Haymarket, North End, Artu

Apologies for juxtoposing my sequence of events from this weekend – I was out in the sun more than I have been in the past month, given the weird weather patterns/global warming happening in Mass.  As a result, I think my brain has been baked and is giving me memories in some strange backwards order.

I finally made it out to Haymarket yesterday!  And, while it was intriguing enough, with the little downstairs Halal butcher shops with skinned goats’ heads on display in their outer windows, I was still reminded of what I miss about the city I left four months ago – Madison, Wisconsin.  Madison’s farmer’s market spans the entire outer circle of the Capital building and only allows its vendors to sell food that’s been produced with a 50-or-so mile radius of the city.  I didn’t see that at Haymarket.  I saw delicious-looking vegetables (munched on sugar snap peas while I walked) and fruits – tropical and otherwise (also snacked on figs, cherries, and black grapes before I could get them into my bag).  As I walked, spitting pits into the piles of rubbish behind the stalls, I thought about how much I miss Wisconsin cheese and locally grown vegetables (no Peruvian asparagus or Mexican tomatoes in sight).

Haymarket was, however, a really cool study in culture – I saw Moroccans, Italians, Bostonians and Mexicans standing shoulder to shoulder, hawking their produce.  I also saw freshly-baked pita bread, beautiful seafood, and a place where I could order a whole goat, in addition to all sorts of other animal… parts.  I heard at least five working languages at the market, got jostled by people of every creed and color, and saw all sorts of bizarre fruits and vegetables that I wouldn’t normally see at the supermarket.

After the Haymarket, my companion and I walked a short distance to the North End – Boston’s Little Italy.   It was seriously… little Italy.  I heard Italian everywhere.  I saw Italians in track suits… everywhere.  I went into a church STRAIGHT out of my childhood (no, I’m not Italian, but St. Rita’s in Milwaukee left a major impact on me with the single Italian mass I attended there as a teenager).  We wandered in and out of little shops selling everything from Pecorino to Prosciutto, to gallon buckets of olive oil, to cannoli.  The glutton in me shouted, “URRA”!  Despite the fact that we were surrounded by food, we spent an insane amount of time looking for a place to eat mid-afternoon.  We finally ended up at a place called Artu.

Artu, what can I say about you?  You weren’t my first choice.  You weren’t even my second choice.  And, had I known that you would just be… sub par, you wouldn’t even have been my third choice.  I’m headed to Giacomo’s next time.  And I’m bringing cash.

I should precede this review of Artu by saying that I have almost an infinite amount of patience when it comes to servers.  I understand every single component of my dining experience, because I’ve been in a position to orchestrate someone else’s in the past.  Serving isn’t a very difficult art, especially when the place where you’re working isn’t particularly busy.  You just scan the table every time you come out of the servers’ station.  You look to see if your patrons have water, if they need another (paid!) drink, how their meal is, if they need anything…  It’s not hard.  In fact, it’s ridiculously easy to keep someone happy enough to throw you 20%.

Our server at Artu was old.  I think he had to have been serving since before 1940 – he was that old.  And he was a pretty nice guy.  But man, his service was not good.  I understand that when you order iced tea, you’re kinda copping out on drinks that bring in actual money for your server.  But if you, as a server, refill the glass a few times, your patron is much more likely to remember the experience fondly and magnanimously feed you a few extra percentages in your tip.  It’s not so hard.  Plus, when you walk by the table ten times, you should maybe glance at it every once and awhile to see if things need to be refilled.

But that’s fine.  Artu’s food was standard Italian, red-sauced… meh.  We ordered Melanzane Parmigiana and Scampi Arrabiata.  Both were satisfactory.  One needed salt, one had too much.  But they were filling and on the cheaper side of things on the North End.  With a quick stop for gelato (espresso and tiramisu), we were back on the T to the PRC.