Last night I celebrated the birthday of one of my best friends. A few weeks ago she emailed me asking for recommendations for neighborhoods with both a restaurant we could dine at and a bar to dance at afterward. I sent about fifteen options and she ultimately decided on a Central Square combo: dinner at RendezVous and dancing at Phoenix Landing. I had not actually been to Rendezvous myself, but had heard nothing but great things.
We arrived at 8:00pm for our reservation. Our party of twelve was seated at a long table in the very front of the restaurant, right in front of the floor to ceiling windows overlooking Central Square. Not too shabby!
The restaurant had nice, non-distracting decor, including mustard yellow paint and an exposed brick wall right at the end of our table (again, jackpot table location). The patrons definitely skewed older than our typical hangouts, but we were too involved in our celebration to care.
Our waiter was superb and quickly scurried around the table to get everyone's drink order. One of the cocktails, the Orient Express, arrived with an actual rose floating in the center!
After placing our orders our waiter brought out several bowls of bread. This bread was the absolute perfect ratio of doughy center to hearty crust. I could have eaten ten pieces!
To start, almost every person at the table ordered the same salad which included: Boston lettuce, sliced apples, cheddar cheese, spiced pecans and a cider vinaigrette. It was incredibly delicious! Salad can sometimes be underwhelming, but this was fantastic.
Between the twelve of us we sampled quite a few menu items for dinner. A popular choice was the gnocchi with oxtail, brussels sprouts and horseradish. The dish received a rave review from the ladies.
Another hit was the pork and veal meatballs with orecchiette, maitakes and piave cheese. Those plates were literally licked clean!
One dish not only tasted sublime, but smelled intoxicating: the wood-grilled pizza with maitake mushrooms, comté cheese, spicy onions and upland cress. I'm drooling just thinking about it again.
There were no vegetarian entrees, so I ordered an appetizer for my meal, which was the vegetable antipasto. I just had an amazing vegetarian charcuterie at Temple Bar, so I was curious to see how this would stack up! The best part of the RendezVous vegetable plate was the muhummara (a walnut/garlic spread), which I ate on that delicious, crusty bread! They should serve just that as an appetizer.
As we were celebrating a birthday, we had to have dessert! What else are you going to put the candle in? The birthday girl saw two items that caught her eye, so I encouraged her to order both. She selected the pineapple and pomegranate upside-down cake with vanilla bean ice cream and the pear crostata with caramel-almond ice cream. This pear dessert was one of the best things I have ever tasted in my life, and I don't even like fruit-based desserts! Seriously, people. This dessert is incredible. It was the absolute highlight of the night!
Our experience at RendezVous was perfection. A beautiful restaurant, a table with a view, a kind and attentive server, a delicious meal and a crave-worthy dessert.
Thank you, RendezVous! I will be back very soon. That pear dessert is already calling me. . .
