a dish of sea scollaps, in a creamed ginger sauce placed around a small mountain of mashed edamame garnished with red radiccio and fried ginger. The scollaps were delicious and their delicate flavor was nicely enhanced by the creamed ginger sauce, which I loved countered with the bitterness of the radicchio. I did find that the edamame had a nice flavor to them, but the mealy-ness of the bean was not lost in the mashing and resulted in a slightly dry texture. With the sauce it was good, but there was just not enough sauce for the amount of the mash.

We found that though we would have liked to have passed up dessert, that was just not possible, so instead we ordered two and shared them among the three of us. We ordered Le Péché au Chocolat which was a rich chocolate flourless cake that was garnished with a raspberry sauce. I do have to admit failure however, I have neglected to remember th proper name of the second dessert that we ordered, and actually all of its ingredients (Ill blame this lack of memory on the several delicious drinks I had had?) however it was a layered dessert with the flavors of praline, almond and dark chocolate throughout. Honestly, I enjoyed this one immensely and am rather upset that I have failed to remember its distinct flavors.

I truly enjoyed The Elephant Walk, and it lived up the hype that my family had given it.
http://www.elephantwalk.com/

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Interesting that you liked the Elephant Walk - I disliked it both times I went. Too much money for not enough flavor or service... but that's just me.

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