Good Eats: The Brahmin & Zocalo

I saw a local deal on Rue La La for a 6 course tasting for 2 at The Brahmin, a new restaurant in Back Bay that opened in August. It was tough to ignore that price so I decided to make the purchase and check it out.

It's in a pretty good location not far from the Orange Line's Back Bay Station. It's a pretty spacious place with a main room, a second function room to the right and a downstairs area which we didn't see. They even had some tables still set up outside for the few fair weather days we have remaining.

As I said, the deal allowed us to choose 6 different items from the dinner menu. We chose the Greens Salad, Seasonal Tomatoes & Baby Mozzarella, Tater Tots w/ a trio of sauces (truffled ketchup, garlic aioli, and grainy honey mustard), Meatballs, Grilled Chicken Skewers and Truffled Mac & Cheese.

The Greens Salad was the only sub-par course. Also, the Sidecar I ordered was horrendous. The rest of our drinks were tasty, though.

Never one to miss an opportunity to brag to my friends I made sure to check in on Foursquare. A tip popped up that "the best guacamole in town" was located right next door at a Mexican restaurant called Zocalo. Needless to say, there was no way my girlfriend was going to miss that. So after we finished our 6 courses we walked exactly one restaurant over and sat down for some tortilla chips and guac. (If you have never eaten dinner and then immediately gone to another restaurant for more food (not dessert) then let me tell you that it is very confusing for your stomach and brain to make sense of what is happening.)

The place looked busy but it was much smaller than The Brahmin so that wasn't really the case. Still it was cozy enough that we could look over towards the bar and see they had their own guacamole station where an employee literally just makes guac all day. Old school style too: in a mortar with a pestle. It was very cool to watch.

It was served in our own mortar and I enjoyed it thoroughly. My girlfriend liked it but wouldn't go so far as to label it "the best in town". Definitely worth a visit for the experience if nothing else.