The Barking Crab

The Barking Crab

88 Sleeper Street

Boston, Ma

Atmosphere: Casual seafood dining in the open air, under a tent near the water. Music on the weekends

Kid Friendly: Sure but earlier in the night

Price: Reasonable for a tourist filled place by the water.

What does biking have to do with the Barking Crab? Not a lot, but I did build up an appetite.

Lou and I went on a 33 mile bike ride yesterday through Beverly, Hamilton, Wenham, Topsfield and Ipswich Ma. The first 11 miles were beautiful, and then Lou got a flat:( I admit it, we were unprepared without a spare and one cell phone. Luckily Lou had a lot of water and some snacks. Weighing our options, I took the phone and headed back to the car, and Lou waited on the side of the road until I was able to come pick him and his bike up.

In the end, I went on a 25 mile bike ride, and Lou went on an 11 mile bike ride. At least we learned our lesson and we won't head out again without a spare.

When we got home, our good friend Kat was in town for work, so we all decided to go out and eat. Kat has a recently discovered gluten intolerance so we decided to head out for seafood.

Yankee Lobster was our first choice, which I will definitely write about in the future, but it was closed this day, so we opted for the Barking Crab. Both restaurants are off of Northern Ave in the Seaport District.

If you have a lot of extroverted friends, you love eating outside by the water, and you want good food, but a casual environment, The Barking Crab is for you.

There are two parts to the restaurant, a tent dining area which is opened to the elements, and a closed dining area. Both areas are divided by the kitchen.

The trend these days for a wait in a restaurant is to give the diner an object, usually a large coaster, which buzzes when their table is ready. At the Barking Crab, they give you a lobster. It's cute and all, but a bit of a pain to lug around with you. We took our lobster and headed to the bar. One thing to note is if you put yourself on the wait in the tent at the Barking Crab, that is where you will be sat. If you want to sit inside, you need to put yourself on that wait. They treat the areas as if they are separate restaurants.

The tent area is made up of a bunch of picnic tables and no matter where you sit, unless you have a VERY large party, you will most likely be sharing your table with strangers. These are our strangers.

On the tables are plastic utensils, paper towels( these are your napkins) and large rocks to smash your lobsters, crab legs, or anything else you have to bust open to eat. In general, this is a very casual place.

This is our friend Kat waiting for her dinner.

We ended up sitting in the middle of the tent this night. We started our meal with the lobster and crab dip. It is a warm lobster, crab, and cheese dip served with tortilla chips. The portion was probably good for 5 to share, but we were starving so we devoured the whole thing. For dinner, Lou got the barking crab cake sandwich, I got the wedge salad with a side of two crab cakes, and Kat got a burger no bun (remember the gluten intolerance)

Lou liked his sandwich but I never did ask him if it was a good as the Farragut House Crab Sandwich. (See my past post on the Farragut House) My salad with the crab cakes hit the spot. The crab cakes were about a 3 inch diameter, and the salad was plentiful and fresh.

The Barking Crab is the quintessential, laid back seafood place on the water. Don't go here if you are looking for a relaxing or quiet dinner. The entire time we were eating, the guys next to us were smashing their lobster with the rocks. I guarantee any given night in the summer at least 20 to 30% of the Barking Crab guests are over served. Given their location by the water, it is surprising they haven't lost any patrons to the channel. Having a casual company outing? This is probably the place you want to be. Rowdy friends in town? The Barking Crab is for you!

It's a fun, laid back, beer swilling, decent food having kind of place.

LTK A.K.A. Legal Test Kitchen

Legal Test Kitchen

225 Northern Ave

Boston, Ma (Seaport District)

Menu: Seafood, various size dishes

Atmosphere: Loud, large bar crowd, identity crisis.

Kid Friendly: Actually there were a ton of kids there the last time we went. It added to the chaos.

Price: Expensive for what it is.

If you haven't been to the Seaport area of Boston in the last few years, you are missing out. restaurants, residences and hotels have sprung up all over the place, and the area continues to grow.

The old mainstays are there like No Name Seafood, Yankee Lobster and Anthony's, but there are bunch of new places which have opened.

One of the first of the new was Legal Test Kitchen or LTK because in a world of texting you need to have an acronym. Don't worry, they aren't trying to horn in on Legal Seafoods name, they are owned by Legal Seafoods.

I went to LTK within the first couple weeks it was opened, and I have visited about once a year since. I still don't know what the concept is all about. In all honesty, I think they suffer from identity crisis.

When they first opened they were one of the only new places in town, so everyone was checking them out. I would have said back then they were a test kitchen created to try new concepts out which would potentially be used in Legal Seafoods. At least that is how I understood it. They had wireless flat screen computers they would give to kids to keep them busy at the table. They had ipod docs if you preferred listening to your own music. The menu was mostly smaller dishes almost like a tapas feel with some bigger entrees, and a create your own dish section where you could pick the fish, the sauce and the side, noodles, rice, etc...

The first few times we ate at LTK it was clearly a restaurant with a bar. There was attention to detail with the food. The food was very good, as well as the service. I would say they were going for more of an upscale ambiance. During those first days, wait times were long. They had seating outside, but they weren't very good at planning for rain. I was there once when they sat the whole patio and it was apparent the rain would start any minute. When it did start, our wait shot up an extra hour, and nobody took the time to let us know. Since that time, the outside seating was covered with a very practical year round canopy sporting sides which can be opened or put down depending on the weather. Smart move LTK.

After my first two visits to LTK I didn't go back for about a year. When I did, I noticed the menu seemed a bit less original and a little more typical. I don't remember a burger being on the menu before but not only was there a burger but a hot pastrami sandwich. The wireless computers and ipod docs were MIA, and the bar crowd seemed to have swelled to a healthy after work crowd. The food was still good, but not quite what it had been when they opened. I wondered if the management had changed? I wasn't sure I was going to come back. I thought the prices were a little steep for what was turning out to be an average meal.

About a week ago, I broke down and gave LTK one more shot. This time there was more of a bar crowd than anyone eating in the restaurant. The crowd was so large we had several people almost hovering over our table when we first sat down. Our server was nice enough, but I could get the same service at Applebee's for about half the price. We got the Calamari to start. LTK does theirs with lots of hot peppers on top of a garlic aioli. It's a little spicy but they always cook the calamari perfectly which means tender not rubbery. For dinner I got the hoisin glazed salmon on top of pad thai noodles. Lou got the lobster mac and cheese. His lobster was scarce, my salmon had too much hoisin and the thai noodles had an abundance of scallions in them. The noodles themselves were a bit hard. We only drank water.

For this meal we paid $54.41!!!! Sorry LTK but I think you have turned into a local watering hole. My suggestion is stop cooking food. Leave the testing at the corporate office and make lots of money on the bar crowd.

Atlantic Beer Garden

Atlantic Beer Garden

146 Seaport Boulevard

Boston, Ma 02210

617-357-8000

http://www.atlanticbeergarden.com/

Menu: Upscale bar food

Kid Friendly: Weekend days, or weekdays, nights seem to be older crowd/

Prices: Average for the area portions are large for what you pay

Atmosphere: Typical sports bar. Waitstaff where's local football, baseball, basketball jersey's Very Loud.

When the weather starts to get cold, but the sun is shining, I have this desire to go for long walks and shop. Today was one of those days. Lou and I took a walk over to the Seaport District to hit up the Christmas Festival at the World Trade Center. He wasn't too thrilled about going, but once he was there, he thought it was a pretty cool event. As craft like festivals go, I think this event has some of the better items to choose from. My favorite buy was wind chimes made out of a Jaegermeister bottle for my brother on law. Red neck wind chimes. Who could ask for more? Here's a shout out to the woman who makes them. The Crafty Peddler http://www.uniqueglasschimes.com/.

After all that shopping we worked up an appetite. Since we had walked to the Festival we figured we had been on our feet for about 3 hours so we opted for a close restaurant. The Atlantic Beer Garden. This restaurant opened about a year ago in the Seaport district where there used to be a Chinese restaurant for years. The location is at the top of the parking lot for Anthony's Pier 1. Although Anthony's has a huge parking lot, don't think you can park there for the Atlanic Beer Garden. There is a parking lot attendant in the paid lot next to Anthony's who is like the parking police. He will flag you down as soon as you try to pull the okey doke. Good thing we were walking today. We had been at the Beer Garden about a year ago when it first opened. We hit it up after work and there was a HUGE after work crowd. The acoustics aren't the best in the restaurant and that night it was extremely loud. Drunk people always get louder and louder, and when sports are involved it ups the ante. Surrounding the restaurant on ever wall, and every few feet are flat screen tv's to watch the games. Boston is a huge sports town. The one thing I can say is the guys who opened this restaurant made a wise choice of location and theme.

I never visited the chinese restaurant that was in this building previously, but I imagine these new owners were working with good bones. Across the back of the restaurant is a wall of glass doors that opens to a patio overlooking the harbor. There is a stairway inside that leads to a roof deck with great views of the Boston skyline, and in the front of the restaurant there is a patio for al fresco dining. The main room is very large, and with the back patio, the roof deck, and the front patio, it makes for a lot of dining space. The other thing that stands out to me about the Atlantic Beer Garden is there is no place in the Seaport with as laid back a vibe as this place to go after work and have a drink. It gives off a little more of a party atmosphere than other places in that area, and no other bar features sports. You would have to go fairly far into Southie to find another sports bar in the area, or brave the traffic and parking prices of Faneuil Hall. Parking in the Seaport District is only about $8 to $10 a day, when 1/2 a mile away in downtown Boston it is anywhere from $30 to $45 a day!

One of the reasons we chose the Beer Garden today of course was our tired legs and feet, but Lou also had a hankering for some good fish and chips, and we assumed they probably had that on the menu. We had been there once before, and most good pub like places in Boston have a fish and chips entree. We were right.

The restaurant was loud again just like I remembered it from our first visit. It wasn't AS loud, but the acoustics really are bad in the place. I wonder how it is when the back doors are opened. For drinks Lou went with our typical water, but I ventured out and got an unsweetened tea! Ooh so dangerous. I guess we just don' t want to waste calories drinking them. For lunch, Lou was hungry so we started off with some boneless buffalo chicken tenders. These got an A+ in my book. The tenders themselves were each a healthy portion. There were about 5 on the plate. The blue cheese was plentiful. The breading on the chicken tenders was light and not overpowering. The sauce wasn't too hot, and the carrot and celery sticks on the side were fresh and crisp. Chicken tenders are a staple on a lot of menus these days, but not every place pulls them off well.

For lunch I opted for the veggie panini. It had strips of eggplant, squash, zucchini, and even though the menu description didn't say it, I swear there were pickles in there. It said it was topped with a marinara sauce and mozzarella. I tasted the mozzarella, but if there was marinara sauce, it was very light. I didn't mind that much. The panini was good, the vegetables were a bit tough to bite through, especially the eggplant. I think it is just hard to to do eggplant on a sandwich like this. Lou got the fish and chips he had been craving. Both meals came with the choice of fries or curly fries. I got regular fries, Lou curly. The curly fries were $.95 extra which I think is wierd, but whatever. Honestly, I think all restaurants should offer something healthier from fries to choose from. I know you can often substitute, but I just don't think it should be the norm. The fries were nothing special. I am sure they get the typical Kraft foods frozen fries most restaurants get. The portions were very large. Lou really liked his fish and since it was so much, he brought half of it home to enjoy later.

The price for our meals was $35 for one ice-t, chicken tenders, fish and chips, and a panini. I would say that is about average for the area. The portions were well above average. The staff at the beer garden is always attentive and friendly. I remember on both visits seeing a manager actively involved in managing the front of the house of the restaurant. This is always a good sign of a well run place.

To sum it up, the Atlantic Beer Garden is what it is. A neighborhood sports bar, in a cool location with solid food, solid wait staff, and tv's galore. it is clean, the staff is friendly. A great place to hang out after work or have a casual weeknight dinner.