To the South End we went...

Some people out there may completely disagree with me on this, but the South End is one of my least favorite places to eat in Boston. Sure it has a lot of variety and some of the nicest looking restaurants, but the environment just isn't me. I'm a very laid back, jeans-wearing kind of girl and every time I go to the South End I feel so out of place. The crowd is older (think business professionals) and sometimes downright pretentious. Despite feeling out of place I still go to the South End hoping to find a restaurant that doesn't feel this way.

Well this past weekend we went to Gaslight. I had high hopes that it wouldn't be too South End-ish because of it's location (next to free parking and not on Tremont Street). We had reservations and arrived a few minutes early. When I went to check in with the hostess I was told we would have to wait 10 minutes for our table to be ready. Big mistake. If anyone who works at a restaurant reads this, tell your hostess staff to never give people a set time. We ended up being seated 25 minutes after our reservation, which means we were seated 35 minutes after we arrived.

Things were not going well. Two of our restaurant pet peeves happened when we first arrived. They told us it would take an X amount of time to get seated and it didn't happen. Then our reservation wasn't met and we were seated 25 minutes after the reservation time.

We were finally seated but because the restaurant was so busy it took the waitress a while to come buy our table. The seating arrangement at Gaslight is interesting. They have some tables for two and they have larger tables in which people who don't know one another are seated together. We got seated at a table for two, which was great because I'm not a fan of sitting with people I don't know.

I started off by ordering a martini (seeing a pattern, yet?). I ordered L'Acolyte which was made with Grand Marnier and Brandy and came with a sugar rim. It tasted just like a sweet orange. It was great.


We ordered the steak tartare appetizer. When it was brought to the table we were so confused. We had both expected to see shaved slices of steak but instead it was more like a paste topped with a fried egg. While it was still good we were both disappointed that they didn't include more croutons because those were really good!


For the entree Alex ordered the steak frites which was a skirt steak with fries and a bearnaise sauce on the side. He said the steak was good and although it looked more cook than what he normally orders, he said it was cooked just right.


I ordered the roasted salmon. For some reason I thought it would come with some mashed potatoes or some kind of side instead of the greens the salmon so I ended up just eating some of Alex's fries. The best way to describe how the salmon tasted was that it tasted like salmon. There was no special taste to this dish.


For dessert Alex had the caramelized apple tart tatin. This dessert was like apples in crepes with a caramel sauce and vanilla ice cream. Alex is a sucker for apples and he ate it all in like 5 minutes.


I ordered the molten chocolate cake. It was rich but not as gooey as I had hoped. There was no melting center you'd expect of a chocolate cake. It was still good though and since it was so rich, I couldn't finish it. But my lovely husband did.

Even though we were seated a while after our reservation and the environment was typical for the South End, it was still nice to go out with my husband after a rough week and have a decent meal. The food servings were on the smaller side (another thing I have come to expect from the South End), but the presentation was nice.Unfortunately, this isn't a restaurant we will be returning to. But I do recommend checking them and seeing for yourself. If your experience is different, let me know!