Hidden in Brookline Village is Pomodoro, a little restaurant that you’d swear was meant for the North End.  Perhaps that’s because the original Pomodoro is, in fact, on Hanover Street in the North End, a tiny place with eight tables and amazing Italian food.The Brookline Village location is bigger and more chic, with exposed brick, gentle earth tones, and a slick bar anchoring the center of the table space.  Jazz standards croon gently in the background. One can picture herself at that swanky bar, sipping a glass of Italian red or a cocktail like the Italian margarita, featuring housemade …

  Brookline offers plenty of sushi, from everyday spots perfect for a nice bit of maki, to express joints smelling like greasy tempura, to supermarkets selling pre-packaged boxes of the stuff. You might think there's no reason to visit another sushi joint. But Shiki, if you let it, will give you a hundred different reasons. To start, there's much more here than sushi: the menu offers dozens of small plates and noodle dishes that sparkle with the flavors and textures of meticulous and distinctive Japanese cooking. Shiki is just a few steps off of Harvard Street; an unassuming little space, a …

Everybody has a favorite way to cool off during the summer months: running through sprinklers, guzzling down popsicles, or plunging headfirst into an ocean wave. My favorite method for cooling down is with an oversized scoop of ice cream, so here are two of my favorite places in Brookline to search out frozen goodies. Bonus--they've both got central air.   Emack & Bolio's 1663 Beacon Street, Brookline. Open Sunday through Thursday 11:30am-11:00pm; Friday & Saturday 11:30am-11:30pm. This chain of ice cream hotspots has its roots, if you can believe it, right in Brookline, where the first Emack…

A visit to The Washington Square Tavern is an evening for good beer, good burgers, and good banter.  It’s like going to a party at the cool kids' place—you know the ones, who ironically wear tweed jackets and stock their bookshelves with Kerouac and Vonnegut. Here at the Tavern, the décor is an homage to a passion for books and for biking, in the form of low, dark wood bookshelves and black-and-white photos of the Tour de France. There's a jovial feel in the air, cultivated by Gerry, the owner, who greets the regulars by name. One of my dining companions remarked that "all the faces look …

Baby, it's hot outside, but these six restaurants have you covered. They'll serve you a hot meal in a cool hangout--or vice versa--when even the thought of turning on the oven makes you break out in a sweat. The Cool Cutty's Take a trip to Cutty's for sandwiches worth their wait in line. A favorite is the Spuckie, a combo of meat, cheese, and olive-carrot slaw that plays savory, crunchy, chewy, and hot in every bite. The Ham Dijon is another winner, with soft, smoky ham from Niman Ranch on a baguette spread with Dijon and butter and sliced cornichons for a vinegary contrast. Pack these in …

Does "Turkish diner" sound like an oxymoron?  If you've ever stepped inside the oddly-named Brookline Family Restaurant Turkish Cuisine, the phrase probably resonates more than you would think. At this casual Brookline Village restaurant, the portions are generous, the atmosphere friendly, and you can order a fried egg until the middle of the afternoon. The difference here is that instead of that fried egg, you could order any number of Turkish breakfast selections, like Pastirmali Yumurta, an omelet with diced beef and feta cheese. Even on a weeknight, the tables are filled with couples, …

Fusion cuisine is a tricky concept.  It's like a clever bait-and-switch, but more so than a simple substitution of one ingredient or side dish for another.  Emergent fusion flavors should give a nod to both of their parents, entirely complementary, yet entirely unique.  It's an adventure to discover one flavor hiding where another usually lives. At Brookline's Umami, the focus is on savory Asian-inspired tastes that meld with traditional French bistro fare. In 2010, after leaving Thai restaurant Khao Sarn, Japanese Chef Yoshi Hakamoto opened Umami with his wife, Nomun. The menu is built …

There are dozens of different types of pizza, and each with their own proponents, but there's one thing we can all agree on: a well-made pie is a thing of beauty.  And something beautiful can be found at Pizzeria Dante, a casual restaurant just outside of Coolidge Corner, with bright red walls and a checkerboard ceiling of emerald and mint green. A loyal delivery and takeout crowd means relative quiet, and seats available for the taking. The menu purports to offer "real New York pizza," those wide, thin-crust slices that almost require folding to allow a bite. As the restaurant's name implies…

Seafood might not spring to mind when you think of Indian cuisine.  Chicken tikka masala, sure. Lentils? Yep. Tandoori? Of course. But seafood? Why not? India's coastline stretches some 4600-odd miles along the Arabian and Laccadive Seas, and, in the Eastern part of the country, the Bay of Bengal.  Thousands of harbor towns, as well as the major cities of Chennai and Mumbai, are right on the water. Once we Bostonians reconcile the fact that there are more options than the Maine-style dipped-in-butter preparation, Indian seafood isn't the oxymoron it might first appear. Tamarind Bay Coastal …

Jay Silverston is a fixture behind the register at Paris Creperie, taking orders and doling out deadpan quips in equal measure. Not catching a customer's name, he asks her to repeat it. "Kyle or Clark?" Jay asks.  It's Kyle.  "Are you sure?" he inquires, straightfaced. Behind this comedic welcome is the assembly line, where a few crepe makers work perhaps half a dozen broad circular griddles.  A ladleful of dun-colored batter slurps onto the first griddle, cooking and setting as it's teased into a perfect circle.  Then it's peeled from the griddle and slapped onto another, a blank canvas to …

Just inside the door of Athan's European Bakery in Washington Square is a brilliant carnivale of color. Sunlight fractures through dozens of pastel cellophane bags, filled with springtime goodies. A freezer case full of gelato reminds me of a painter's palate, from its bright, glistening purple blackcurrant and deep mauve raspberry, to rich browns and beiges with undertones of cocoa or nuts. From the shelves beckon little chocolate pyramids and hearts and bars wrapped in fine gold foil. The urge to run around touching everything, to plunge my hands into the bins of cookies like a kid in a toy…

It's eight-thirty on a Saturday evening, and the baseline of noise is high in Osaka Japanese Sushi and Steakhouse. Cheers erupt from the corner as one surprisingly sober diner catches a bite of grilled chicken in his mouth, slung across the grill by a chortling chef; from the next table comes a gasp of delight as four-foot high flames swoosh off of the grill. Meanwhile, across the dining room, a chef armed with a squirt bottle squeezes a thin arc of sake into the mouth of one grinning diner. Diners at the table take up the fist-pounding count of "One! Two! Three!" until, somewhere around "…

In some ways, the Corrib Pub is the most old-fashioned place I've been to in a long while, a throwback to the type of bar where--please excuse me for this-- everybody knows your name.Here is a place where simple drinks are simply poured.  You won't find a frou-frou specialty drink menu; there's no pomegranate syrup or chocolate shavings.  What you will find, however, is an incredibly fresh and effervescent Guinness, or Harp, or Bass from the tap, perfect black & tans, and solid mixed drinks.There are clear upsides to the vintage vibe, beginning, first and foremost, with the prices.  It's the …

For many observing the Lunar New Year, the perfect way to ring in the year of the water dragon is with an enticing feast of Chinese food.  And Golden Temple feels like an inviting place to celebrate.  This is sort of a restaurant-cum-nightclub, one half resembling cruise-ship style opulence—perfect for the sixty-and-up crowd—and the other half a bar under a high ceiling that, architecturally at least, makes me think of dining inside a beehive.  The crowd here is a mix of teenyboppers and middle-aged folks lingering over their happy hour drinks, ordering everything from margaritas to sake to …

I'll admit it: I'm confused. Dok Bua Thai Kitchen, nestled in on Harvard Street, has the feel of a roadside Thai joint—plain wooden tables and chairs, with the kitchen enclosed in a wooden hut.  It’s one of those much-lauded local favorites, proclaimed a "hidden jewel" with great value, and the 2011 Best of Boston winner for best Thai restaurant. If you're familiar with good Thai food, you'll know that it balances four core flavors: salty, sour, sweet, and spicy. This balancing act is key to the complexity in such famous Thai dishes as, say, a bowl of Tom Yum soup, or Som Tum, that remarkable…

As a rule, I’m not given to superlatives—with the written word, it’s too easy to fall into a hole I can’t climb out of.  But folks, the truth is that I’ve found the best eggplant dish in Brookline. It’s at Jerusalem Pita, just off of Coolidge Corner, selected at random from a menu endearingly full of spelling errors.  The Eggplant Rolls are somewhat doleful-looking bits of cold eggplant, perhaps inviting a bit of ‘order remorse’ when you see them on the plate, weeping olive oil and spooned over with a green relish of raw garlic, parsley, dill (the dill most of all, that marvelous, …

Let's talk about pizza for a bit—that indispensable element at slumber parties, college cram sessions, and weekday office lunches.  Thin-crust, deep-dish, wood-fired, extra cheese; you name it, you can find it.  One might find a hundred different pizzas on one city block, but all of us keep a mental note of our favorite topping combinations (mine is sausage with black olives and mushrooms) to fall back on, ready to roll off the tongue when the swarthy, stubble-cheeked pizza guy frowns at us for taking too long to order. Though Boston might not have the pizza definitude of, say, New York, or …

Casanovas, take note: I’ve got a recommendation for your next date. There’s a cozy little tapas place on Beacon Street called Taberna de Haro, with mustard-and-cobalt tiles gleaming under dim yellow lights. Ropes of garlic and chili peppers drape across the red-brick oven, like so many holiday garlands in Rockefeller Center. Using your best Castilian Spanish, you’ll order seductive tapas like Codorniz al Xocolat, braised quail with a sauce made of cocoa, almonds, and hazelnuts, and meant to be shared, your fork accidentally clinking into your date’s as you both reach for seconds. The warmer …

I still remember my first Russian meal in Brookline; a bunch of us slurping down bowls of borscht over lace tablecloths, while a fellow diner warbled Tchaikovsky over the tinny notes of an upright piano in the corner. That place has since closed, and Stoli Bar and Restaurant is decidedly more posh than that restaurant of my memories. Stoli is a tiny place, with red leather booths and a TV looping rap performances over a bar that’s well-stocked with vodka. The housemade infused vodkas at Stoli, like black currant, cranberry, and mint, are smooth, juicy, and perfect for sipping. We loved the …

Cook's Illustrated magazine founder Christopher Kimball likes to recount an anecdote about one reader who wrote in to complain about a recipe for chicken breasts, only to finally disclose a substitution of shrimp for the chicken. “So of course the recipe didn't work!” Kimball chuckles. As the driving force behind the magazine's characteristic preciseness, Kimball would gladly expound at length upon the reasons why that shrimp substitution failed.  From 1980, when it showed up on the racks in its original form as Cook's Magazine, and later in 1993 when it relaunched as Cook's Illustrated, this…