JZ: I guess what sort of happened was we were saying, “Oh, these people came in again, let’s send them a cicchetto, let’s send them a meatball, let’s send them an anchovy.” But we were already serving them cicchetti; we had had to come up with something different because we wanted to take care of people. We have a small kitchen and we didn’t want to make people wait, so we started sending out amuses-bouches. We don’t do it for everybody; it’s a last-minute thing. It’s “We went to the market, we got this, we got that. We’ve got enough for two or three orders; we don’t have enough to turn it into a special. We have 12 Brussels sprouts; what are we going to do with these?” We just kinda do it on the fly. Some of it ends up on the menu.
Anyway, you just see these amuse tickets and it makes you so happy and it makes you think, “Okay, these are people who’ve been here before.” Because Route 9 isn’t a natural stopping place. That’s my worst fear, is that people will say to me, “Oh, we drive by all the time.” And I’ll say, “Oh, stop, stop . . .”
AC: We kind of gave into the pressure of what people actually wanted. You’ve seen Big Night? It’s like the chef in Big Night; he’s a great chef, but he doesn’t want to make the dishes that’ll keep him in business. When we opened, we were doing the hanger steak with the figs and artichokes, and people were coming in and saying, “Can we just get some mashed potatoes?” Then they’d go home and say, “Wow, that’s pretty cool that they would do that for me.” You gotta cook the meatball first, you gotta give ’em what they want, and then you can give them what you want.
It’s not until now, six or seven years later, that we’re able to get the respect that makes us able to do some different stuff. Now we know just how far to go outside the box. And we have customers who eat here three or four times a week. Since it’s a little more pricey here, I think that really says something, that they’re willing to pay $60 or $70 for a meal a few times a week. There must be some kind of value in that. One guy has his own key in the computer now, for Chuck’s Chicken. He sits here [at the bar] and talks to people and he says, “Oh, you gotta try this dish,” and now we’ve got this underground dish — the only people who know about it are the people who sit next to Chuck. And it gets ordered like 12 times a week.
Come on — tell us what your own favorite neighborhood place is and why.
JZ: We always take our kids to the weekend pajama brunch at Tremont 647. The staff is keen on kids, which is really great, especially in the South End.
DO: To be honest with you, I don’t really go out that much because I’m always here. Last night we went down to West on Centre in West Roxbury, sat at the bar, and had a nice, simple meal. But I don’t get out enough.
