Maxwells Trading

Maxwells Trading got caught between better meals, but it remains worth visiting.

One of the more interesting thoughts to come from this dinner stems from the different ways in which Allison and I experience dining. Though I like to give her a hard time for her preferences, they are preferences after all, and objectivity only goes far enough to suggest that mine are at worst slightly better than hers.

When we entered, she immediately admired the vibe. It is modern, warm, open, and upscale but not pretentious. Here I was wondering if the food would taste like I remembered it, and we hadn’t even had a dish before she was saying "this is my new favorite restaurant." Selfishly, I got quite excited about more frequent visits.

We ordered the prosciutto & gnocco fritto, the whipped ricotta, the japanese sweet potato and the pork chop. The first to arrive was the prosciutto, which is fantastic, as she rightly noticed. The fritto is warm and airy, and it takes to the saltiness of the prosciutto well. They don't overdo it with the sauce, which more places should take note of.

Then came the whipped ricotta, which, while good, is a bit of a cop-out order. You are not going to be upset that you ordered it, but you might wonder if you should have ordered the french onion dip instead.

The japanese sweet potato was great, as it always is. The caramel crust does have a tendency to stick to random places in your mouth, which is moderately uncomfortable for a moment or two. The flavor in the crust is perfect, though, and the texture contrast with the soft interior makes eating an entree-sized sweet potato more reasonable. In my mind, this dish is dangerously close to being elite.

Despite the effusive praise from our neighbor at the bar, the pork chop was just good, not great. The trouble with pork chop is that you eat horrible ones your whole life until someone finally feeds you one cooked correctly, then you spend the rest of your life trying to emulate that emotion, which may have only partly been tied to the flavor itself and otherwise tied to an unforgettable discovery. Maybe this was that pork chop for our neighbor, or maybe I will never be more satisfied by one than Noble Rot's ().

Dining with Allison more frequently than not has been incredibly useful for how I try to understand my own experiences at them. I could go to each one, evaluate the vibe, the food, the service, and all else with the worldview that I have built for understanding and appreciating these things, but it would make this blog more narrow-minded. When I go to dinners with like-minded people, it is no surprise that we often come to similar conclusions. Sure, in some respects I like to think of that as a representation of our collective genius, but how people shape these reviews to their own experiences matters to how useful they will be.

The most acceptable worldview in these reviews will always be mine, but I’m curious to see how much that lens shifts if I let other perspectives in.