Zoe P.'s Profile

New Haven has a dozen street corners where you can find a breakfast sandwich that rates four or five stars. Dunkin Donuts' everything "bagel" with bacon, "egg" and "cheese" isn't bad. But my scare quotes aren't gratuitous - the bagel's too soft, the egg is a little weird and the cheese is more than a little weird. Definitely 2-star food.

On the other hand, if I were rating this against other DD experiences (Foxon Blvd), this place is a full 5-star gourmet godsend. There's no line downstairs (now you know, Yelpers), the service is speedy and the whole deal is consistently piping hot, filling and cheap.

Also (and this is probably true of all DD but I'm no expert) they go light on the packaging. Just a few pieces of paper that are easily discarded on board the train or whatever.

Excellent mashed potatoes, pleasant atmosphere, large menu, lots of "best of" hype, on a bus line. Years hence, everything else has faded from memory. Mark that.

The food is just fine, and I like that you can dine alone at the counter, in the midst of cheerful, anonymous hubbub.

I like the kitschy murals and the jukebox, but that's me.

The food is a little disorienting. Excellent short ribs? Really? Yes. Grape leaves that leave all other grape leaves behind? Also yes. But the food overall is more Paul Henreid than Humphrey Bogart. Who is Paul Henreid, you ask? Exactly my point.

The exception that proves the rule.

I pretty much feel that to get good food in Boston you need to have (a) a lot of information at your fingertips, or (b) a lot of Boston experience under your belt, or (c) money to burn.

But I walked into Grafton Street unawares and had yummy oysters and a salad and some scallops and a glass of wine and it was pleasant and not that pricey.

Loved the brunch breads but, under the influence of my mini-mimosa, I must have ordered the wrong things. Lobster omelet and zebra cake were, somewhat inexplicably, downers. Outside dining was nice, inside looked adorable. I'm glad they use local foods and, for me, that justifies the prices.

It was lunch time and we were deeply, truly thirsty. Unbeknownst to us, this place has the largest sodas in the entire world. It was sort of cosmic. But the meal went down hill from there.

Chips and salsa were fine. I had the catfish tacos and I was pretty much horrified by a dish of deep fried fish nuggets embedded in cheese and folded in flour tortillas; I think I read the menu too quickly. But the fish was nice and fresh (and upon biting I found it was whole big pieces) and I removed the cheese and placed it in the do-not-eat pile, with my sad jumbalaya and the rather "special" sauce that came with the tacos.

Next time I'd watch my step, but there's not likely to be a next time.

A good place to sleep. High praise for a hotel. It's a nice old building with solid walls and doors. Conveniently placed at an intersection with very little car traffic. Add to that good beds and linens.

And it's very convenient to the Harvard campus and Cambridge generally.

But heed the bad reviews. We avoided the breakfast. We did not drink the tea. We did not park in the $40 lot. We watched, dumbstruck, as the diffident staff removed the afternoon cookies (see photo) from under our very noses and took them behind the registration counter.

We did drink the morning coffee on our way out the door. And it wasn't awful. It also seems like they've put the TV on mute.

I was planning to be in Washington Depot and I decided to try this place because it gets a lot recommendations over on the Chowhound boards. And now I ask myself, why do I listen to those people? Food 3, Atmosphere 1, Environmental Ethics 5.

So. I got an above-average roast beef sandwich: nice pickled onions, spicy horseradish that wasn't too "saucy," lovely roast beef and tomato, outstanding bread. So far so good. My lunching companion got the chicken pot-pie. No comment - a bad sign, coming from this particular lunching companion. We also got a basic beet and apple salad. And the carrot cake, which is the kind I don't like: a spice cake with a few flecks of carrot and a cream cheese frosting that isn't tart and tangy enough.

You got to hand it to The Pantry, though. They are serving tarragon chicken salad and a hundred kinds of slaw and root vegetables and roasted turkey platters and, I guess, keeping a certain New England, Martha Stewart, Kate and Allie Caterers spirit alive. And I guess they're doing a good job of it, foodwise.

What was really a problem was that the staff were totally overwhelmed during the lunch hour and you felt it. Pretty plates were headed for the dining room and the lunch line was long, but I'm sure it gets that way a lot; it's a popular place. They prep things from scratch and heat things for you, which does take time, but everyone seemed hurried and tense, like *they* felt like it shouldn't take so long, or like they'd had some kind of kitchen catastrophe earlier or something. The staff didn't seem to trust one another to each do their part.

And the "gourmet store" decor is pretty annoying. Most of the stuff in there isn't that special as far as I'm concerned. The picnic tables outside are nice enough, except, let's face it, they are in a countrified parking lot.

I think my favorite thing about this place is their environmental choices: they compost their veggie waste, they have a second trash can out back for "chicken feed" and they pack your to-go food in paper containers.

The healthy portion of beef atop my cold rice vermicelli was outstanding. Sweet and spicy and tender and toothsome. The rest of the mix-ins were a little more mild and low key. But fresh and tasty enough. My dining companion seemed happy with the pho.

Decent rice vermicelli has been difficult to find in New England. And this place has it. Not the best food I've ever had, but not the worst, by a long shot - that would be a tie between New Haven's Pot au Pho and Pho Pasteur, in Boston!

The rest of the reviews here are right on: it's a hole in the wall, it's a good idea to order by number, it's cash only, the staff is friendly, they don't speak much English. And I can't wait to BMOB! Very cool.

On a second visit I had the crepe, which was not outstanding, but was better than similar items from . . . pricier restaurants.

So if you're in New Haven, craving Vietnamese food, and you like this sort of thing, I wholeheartedly recommend finding a reason to visit Middletown.