The Bowdoin Gourmet

Its been a while since I’ve had sushi here at Bowdoin, so I was particularly excited to pick some up at the cafe this afternoon:

This is the “Starburst Combo”, featuring cucumber, tuna, and California rolls, and two giant spicy-shrimp rolls. The tuna and California rolls, which I’ve had before here, were pretty good. The cucumber rolls were OK, but they needed more actual cucumber. Look at them; they’re little more than rice balls wrapped in seaweed. Its one thing to skimp on expensive sushi-grade fish, but cucumbers?

The highlight of the selection was the pair of spicy-shrimp rolls. I’ve had a fair amount of sushi over the years, and I do believe that these were the single largest pieces I’ve ever encountered. These weren’t one-biters – they weren’t even two-bitters – they took three full bites to get down. Their size introduced some logistical troubles in picking them up with the chop sticks, dipping them in the soy sauce, and then eating them over several bites. In the end, however, I was willing to endure the awkwardness because the rolls were so delicious.

A classic combo – spicy shrimp, tuna, and salmon rolls.

All delicious as usual.

On McGee’s Menu
The description should just read:
Ode to feta cheese.

Sometimes good food can be very simple:

Today’s special at the pub was a pair of tacos with a corn and black bean salad.  Not as fancy as, say, the recent Mandarin Chicken Salad, but every bit as good in its own way.  If its possible for a salad to be ingeniously seasoned, this one is (I wrote about a similar salad here) and the tacos themselves were very tasty.  I also liked the serving size of this meal; it was much more reasonable compared to the pub’s other, often oversize offerings.

I got a very colorful Mandarin chicken salad at the pub this afternoon:

The pub isn’t exactly known for its salads, but this one was excellent. I loved the grilled chicken and the eclectic variety of toppings, especially the Mandarin oranges and the almonds. This salad is also not one that I would usually make for myself at the dining hall, so its a nice change of pace in that sense.

My one complaint is about the lettuce; you can’t see it in the photo, but the lettuce pieces used in the salad are absolutely huge. The cooks use the same lettuce for their sandwiches as they do for salads, which is fine, but they don’t bother to cut up the sandwich-sized lettuce leafs before putting them in the salad. Fixing that simple problem would make this great salad even better.

It’s Wednesday, and that means sushi from the cafe:

I’ve committed to tasting a different sushi variety each week, so today I got a crab roll. Once again, I was glad that I tried something new; this roll was absolutely delicious. I especially liked the generous amounts of crab meat and especially of flying fish roe. Whereas most sushi chefs just use the roe as a garnish, the one that made this roll featured the roe as a main ingredient. Its nice to experience a unique and unusual taste in something that you only eat once a week, and the fish roe does that job perfectly here.

Today I got the ‘Traditional Greek Salad Wrap’ special from Bowdoin’s grill-pub Jack McGee’s. I was excited about the wrap because it featured a lot of my favorite ingredients: romaine lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, red onions, and feta cheese. In fact I often use those very ingredients to make salads at Bowdoin’s salad bar, so I thought it would be neat to try them in a wrap.

I found the wrap to be really great in some respects but lacking in others. On the positive side, it had a satisfying texture: a flaky wrap around crunchy vegetables and crumbly cheese, all held together by a moist sauce. I also enjoyed the contrast between the salty ingredients like the cheese and olives and the sweeter vegetables. On the other hand, I think that the wrap went a little to heavy on the feta cheese, the sauce, and the olives. All of these ingredients tasted good, but there flavors are so strong that they tended to overpower the other ones, especially the vegetables. The whole olives in particular were too much for me, so I ended up picking most of those out. It also would have been nice to some more tomatoes; they would contrast nicely both in flavor and color with the rest of the sandwich.

Altogether I liked the sandwich, but I think I’ll stick with my custom Greek salads from the salad bar. That way I can include the extra vegetables that I like while also moderating the amount of cheese and dressing.

This semester I have Wednesday classes from 11:30 to 2:30, so I miss out on my usual sushi lunch on Wednesday at Bowdoin’s café.  Instead, I can now go on either Monday or Wednesday nights to get a late sushi dinner.  It had been a while since I had any sushi, so tonight I decided to treat my self to a late-night tuna roll snack.

And a treat it was.  Like the spicy salmon roll from a few weeks back, today’s tuna tasted impeccably fresh.  I love how the flavors of this roll; the sweet rice, salty nori, crunchy cucumber, savory fish, and rich, spicy sauce, all combine in one delicious bite.  The café offers 7 or 8 different varieties of sushi, so I know I have a lot more tasty late-night snacks like this one to look forward to.

My Monday classes box me out of the normal dining hall’s lunch hours, so I often grab something at Bowdoin’s grill-pub “Jack Magee’s” instead. This “mexi-burger wrap” was today’s special.

Basically it’s a classic burrito made with a crumbled garden burger instead of chicken or beef. The garden-burger part of the wrap was surprising moist and delicious, but I wish that the wrap had more lettuce, tomatoes, and onions and less cheese. Including lots of vegetables is something that Bowdoin generally does well, so I was pretty disappointed by their omission in today’s special.

The salsa ended up saving this wrap; it really kicks up the flavor, especially since vegetables are otherwise lacking, and helps cut the tortilla’s starchiness and the cheese’s richness.

Today’s lunch was OK, but I expect better from Jack McGee’s in my future visits this semester.

I was excited today because it was the first day this year that the Bowdoin café had sushi available. Sushi is my single favorite food, so this was a big deal for me.

The café actually serves sushi every Wednesday for lunch during the school year, so today’s lunch was just the first of many sushi moments to come.

I ordered the spicy salmon rolls and they really impressed me. The chef had judiciously applied the spicy sauce so as not to overpower the fish, and the salmon itself was impeccably fresh. I seldom find salmon rolls this good even in sushi restaurants.

Serving excellent sushi is another aspect of the Bowdoin dining services that really distinguishes them. Again, I feel very lucky to be the beneficiary of their work.

Last night I walked with some friends from Howell House to the local Indian spot Shere Punjab. I enjoyed the company and the exercise, but the food failed to impress.

When I’m trying a new restaurant, as with Shere Punjab last night, I usually go right to the seafood section of the menu. Not only do I love seafood, but seafood dishes are particularly good for distinguish great restaurants from mediocre ones. Only a special restaurant can obtain truly fresh seafood and prepare it in a way that both highlights and builds on seafood’s delicate flavor.

I took the food back to the dorm, opened the container of Seafood Medley Masala I had ordered, and immediately felt discouraged. The dish had an unappetizingly uniform orange-brown color, with no garnish whatsoever to make it more appealing. Regardless of its depressed appearance, I gave it an honest taste.

This dish flat-out failed my ‘seafood test’. The overwhelming richness and spiciness of the sauce masked any flavor that the scallops may have had, and the only thing I could taste besides the sauce when eating the shrimp was an unpleasant fishiness.

I had some success salvaging the dish by mixing in a lot of basmati rice, but by that point it had clearly failed to live up to its $15 price point.

I’ll probably give the Shere Punjab one more chance, perhaps trying a different portion of their menu, but I frankly won’t be expecting much. The seafood has spoken; the Punjab was mediocre.