Your Chowder hounds have sniffed down the best culinary events in town. Check back every Friday for your weekly prix-fixe of foodie festivals, cooking classes, wine tastings, and more.

Oct. 31, 5-10 p.m.
Halloween Prix Fixe Menu
Om
The posh Harvard Square eatery offers a $50 prix fixe menu tonight in celebration of the bewitching hour. Indulge in festive concoctions like Nightmare Salad, Mummy Monkfish, and a tasty dessert that’ll satisfy your Halloween sweet tooth.

Every Monday through Friday, 5-7 p.m.
Economic Relief Program
Townsend’s
The Irish restaurant, recently reviewed by our food critic, Corby Kummer, created a package deal for diners that includes a bottle of the “Wine selection of the week,” and one appetizer, and one entrée—all for $15 per person (yes, $15, we double-checked). Apps include mussels with Smithwick’s Ale or fall greens with red beets, and entrees include Irish-style Bolognese, beer battered fish & chips, or a Wagyu beef burger with aged cheddar. (more…)

Alright, Chowderheads: For all of you with the stamina and appetite to keep up on Chowder’s thousand-mile, six-week odyssey to identify the best and the brightest of New England’s destination-worthy hotspots, we’ve come to the end of our journey.

Well…almost. After downing lemon-oil-drizzled halloumi grilled cheese toast, scarfing down sambal-slathered pork-and-apple fried wontons, pigging out on fork-tender, dry-rubbed baby back ribs tarted up with vinegary apple-cabbage slaw, indulging in butterscotch cheesecake with sweet candied fennel, and munching on the best sautéed Rhode Island-style calamari ever, we’re finally ready to reveal the No. 1 foodie road trip destination! (more…)

As the old adage goes, you eat with your eyes first. Chowder believes this doesn’t just apply to the dish before you, but also the ambiance. Some interior designs enhance the theme—take Redbones as an example—but even if a strategically placed set of lights does nothing for our seared tuna, we don’t have many deal-breakers.

But we did discover one the other night while grabbing a drink at Max and Dylan’s. We call her Berry Thong.

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I’m usually wary of combo restaurants: Joe’s house of Pizza and Tacos, pizza/gyro joints, those Taco Bell/KFC franchises, Marche Movenpick. They tend to fall prey to the “Jack of all trades, master of none” problem.

So imagine my delight upon discovering that Pho Basil, the brand new Vietnamese/Thai restaurant just down Mass. Ave. from BoMag headquarters is actually very good.

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Chowder may be talking turkey a lot these days, but one meat is our always-and-forever, and that’s pork. And while we’re all about the booming “snout to tail” movement, which puts everything from guanciale (smoked pig cheeks) and boudin blanc (an intestinal-looking pork sausage) to whole suckling pig on local menus, our first love is a big, honkin’ plate of falling-apart ribs.

Alas, this is New England, not Dixie. And while we’re blessed with a couple of standouts (Blue Ribbon, the Best of Boston winner, Redbones, and Poppa B’s), the pickings are still pretty slim. So I’m always stoked (sorry) when a new pit-smoked BBQ joint comes to town, and on Saturday night I finally made my way back over to Washington Square’s Roadhouse. (more…)

Your Chowder hounds have sniffed down the best culinary events in town. Check back every Friday for your weekly prix-fixe of foodie festivals, cooking classes, wine tastings, and more.

Harvest on the Harbor Food and Wine Festival
Oct. 23-25
The Ocean Gateway, Portland, ME
It’s a perfect weekend to road trip it to Portland. We know you’ll be indulging in delicious seafood and lobster dinners from the best chefs and restaurants in town at the festival, but you should also make a stop at one of our favorite restaurants.

Turkey Tutorial
Oct. 25, 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Sel de la Terre: State Street
Learn how to roast and baste the best-tasting turkey with chef de cuisine BJ Salazar as he teaches guests how to create a mouth-watering Turkey Day dinner from start to finish—for only $45. You’ll also enjoy a three-course brunch and take home the recipes. (more…)

From the number of miles Chowder has put on the old Chowdermobile as of late, you’d think gasoline grew on New England trees. But neither rain nor sleet nor $5-a-gallon pump charge shall hinder our mad gastronomic dash to uncover the top day-trip-worthy restaurant destinations around the region.

After weeks of counting up the best, we’ve reached No. 2:

No. 2: Hen of the Wood (Waterbury, Vt.) (more…)

Everyone’s talking about how the economic catastrophe correction is going to affect the restaurant world. I’m worried myself. Restaurants are important to Boston—culturally, economically—and they’re getting squeezed hard by higher food/fuel/healthcare costs at one side of the P&L sheet, and skittish customers on the other.

Less urgently, I worry about what it’ll do to food landscape. It seems like diners have just started getting over the comfort food fad in favor of less sedative, more adventurous fare. I like a nice bowl of mac n’ cheese as much as anybody, but it was getting stultifying. Just ask chefs. You think they want to make jazzy meatloaf every night?

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Unlike many summer-weary Bostonians, I hate fall. Not because I dislike crisp days or the crunch of leaves underfoot, but I hate what fall signifies. Before we know it, we’ll be sliding across icy sidewalks and shut in our apartments and offices until May.

But fall does have one saving grace that keeps me from completely losing my gourd—pumpkin beer. Now that the days have grown cold and we’re talking turkey, I’m fully embracing the gourd-laced offerings while I can.

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All right. Fine. The Sox have turned in for the season, my backyard patch of basil is dead, and the wool coats have come out of hiding. We’re deep into fall already. While some of us at Chowder are still sipping rose, I’m ready to get on with it.

And that means one thing: I’m thinking turkey. (more…)