UPDATE 5-30-09: Unfortunately, the Great Bay is no more and has alas closed its doors for good.
After several failed attempts, I finally was able to try the Sand Dollar Menu at The Great Bay Restaurant, located right in Kenmore Square in Boston. And I must say, that Great Bay places itself up with there with Morton’s and McCormick and Schmick’s as one of the titans of the Boston Bar Menu.
The Sand Dollar Menu returns to Great Bay after a hiatus, and is one of the best deals for your dollar anywhere around. It runs from 5-6pm weekdays when there isn’t a Red Sox game.
The Sand Dollar Menu includes calamari, oysters, spicy fish tacos, a shrimp and lobster dumpling, and salmon sashimi, each for only $1, with no drink minimum.
What puts Great Bay’s Sand Dollar Menu up among the best is the attention to detail and presentation that goes into each serving. The picture above shows a sampling of three of the five choices (thanks Uri!), lovingly plated to perfection (can you believe it’s only $3??). My friends and I each ordered different combinations of the 5 choices, and every single plate was artfully arranged and unique.
Now in general, I really don’t care much about presentation. I don’t think that drizzling sauce around food that’s been stacked up to the ceiling or smooshed into a ring mold makes it worth an 800% markup. In this case, however, the fact that the Great Bay put so much effort into their dollar menu sends out a strong message that they care about their food and enjoy showing it off to their clientele. While the bar menu deals at McCormick and Schmick’s and Morton’s are phenomenal food for your buck, one would never describe the offerings as either chefly or pretty to look at. The Great Bay’s Sand Dollar Menu, however, is greatly deserving of both adjectives.
I started off by ordering one of each of the five selections. On the first plate (top of the post), was a chilled Duxbury oyster with chive mignonette and lemon, a lobster and shrimp dumpling with ginger, scallion, garlic, and calamari with a spicy aioli.
The oyster was delicious and delicate, and didn’t even really need the mignonette (though I always love a few dashes of tabasco), and much better than those I’ve had on the McCormick and Schmick’s menu, which tend to be overly meaty.
The dumpling was crisp and doughy at the same time with a good portion of filling inside. I liked Chinese dumpling sauce that came with it because it had a great kick with remaining simultaneously sweet and salty. I’ve made that sauce a lot at home (soy sauce + brown sugar + ginger + sake + chili paste) and I’ve yet to achieve as nice of a flavor balance.
The calamari is by far the most filling of the items on the Sand Dollar menu, and was very nice, as far as fried calamari goes. Also, you can never go wrong by me with spicy aioli. While there was nothing particularly unique about the calamari itself, the assorted pickles that came with it were outstanding. My favorite of these were little pickled grape-sized tomatoes that exploded flavor in your mouth and were an excellent way to break up the fried tasted of the calamari.
For the final two offerings on the Sand Dollar Menu were a spicy fish taco, with tropical fruit, avocado, cilantro and a salmon sashimi slice, with shiso sauce, which you see above.
If you plan on being proper and eating with a knife and fork, abandon all hope of keeping the structural integrity of the taco (unless you a far better surgeon than I). The crispy shell is a great texture contrast for the light fish and is definitely worth a try.
The sashimi was perhaps the most interesting of the dishes on the menu. The salmon was served on what might be called a Japanese pickled slaw, with little pieces of grapefruit. What made the dish were the grapefruit bits, which added a great citrus kick in the pants to the the crunchiness of the slaw with the soft saltiness of the salmon.
I should also mention that the service was also excellent. The bartender, Scott, was very friendly, highly knowledgeable about the food, and did not begrudge us ordering from the dollar menu. There was an error with one of the orders, which he fixed before it even came to us. It’s nice to go to a place and feel like the people working there are glad to have you there, even if you’re just ordering from the bar menu.
In closing, all I can say if you haven’t had the Sand Dollar Menu yet, you’re really missing out on something great. Hurry before it goes on hiatus again!
Last year I wrote about the What the Fluff? Festival in Somerville, MA, which commemorates the invention of the marshmallowesque topping by Archibald Query in 1917 in that very town. The What the Fluff? Festival will be held on Saturday, Sept. 29 from 4 to 7 p.m., in Union Square.
