It's frustrating to have to promise your little brother plain spaghetti with butter in order to get the family to a fancy restaurant, but let's face it: Siblings have serious market power in dinner-decision dynamics.
Ironically, as college students, we often have to play a similar game with friends.
A dinner party is only as strong as its least adventurous palette - the charge of a foodie is to broaden horizons. An outing to the Brazilian restaurant Muqueca helped us understand the responsibilities that come with being a foodie.
On the weekend, it is refreshing to bypass the dining halls and try something new. Thanks to our gerrymandering forefathers - don't feel bad, Charlotte "forgot" what gerrymandering means, too - we took the T from Somerville through Cambridge ... and back into Somerville. This is Somerville at its most S??o Paulo.
Muqueca may not be for those unwilling to put up with a healthy wait; when the hostess told us it might be up to 45 minutes before we were seated, we almost lost two of our party to the pizza place down the street. We managed to keep them on, though, by making an appeal to their inner-caveman - promising slabs of Brazilian beef and fries, a veritable kid's menu. For our part, we were waiting for some moqueca, the restaurant's namesake dish (notice they spell their name differently - apparently the stew claimed copyright?)
Part of the reason for the lengthy wait is the "compact" nature of the restaurant, boasting only eight tables and smashing the diners up against the windows. The heavily Brazilian patronage convinced us to wait it out, but their presence wasn't about to keep us from shamelessly staring-down the people inside, willing them to eat faster. Lesson learned: peer-pressure works.
Once we earned our right to eat, we were led to a table and left to pore over the menus. We'd hoped that since our friend who introduced us to the place was Brazilian, we might get a leg-up on other Portuguese-illiterate. To our surprise, we held our own pretty well in this South American atmosphere ... the waitress spoke enough English for us to get by. Our friend, however, was very helpful in suggesting what to order and what to avoid.
Don't be put off by the fact that the moqueca is usually described as a "Brazilian seafood stew;" it's essentially a slow-cooked, rich combination of garlic, cilantro, pimenta malagueta (a native spice regimen), tomatoes and some sort of seafood.
Between the two of us, we split two dishes. We decided on traditionally prepared shrimp moqueca, with black beans, rice and farofa (no, we don't know what this is - just eat it). It's not so simple, but very yummy. To shake things up, we also got mariscada, which, according to the menu, is a "must try" combo of shrimp, crabmeat, mussels and squid sumptuously brewed with cilantro, tomato and onion, again, served with rice and the mysteriously good farofa. It also came with a side of plantain moqueca - in itself reason enough to order the whole thing. Winston should know; he ate more than his fair share of both meals.
As a table, we started with a spicy calamari with passion fruit sauce (YES!) and some fried yucca, which is very akin to potato. It was gratifying to see the crew accept yucca where they might have whined for fries; just proving that good things come to those who wait.
If you want to take them out to dinner, email Winston.Berkman@tufts.edu or Charlotte.Bourdillon@tufts.edu
