Location based networking, anurag wakhlu (coloci inc)
http://goo.gl/mxAtd
* location based apps: where are you now? or where will you be?
* where are you now: foursquare, gowalla, loopt, etc
* where will you be: coloci, fyesa, tripit, plancast
* interest based networking: the reason to talk to someone who is near you. tie an interest: sending someone a coupon when they are near starbucks. if they arent near starbucks, what good is a coupon?
* proactive coupons: dont wait for a check-in. if someone is 2 blocks from starbucks, send them a notification for coupon. ex// minority report. walk by a billboard, recognizes you, tailors ad specifically to you.
52% of US consumers willing to share location for retail perks.
* foursquare background checkin? automatically check you in when you are in a close enough vicinity to a location
* Do privacy concerns have a potential impact on services becoming more popular? ex// European privacy laws about broadcasting who you are, where you are, etc.
* Have to trust your device that when you disallow authority to know your location, it actually does not broadcast where you are.
* Trade off of convenience versus privacy. Debit card is a lot more convenient than cash, people are more than likely to give up privacy.
* If you really want to not be tracked, you really need to disconnect yourself from the computer. Go cash only. Re-education might help. “You might already be sharing this info somewhere else, so what difference is it now that you do it via your phone?”
* Tracking someone’s history via CSS visited tag. Firefox supposedly has fixed this issue where websites cannot do this anymore.
* Using EZpass, who is responsible for giving a ticket if you did 60 miles in faster than 60 minutes? Using your location to know your broke the law.
At the start, Anurag gave a wonderfully succint history of location based networking, highighting the current giants like Foursquare and Facebook Places. We talked about how the potential is there to enable your phone to alert you about consumer deals in your vicinity, having more of a ‘push’ aspect to networking, or your phone could alert you to friends being near as well. Eventually though, the attendants turned the talk into a big privacy discussion. Not necessarily as flame-worthy as it could have been, but still talking about how much of our information we want to broadcast and allow to advertisers. Broadcasting location and private information. Could the situation eventually get to the point like Minority Report where your phone is overtly/covertly broadcasting who you are to potential advertisers or other potentially nefarious people.

Economics of open source
* reputation is a kind of currency. ancillary benefits of ‘being known.’ ex// popular github repo, can get you a book deal, flown to conferences, etc.
* are we cheapening what we do by giving it away? software produces so much cash for people. not everything is oss. still need people to customize it and apply.
* discussion: can donations kill a project? the comptroller decides who gets money, and those who donate time but dont get paid feel slighted, and the project can take a nose dive.
Content of presentation was a bit bland/dry, but the discussion was involved. War story: giving training away for free when a company charges for it. you are hurting the ecosystem by giving it away rather than someone paying for it. This was fairly interesting, delving past the common topic of software being ‘free as in beer.’

Interviewing well as a coder round table
* feel okay sitting there for a couple minutes thinking. Dont feel stressed to start writing code right away.
* some questions to ask you to regurgitate syntax. what happens if you get confused between languages.
* design issues “show us where you would add X feature.” stylistics versus code syntax.
* code portfolios: employers look at your github profile. see the code you’ve written. if your code is ‘too good’, employer wants you to find bugs in their code.
* how to practice your whiteboarding skills? codekata: short programming problems.
* asking questions that there is no solution to. can you be an asshole interviewing?
* be prepared for personal questions because employers will google you and find your personal interests
* spin negative questions as positive: what do you see improving in your work environment?
* questions back to employee: what do you hope to improve for our company?
* if you list a skill in your skills list, be ready to whiteboard the code.

Can the internet make you healthier? jason jacobs, runkeeper founder
* convergence of health/athletic data and IT
* virtual coaching: ahead/behind pace, in-app reminders to go faster or slower on their iOS app.
The more data you have over what you’re doing physically, can help you react. How am I doing against my peers? This was interesting, since Jason sees his company’s first product ‘Run Keeper’ as the jumping off point to more athletic-body sensing applications. The point was raised about what point does the app which suggests a certain pace while running, dance the line of being medical advice. I think it is a good point, that the app needs more information about your health before suggesting a certain distance or pace for exercise. I’ll be curious myself as I use the app more, how I am improving athletically.

Overall, I found the signal-to-noise ratio of the unconference to be very high. For my first Barcamp, I would suggest it to all technically-inclined folks who just want to let their interests and imaginations plot the course of which talks they attend. I know I will be a repeat attendee. ]]> http://blog.jeffreyforman.net/2011/04/17/boston-barcamp-6-day-two/feed/ 0 http://blog.jeffreyforman.net/2011/04/10/barcamp-boston-6-day-one/ http://blog.jeffreyforman.net/2011/04/10/barcamp-boston-6-day-one/#comments Sun, 10 Apr 2011 12:13:22 +0000 Jeff Forman http://blog.jeffreyforman.net/?p=633 Continue reading →]]> Having never been to a Barcamp before, I knew the overall structure of the conference, but was curious if I would actually like it. Truth be told, I found it full of content, without a lot of fluff, even for the talks I sat in on where I had no prior knowledge. My notes follow, thanks to the great OSX app Notational Velocity hooked up to Simplenote. My overall thoughts in italic after each post.:

how to give a presentation people love and learn from
break presentation into 7-10 minute chunks
then transition 7 minutes into the talk to another topic, to keep people’s attention
insert emotion, a story. rather than just X happened.
(For a talk to be this meta, a presentation about giving presentations, I was not hooked. There weren’t any real nuggets of information here that made me sit up and say “Wow, I haven’t been doing this in the presentation I make.”)

how to run a startup like genghis khan, by @wufoo
* work like a nomad
* build an audience first. protect your audience. make the audience part of the show.
* make developers handle support requests. once devs get same question two or three times, they go in and fix the code so they dont get the question again.
(Presenter absolutely killed it. Engaging, fast talking (without mumbling), great slides that presented the information in clear and sometimes humorous ways. Made me think more about engaging the people I am trying to convince to my way of thinking)

android developer: war stories and antipatterns
yoni, lead android dev at scavngr
* dont code splashscreens. more of an iOS thing. if you have to preload data, show a progress bar in the app already open
* dont force orientation (landscape/portrait). support both
* dont assume their screen size. use relative layouts
(I went into this talk curious and with no prior experience or knowledge of writing an Android app. I don’t even own an Android phone. This was much more a round table, with those devs in the room very willing to share their experiences and war stories. I found they really had good experiential tips, rather than “This is the best practice” and moving on.)

ask a plasma physics grad student anything
(I must say this was completely over my head. The student at the front of the room, from MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, seemed to know his stuff and was genuienly interested in challenging the audience. What blew me away was the knowledge of the audience, asking very pointed questions with what sounded like real science to back it up.)

building fast websites, making users happy (@jonathanklein)
* google injected 400ms delay into search page, dropped 0.76% searches/users over time.
* phpied.com/the-performance-business-pitch
* faster sites rank better in google. site speed is part of search ranking.
* what’s load time? server side generation time, client side render time. 80-90% of load time takes place on the client.
* best practices:
* reduce http requests: combine css/js, use image sprites (one download and cut up into multiple images).
* minify css/jss: strip comments out and white space. (yuy, java library). will rename variables into shortest name possible
* gzip all text: html, css, js
* for graphics, use png8 (restricts you to 256 different colors in the image)
* jpegs can be saved at 75% quality
* image compressor: smush.it (from yahoo dev network), lossless compression.
* measuring performance
* google webmaster tools, www.webpagetest.org
* yotta, firebug, yslow, page speed, dynatrace ajax edition
(For an ops guy, I was really interested in this talk. Jonathan blew through his material at break-neck speed, but covered the topics and answered questions without feeling like the talk was broken up. Some really good information through his experiences, and things I would like to dig into more myself.)

nosql round table
* some are relational, others are key value
* redis, redis + resque
* cassandra
* mongodb
* why nosql over mysql? no schema, lack of migrations from version to version. being able to store different things. replication (single threaded)
* keeping mysql in sync with nosql layer about: broadcast updates from mysql over rapidmq(?).  nosql service grabs update from mysql.
* solutions that they discarded:
* cassandra: v0.6, latency spikes between nodes. node would get flagged as awol. cascading failure because data gets rebalanced. use “hinted handoff” to prefer the direction of the failover. supposedly better in v0.7. documentation is messy.
* in the cloud or in a dc? mostly EC2. local storage with evs slave.
* search via solr
(Another one where I went in having nothing but curiosity, since noSQL is one of the popular buzz words these days. Very engaged audience who shared war stories, both good and bad, implementing noSQL solutions in their workplaces. Left me with a stalk of websites to dig into.)

agile development war stories
* problems it tries to solve: waste. business approach.
* more collab between business and engineering. dont just throw the ‘stories’ from biz over the wall.
* focus on testable behavior. how can we test each iteration? should be part of the original story.
* be smaller, quicker, more iterative. ex// dont go off for 18 months planning your solution. business might change underneath you
* people do “agile but..” and tend to modify the methodology.
* burn down?
* should tasks stay <1 day? sounds a bit unreasonable, since “speeding up the server by 20%” is unable to be done in one day. task size should have a reason.
* average sprint time: 2 weeks
* do a code review before the planning meeting. so estimations on a piece of work can be completed in the meeting. ex// dont trace the code for the 1st time in a meeting.
* software to track scrums/managing stories: soft2, scrum ninja, team foundations studio (windows), white boards, index cards on a wall, ibm rational, pivotal tracker (good for distributed teams), mingle from softworks.
(Another highly-concentrated buzzword round table where I was more curious than anything. Some real good information about what works and what doesn’t when it comes to managing time and projects. Lots to read up on here, and see if I can apply it to my daily work life.)

One of my favorite pictures from the event:

Pillow Fight Warrior

Album for the event on my Picasa Web Album.

For those not familiar with Wine Riot, it’s basically a beer festival/tasting, but with wine. A bunch of retailers, distributors and vineyards themselves come to the event and give samples of their product to attendees. This happened to be the biggest surprise for me. Having been to several beerfests previously, I am used to the brewer themselves being there. This gives patrons the ability to speak to the people behind the product. You can really learn a lot from those people, all the nuances and thought behind a new series of brews, and upcoming products. Wine Riot had a much higher percentage of distributors and wine purveyors on-hand, as opposed to winemakers themselves. To the best of my memory, I don’t remmeber speaking to more than a handful of actual winemakers or people from the actual vineyard. In total, there were about 50 booths set up in the Cyclorama in Boston’s South End.

Below is the list of wine I vaguely scribbled as myself, M, and some friends made our way ‘around the world of wine.’ In no particular order.

• Oyster Bay Marlborough Pinot Noir 2008 (New Zealand)
• Esporao Reserva White 2008 (Portugal)
• Sequana Vineyards Dutton Ranch Pinot Noir 2007 (California, Russian River Valley)
• Corvidae Wine Co Wise Guy Sauvignon Blanc 2009  (Washington, Columbia Valley)
• Corvidae Wine Co “Lenore” Syrah 2007 (Washington, Columbia Valley)
• Charles Smith Wines Kung Fu Girl Riesling 2009 (Washington, Columbia Valley)
• K Milbrandt Syrah 2007 (Washigton, Wahluke Slope)
• K Viognier 2009 (Washington, Columbia Valley)
• Terra Rosa Old Vine Malbec 2007 (Argentina)
• Porta Wines Syrah WInemaker Reserva 2008 (Chile, Acongagua Valley)
• Terra Andina Reserva Cabernet Sauvignon 2007 (Chile)
• Yellow+Blue Torrontes 2009
• Herdade do Esporao Touriga Nacional 2007 (Portugal, Alentejo)
• Podere San Lorenzo Rosso di Montalcino DOC 2007 (Italy, Toscana)
• NV Mionetto Moscato Dolce (Italy)
• Corelli 34′ Malbec 2008 (Argentina, Mendoza)
• Cahteau Lacombe Noaillac 2006 (France, Bordeaux)
• Domain La Croix Belle Champ du Coq 2007 (France, Languedoc)

My biggest surprise was the Yellow+Blue Torrontes, a wine served from a plastic container, almost like Franzia’s popular low cost wine in the square box. It was surprisingly good for the connotation that boxed-wine has.  Overall the event was worth going, especially because I was able to use a Groupon I purchased, saving me $10/ticket from the normally $30/ticket price. Local restaurants Upper Crust Pizza, Legal Seafood, and Redbones BBQ were among others selling food at the event. Given a Groupon being offered for next year, I highly recommend the event for those interested in wine, and will return myself.

Two weeks later, M and I, along with another couple friends who have become our restaurant seekers-in-crime, descended upon HLM at 12:30pm on a Saturday afternoon. To say this place was busy is an understatement. Now I don’t pretend to speak any Chinese, but that’s all I heard among the hostess shouting out numbers to parties waiting to be seated. (Being the stereotypical white male, I have heard the adage that a restaurant with ‘locals’ to the cuisine is normally very good, so I was psyched.) Without waiting more than 5-10 minutes, we were ushered through the throngs of people and incredible number of staff pushing carts to our table. I looked around and all I saw was a sea of people and staff, working the crowds entering and exiting, ushering food between tables, and turning tables over for the next party.

Within 30 seconds of being seated, we had a cart off to the side of our table, with a waitress offering us various kinds of dumplings. This is all from memory, as I was not able to either take pictures nor write down any of what we had due to the intense commotion of the entire dining room. (In no particular order)

• Beef Ball
• Tripe
• Peking Duck
• Tofu skins
• Pork knuckles with thick wonton noodles (the latter were incredible)
• Steamed shrimp dumplings
• Steamed Pork buns
• Sticky rice with peanuts
• and others I am unable to remember.

This was a new experience for me, having never had ‘cart service’ dim sum. Waitresses did speak English, but over the din of the dining room (it was incredibly loud, but still possible to carry a conversation at your table), we ended up just pointing to things we wanted and that we hoped had the food we expected in them.

There were some hits, like the peking duck, tripes, and wonton noodles. Each had a distinct flavor, never bland, and perfectly cooked, even though they had probably been sitting on the cart for several minutes making their way around the dining room. And there were some misses, although few and far between. Only the beef balls and sticky rice received less-than-rave reviews. We found those dishes to be very single-note, with not much interesting flavor. The beef balls tasted more like meatloaf, of which I am not a fan. The sticky rice had boiled peanuts, which surprisingly added no peanut flavor to the dish. We drank hot tea throughout the meal, but I must imagine cold water and soft drinks are available. Flagging down a waiter or waitress was not a problem when we were looking for more dishes, most of the time they came to us before we were done.

Needless to say, we were full, but not stuffed, after polishing off the food we had ‘ordered.’ The one thing we were unsure of was just how much money we spent, given that the dim sum menu has no prices. After giving them my credit card and hoping for the best, a bill of $44 came back. We were blown away that so much food came from $11 a person. While not an every weekend trek for us from the near suburbs, we will definitely be back to try more of the menu and experience the frenzied atmosphere of Hei La Moon.

Luckily I had dressed in jeans and a dress shirt, so while I ended up being a little under-dressed, I did not feel uncomfortable among the other clientèle who walked in later. The restaurant was empty, it being 530pm which is on the earlier side of dinner. The hostess took what I thought was an inordinate amount of time trying to “fit me in” but I obliged respectively and was seated at the bar. I was given the menu, and of course offered omakase, chef’s choice. While scanning the menu I noticed that the prices were indeed very high, even for sushi, and decided to put myself at the whim of the Chef for $75. This in my mind was how I would keep myself within a price range, and explore things I would not have otherwise selected on my own.

The hit list (from the receipt, I didn’t have a chance to take pictures or write down each dish specifically):

• Hamachi N O Ya
• Salmon Tataki
• Warm Eel O Ya
• La Ratte Potato Chip
• Shiitaki Mushroom O Ya
• Kumamoto Oyster O Ya
• Shima Aji Sea Urchin
• Salmon O Ya
• Hamachi Viet O Ya
• Tuna Tataki O Ya
• Foie Gras O Ya

I must say that the sushi was excellent, every dish visually stunning, and even better on the way down. Most of the dishes were cooked or heated in some way, which caught me off guard from other sushi I have enjoyed. Having had omakase previously while on vacation in Los Angeles, the fact that this presentation was more cooked than I expected, made it no less satisfying. The only dish I felt was a let down was a piece of hamachi covered with a home made potato chip. While the dish was good, I felt that while at a restaurant that carried such prestige, this just seemed like a pretty-good potato chip on to pof a piece of tuna and some rice. It felt boring, more of a “a potato chip, really?” kind of moment. The only other nit was the use of basil. While very fresh and refreshing, it overpowered the dishes it accompanied, and I found myself removing it as courses went on.

The last course was the most memorable since it was the most different. Foie Gras seared with some balsamic vinaigrette and chocolate, on top of a simple sea-weed rolled piece of rice,  paired with a sample of an 8 year aged sake. While having more of a syrupy consistency and being heavier than most sakes I have had, is still extremely sweet, with a strong hint of raisins. A perfect combination with the very savory foie gras it had been paired along side. This sake, worth noting and buying on my own for consumption at home, is called Hanahato Kijoshu.

I thoroughly enjoyed my meal, and left full but not stuffed from the portion size I had decided on. I felt the omakase kept my budget in check. While scanning the menu during my meal, it would be very easy to blow a $100 or even $150 per person going a la carte selecting sushi or other cooked entrees from O Ya. This is definitely a special occasion meal, and somewhere I put on my list to hit once or twice a year if my budget and appetite desire.

The restaurant met all the South End trappings: expensive valet parking, dim lighting, and a clientèle a little bit more hip than everyone else. But being that it was a Sunday night, and a bit on the early side (630pm), I was hoping I could find street parking (I did), and that we could slip into a table (30 minute wait) or at the bar (we happened to get the two seats closest to the open kitchen). Having read about the place before, and heard about the Chef, Jamie Bissonnette, I recognized him from the moment we sat down. We saw him the last time we came in, and he’s here again. For some superficial reason, I knew the food was going to be just as good since he was there. Just so happened during the meal he ended up service us one of the courses, and asked how whether we had been to Toro before and whether we liked the food. Judging from my comments below, it was a hit, and we told him so.

While waiting for our seats, I scanned the chaulk-board menu above the bar. I asked one of the bar tenders what a ‘Blinker’ was. Rye, grape fruit juice, and orange juice. While it was a good drink, albeit a little strong, I’d probably get something else next time. M got a sangria, which she enjoyed incredibly fast.

Tonight’s hit list:

• Atun Pincho: Tuna tartare with coconut milk and lime
• Lengua con Lentejas y Salsa Verde: Smoked beef tongue with lentils and salsa verde
• Ceviche with halibut
• Anna’s Empanadas: Chicken and potato empanadas, aji roja and alioli
• Sherry del Pollo con Tomate: Braised chicken with Pedro Ximenez, tomatoes and quinoa
• Escalavada catalana: Roasted eggplant, peppers, onions and tomatoes
• Churros con Chocolate (dessert)

Every plate was memorable. The lime foam on top of the tuna tartare made the dish pop even more, with just enough sweetness to bring the tuna to life. The beef tongue had a buttery texture, sliced thin. M loved the lentils, even eating the tongue regardless of her less-than-voracrious appetite for red meat. The ceviche with halibut was extremely fresh. (Get more bread for this one, and sop up the juices with the bread.) The empenadas were M’s favorite. Luckily the weather had cooled off in Boston tonight, or else this dish would have been a bit too heavy for a hot night. The accompanied mayonassaie aioli to put on top of the empeanads had a very faint hint of garlic, which didn’t overpower the sweet empnadas. The chicken was cooked to the point where only forks were needed to seperate meat from bone. The chicken I found to be pretty ‘chicken tasted’, that is to say that it didn’t have much flavor in and of itself. But the accompaning quinoia and tomatoes added some depth. While I am not the biggest fan of quinoa (I found it a bit bland), this version did have definitely character to it, and added some thickness to the chicken. This chicken dish was another that had juices on the bottom of the plate worth scooping into your bread. The eggplant brought out was soft and made a good comparison to the heavy meat and poultry dishes we had.

To end the meal we decided on getting the dessert suggested by our bartender/waitor who took great care of us. Churros con chocolate, like a fried/puffed pastry. The chocolate had a little kick to it, definitely unexpected. M and I had tasted chocolate that had chiles in it when we were out in Seattle in May, and this had the same profile. Slight, but not overpowering. Just enough to make you realize how unique and tasty it was.

The bill came and we were again pleasantly surprised at how relatively affordable it was. All in all, another home run for Toro.

So the lies started early. I went away the weekend before to the Masters, with the plan of telling Meryl that we had plans the following Friday night. Her and I had planned a week-long vacation to Seattle and Vancouver, and I wanted to do the proposal the night before. So I lied to Meryl, saying we had to meet one of my father’s clients for dinner, and that it was a client we couldn’t say no to. This solved one problem, that Meryl couldn’t go workout, and that she had to come right home after work.

The next problem was getting her to a place in Boston to do the proposal. I waited until the last minute figuring this out, and thanks to half my office at ITA, came up with doing it somewhere outside overlooking the Boston skyline.  I told Meryl that my mother needed a picture of the Boston skyline, and that since she wanted me in the picture, Meryl had to get out of the car when we stopped. We got to a spot right outside the Boston University Boathouse on Memorial Drive in Cambridge, and took the first picture of me. I then told Meryl to turn around because I wanted to get a picture of her. In the commotion, I took out the ring, and asked her if she’d put up with me for the rest of her life. Surprisingly, she said yes!

After many tears, I had to tell her to look at the ring and put it on her finger. In typical Boston fashion, a runner went by yelling “Say Yes!” After a few quick phone calls in the car, we went to a dinner that I had made reservations at weeks ago, at Craigie on Main in Central Square in Cambridge. This place is awesome, the food outstanding.

Six courses, and a bottle of champagne so nicely provided by my boss Dave later, we came home to finish packing for our trip. Now we sit in the Boston Airport heading out for a week vacation in Vancouver and Seattle.

Details and wedding website to follow!

-Jeff and Meryl

Which brings me to today. In the mail I received my Dave Matthews Band tickets for Fenway Park, for a concert in May. While I am not normally a huge concert goer, it is my first DMB concert since high school in Florida, so I felt I couldn’t pass it up. Mostly because of the venue, what better way than to see a concert in one of the country’s oldest ball parks. Tickets went on sale a month or so ago, I debated buying them, with the $75 ticket price. But what the hell, how often do you see a concert in Fenway Park?

Looking at the receipt now, I realize, holy shit, talk about a racket.

Two tickets: $150.00

Handling Fees: $33.80

Total: $183.80

Yes, you saw that right, a whopping 18.3% fee just for handling. Someone in this industry, please explain to me what ‘handling’ in this case means. Do you have people go on a map and find my seats by hand? Are you physically breaking apart the tickets from large sheets and compiling them together in a Level 4 Bio-toxin lab that requires special levels of cleanliness? Do my seats come with a sommelier at the ball park?

Let me try and paint this picture from an IT perspective. What I consider handling, are the back-room costs associated with assigning me a seat, processing the credit card charge, printing the tickets, and mailing them. During ticket purchase, I picked ‘best available’ for seat selection. About 45 seconds later, the next page pops up, offering me a choice of seats in a drop down box. Too bad all the drop down options were the same. Awesome. I hit continue.

Enter in my American Express number (it was an Amex presale), billing information, and hit confirm. About a minute later a confirmation page comes up, email drops in my Inbox and I’m set. At the moment I was more overjoyed to really calculate the percentage of fees in my head. A process that took maybe two minutes, barring the processing servers being overloaded, and you guys take almost $34 of my money.

Now I realize why I am a much bigger fan of the $18 law seats at Tanglewood in the Summer time, when James Taylor and other musical luminaries grace the outdoor stage. I can bring in lounge chairs, a cooler stocked with food, beer, wine, and a frisbee. I understand the backlash against companies like Live Nation. While I am not a frequent concert goer, I now will make a better effort to make sure I fully swallow the fact that almost 20% of my total is going towards a fee I don’t understand.

We arrived to Ten Tables-Cambridge (TT-C) around 850pm and approached the hostess stand. We were told that our name was not to be found on the reservation list, but none the less, they would see if we could be seated. Ten minutes later, we were seated along the main aisle of the dining room. I noticed it a bit loud for indoor-voice conversation, but not overwhelming.

It took at least five minutes before we were offered water and then another several more minutes before the water arrived in a glass carafe. Several more minutes elapsed before our water arrived with some pretty good soft bread and olive oil. A pretty good start to the meal while even though the service seemed a bit inattentive.

We ordered our dishes, one appetizer and one entree each. While we were sitting there talking, we noticed that our waiter was discussing the tasting menu to a couple next to us. After he had tended to their needs, we pulled him aside and asked about the tasting menu, which we had not been told about from the outset. A bit odd, but four courses, chef’s choice at $40 a piece, we decided it was the way to go, to truly experience what the chef had to offer. We noticed that our server was much more explanatory with other parties, talking about TT, the thought behind how the food is sourced, how the kitchen can accommodate most food preferences and allergies. I guess we expected that a resaurant that had such good reviews would give us customers more of a welcome feeling rather than ask for what you want and dash off.

Our first course was by far our favorite, a small bowl of mussels on top of a crustini with sauteed spinach. Just the right amount of garlic and oil so that the bread was slightly soggy. I was using my bread to lap up all the garlic-oil sauce I could get to. The second course was a duo of scallops on top of farro with olives, with a strong zest of what tasted like lemon. I found the scallops well cooked, but the lemon zest over-powering the entire dish. I ended up pushing what zest I could find off to the side. The olives were cut up small and mixed in with the farro. I myself am not a fan of olives at all, but did not find that they dominated the dish. M felt otherwise, and left most of her farro on the plate.

The third dish was a piece of steak, sliced thin, over vegetables in what tasted like a balsamic vinegar reduction. I found this the most uninteresting part of the evening. While I do understand it was chef’s choice, I must imagine there are people who have strong preferences over how they like their meat cooked. I like mine more medium-rare, while M is more a medium- well person. The meat came out in more of a medium preparation. It was quite tough, and lacked any real distinctive flavor other than the vinegar on which it sat.

Before desert we were given a palette cleanser of sour-orange sherbert which was quite tart. It did its job, the memories of the past three dishes had been successfully erased. The dessert was a chocolate terrine with Thai basil ice cream. For those people who enjoy Thai food and the spices it features, the ice cream will bring a familiar flavor to your tongue. I must say it was the most thought-provoking dish of the evening. Definitely not what you expect, but it easily cut through the other flavors. The chocolate terrine was a square of sweet rich-but-not-too-rich chocolate. I felt that again a restaurant that is popular among Boston foodies, could have made a much more interesting dessert.

I must say, having read reviews of the Ten Tables-Jamaica Plain location, and how it was a must-eat for so many of Boston’s residents, I found TT-C underwhelming. The hype and excitement of a new location for TT was much talked about in the local newspaper rags and food blogs and forums. While M and I do plan to go to TT-JP to sample the food and make a determination about whether we truly enjoy the resturant’s presentation, we are going to hold off for a while. Lets hope that only the young age of TT-C contributed to its underwhelming presentation. One always has to take reviews with a grain of salt, or maybe the fact that the kitchen was having an off night. But at least I can check this place off my list of places-to-go.