Sunday, August 23, 2015

Ricardo's Ristorante and Carrie Nation Cocktail Club

Wow!  I can't believe I'm almost caught up with the blog....just in time to go back to school in a week.  I really have to push myself to be better about blogging in a timely fashion.  I love going back and looking at the posts from previous years but it's so easy to fall behind.  I'm really going to work on that this year.

Anyways, back to the present.  Last night we went out to celebrate a good friend's birthday.  His summer birthday has become a bit of a reunion for a group of friends that doesn't get to see each other nearly enough as we would like.  This year featured the East Coast return of one of the gang that had moved to Oregon last year.  It was nice to see her again and to be out in Boston with her like the old days.  She was always up for a city adventure and I've definitely missed having her around this past year.

The evening started at Ricardo's Ristorante in the North End.  The North End is always a fun place to explore and you're probably not going to get a bad plate of food ever. The food was definitely delicious but the atmosphere was definitely lacking.  We were a big party so they sat us upstairs in a room with a leaky ceiling, a big tv (which I don't like seeing in North End restaurants),  and zero personality.  Like I said though, the food was delicious and pretty reasonably priced.

After dinner we hiked over to Carrie Nation Cocktail Club in Beacon Hill.   I was looking forward to checking this place out.  I went once last summer when my friend from France was in town but I didn't get to try a cocktail.  We were supposed to go for Valentine's Day but the T was shut down due to a medical emergency and we missed our reservation so I was definitely happy to hear this was the post dinner location.

Carrie Nation has two parts:  the main dining room and lounge decorated in rich reds and creams and the back "speakeasy" room decorated in black, crushed velvet curtains, and purple lights.  The back room has a great vibe but it smelled like rotting fruit and was really loud so we staked out a spot in the main bar area.  I ordered the Hemingway Daiquiri and it was pretty good, not as good as the Old Cuban at Noir though.  It was good but I probably wouldn't order it again.  I ended the night with some prosecco but I was a bit disappointed to see that they use those split bottles.  They are almost never as good as a prosecco from a full bottle.

We had a great time catching up with a really great group of people and I liked that Carrie Nation had a lot of room for us to mingle and it wasn't loud so we could actually have a conversation.


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