9 Sanborn Court, Union Square
Somerville, MA 02143
Reservations (617) 718-2333 or eat@journeymanrestaurant.com

In the year 1154 Eleanor of Aquitaine married Henry II of England, bringing as her dowry much of southwest France. This led to several hundred years of war between England and France and also the beginnings of the Bordeaux wine trade.

That year, along with 1642, 1855, 1892 and 1982 will figure into our story of the wines of Bordeaux’s Left Bank; the Medoc and Graves and Sauternes where Cabernet Sauvignon is king for reds, Sauvignon Blanc for whites, and Semillon for sweet.

We’ll try wines from all the major appellations, and we’ll taste and talk about the relative importance of class, grape blend, soil, technology, and vintage. More importantly, Len Rothenberg, an expert with several decades of experience, will be sharing stories and opinions as we go.

Although no prior knowledge is required, we promise you this will not be the adult ed version of wine tasting. It will be informative, fun, good tasting, too.

The Tasting

White
2010 Ch. Chantegrive (Graves)

Red
2009 Ch. Lebosq (Medoc)
2009 Ch. Beaumont (Haut Medoc)
2008 Ch Giscours (Margaux)
2005 Ch. Lacoste Borie (Pauillac)
2008 Ch. Hortevie (St. Julien)
2005 Ch. L’Argilus du Roi (St Estephe)
2005 Ch. Haut Bergey (Pessac-Leognan)

The Dinner
First course: Soupe aux Moules
Second Course: Blanquette de Veau
served with 2009 Ch. Caronne Ste. Gemme (Haut Medoc)
Third Course: Vanilla, Rum and Stone Fruit
served with 2009 Haut Charmes (Sauternes)

The cost of the seminar and dinner will be $95 per person which includes wine and food, but not tax or gratuity.

We borrowed the name for that kind of wine from a man we were lucky to call a friend, and to whom we were lucky to serve dinner on his last trip to Boston. Joe Dressner, the man in question, imported real wine from around the world to the United States, and shared it with friends near and far through his company, Louis/Dressner.

The Louis/Dressner wine portfolio has converted all of us at Journeyman into winos and wine aficionados, because Joe’s passion was infectious, and because real wine is truly delicious. Joe Dressner died recently, after a long fight against brain cancer. He never lost his sense of humor, or his deep appreciation for food, wine, and friends, and our respect and fondness for him and his mission is sharpened and deepened with his loss. Together with our good friends from the Wine Bottega, Journeyman is sharing our love in the form of a tribute dinner to honor Joe.

This will NOT be a somber event with toasts and dirges, rather, it will be a rollicking good time to celebrate what Joe cared most about: good wine, good food, good times, and good causes. We’ll make merry with over 10 wines from Joe’s portfolio and a Journeyman-style feast. All the proceeds from the night will go to Partners in Health, Joe’s charity of choice.
Here’s what we’re planning:

Space is limited, so please RSVP as soon as possible: 617-718-2333.

Monday, October 17th, 2011 at 7:00pm
$80 per person, includes food, wine, tax, and gratuity.
All proceeds from the dinner will be donated to Partners in Health, for their work in Haiti, and additional contributions to Partners in Health can be made that evening.

NV Chaussard “You are so Bubbly”
served with assorted housemade charcuterie

Trio of French Muscadets: Domaine de la Pépière “Muscadet Sévre et Main”, Domaine Luneau-Papin “La Grange”, and Domaine de la Pépière “Clos des Briords Cuvée Vieilles Vignes”
served with roasted cauliflower soup, oysters, and red cabbage

Trio of Italian reds: Vigneto Saetti Lambrusco di Salomino di S. Croce, Tami Nero D’Avola, Foradori Teroldego
served with roast pork shoulder, potato gratin, suitable vegetables

Domaine Renardat-Fâche Cerdon Methode Ancestrale, Bugey
served with creme brulee and poached, spiced pears

Roagna Barolo Chinato
served with cookies and marshmallows

“There are no journeymen at the Journeyman. The trio behind this restaurant are clearly master craftspeople[.]”

When we designed Journeyman, simply running a restaurant seemed like the height of hubris: we were neophytes making it up as we went along. We didn’t hire seasoned professionals who’d grown up in front of the stove or carrying plates; we hired by personality and feel, finding the people who felt the same passion, dedication – and yes, insanity — as us. We invented systems as we needed them, made up our own language and symbols to communicate, and reinvented those systems and languages just as often. When we opened last year, our questions were about whether there were enough people in Boston who wanted to eat the food we made, sit in the dining room we’d built, drink the wines we wanted to sell, or walk down the lonely alley that dead-ended in a park we love to find us. Our questions were about how to get our staff home at 2am after the buses stopped running, and about which cleaner to use when we mopped the floors. They were simple conundrums, about learning new tasks, new rhythms, and new necessities.

Thursday night, we toasted with our friends and family to Journeyman’s first year, and set ourselves the next set of goals. Our questions are more complex now, they’re about how to better support the community around us, how to open a cocktail bar, how to keep improving our food, service, and beverages, how to embrace and empower the new people who join our company, and how we communicate what we want to be next to everyone who walks in our door. We want, very much, to become a restaurant of unparalleled caliber; if simply running a restaurant was an attainable form of hubris, we feel the need to up the ante: we’d like to strive toward becoming the best restaurant we’re capable of being, and to be able to hold ourselves up next to the restaurants that have inspired, fed, and guided us in Boston, and all over the world. Even if we find ourselves lacking in the comparison, having the ambition to improve ourselves seems the best form of respect and acknowledgment we can offer everyone who has supported us so far.

These are incredibly lucky challenges to have, and we’re glad to have them. We owe an immense debt of gratitude to so many people who have helped us survive this first year, from advisers, to customers, to staff. Below is an incomplete list of the people without whom last year would not have been possible; we offer our sincere thanks and love to all of them:

Ben Dryer, Nick Branigan, Seth Hill, Len Rothenberg, Georg Lauer, Ed Rapacki, Mike Ellman, Kevin Gold, Dan Bradley, Jim + Sharon Ermilio, Peter + Viva Lajoie, Eric Klotch, Scott Abrahamson, Jared Rudnick, Dan Hanken, Jenny Hong, Dora Sanchez, Amber Lee, Andrew Ferrell, Bradford Yates, Sasha Wachtel, Christine Oliver, Maggie Kaiser, Catherine Owens, Andrea Hasselbacher, Ry Strohm-Herman, Vaughn Tan, Dennis Clark, Kevin + Rose Martin, Shelley Barandes, Mimi Graney, Trisha McCauley, Gordon Carlson, Campbell Ellsworth, Smita Sihag, Henry Patterson, etc.

photo by Johanna Bobrow

Last Saturday was the first of our Saturday BBQs, aimed at adding another layer of delicious fun to the Market that already boasts some of our favorite farmers, musicians, festivals, artists, and workshops. The food’s made by our line cook, Dan Hanken. Dan is a frisbee player, cellist, and – we discovered after hiring him – a smoked meat aficionado. For our first week of serious BBQ, he rolled out house-made sausages, dry-rubbed veal ribs, brined chickens, pulled pork, and sliced brisket. We also started out with a few Market-sourced sides: sweet pickles, cornbread, grilled asparagus, and dirty rice, along with two kinds of baked beans.

photo by Johanna Bobrow

photo by Johanna Bobrow

Our five course dinner will cover our favorite brunch classics — in reinvented form, of course — and have a few other surprises, as well.

Waffles
with a side of sausage

Eggs Florentine
with salmon and duck egg

Bacon + Hash
with ketchup

Yogurt
with granola and fruit

Assorted Bagels
with cream cheese

Breakfast will be available from 5:30pm-10:oopm Sunday May 8th and Monday May 9th, and you’ll be able to round out your mother’s day meal with a few breakfast-inspired cocktails (we’re playing with the classics here, too, look for our takes on the mimosa and bloody mary, among other great options).

Reserve online or call 617.718.2333.

Please note that we will not be serving our regular menus for these two nights, just the five course brunch.
We apologize that there will be no 3 or 7 course options, no vegetarian menus, and no substitutions.

Please Note

“Please inform the waitstaff before ordering if you have a food allergy”

“Warning: consuming raw or undercooked meat, poultry, seafood, shellfish or eggs increases your risk of foodborne illness”

“Starred items may be served raw or undercooked”

“Employees must wash hands before returning to work”

Before opening, we ran a facebook challenge to our friends and fans to generate haiku versions of the “employees must wash hands” warning, and our wonderful graphic designer laid out the menu warnings as if they were an e. e. cummings poem for our menu.

Our long-format menu faded away as the chefs changed the menu so often that cutting and assembling a new booklet for each menu was driving servers into madness and misery, but our bathroom haiku are still there. The haiku still rotate whenever I remember that someone coming in to dine wrote one for us. For all the jokes about having someone’s name on the bathroom wall, it really is fun to have people see their words up there, and now and again someone leaves us a haiku on their check. Some of our favorites have been:

Cascading water
Over your hands – so calming,
So mandatory.
-Mindy Klenoff

Employees wash hands.
What a pleasant thought that is.
And also the law.
-Georg Lauer

Workers, wash your hands!
Release your stained, dirty past
And begin anew.
-Susan Crandall

Charm friends and lovers,
while following the health code.
Washing hands does both.
-Kevin Clark

Worker, joblessness
Is disharmonious, so
Wash hands with gladness.
-Alice Gorel

There are so many things to be said when running a restaurant, and having new voices is always welcome. This blog has been quiet for a while as I’ve worked on other things at Journeyman, but in the coming weeks, I hope to start having more staff members writing posts. If you want your name on the Journeyman walls, you can always write us a haiku or send in a question you’d like answered. The questions will be posted here, and the poetry will rotate across our bathroom walls.

This time, we’ve paired the pairings; each course will be served alongside at least two drinks! We’ll start with a flight of some our favorite vermouth-style aperitifs, compare two Belgian-style sour beers, challenge the norm with a red wine that drinks like a white + a white wine that acts like a red, then compare two wildly different Cabernet Francs, and end with two of our favorite sparkling wines for spring.

$85 for 4 courses with multiple beverages paired with each course.

Assorted small bites
with
Flight of Vermouths
Sutton Cellars Brown Label Vermouth (USA), Cocchi Americano Aperitivo (Italy), Dolin Blanc Vermouth(France)

Wheatberry Risotto
bone marrow, herbs, pea tendrils
with
Sour-style beers
Panil “Bariquee” & Cantillon “Bruocsella 1900 Grand Cru”

Spanish Mackerel
Potato, Tarragon
with
Category-foiling wines
Frères Grosjean “Premetta” & Heidi Schröck “Furmint”

Pork Knuckles
Parsnip, Radish, Greens
with
Cabernet Francs from the Loire
Clos Rougeard “Les Poyeux” Saumur-Champigny & Domaine de la Pepiere “La Pepie”

Pistachio
Treacle, Raspberry
with
Lesser-known sparklers
Camillo Donati Malvasia Dolce & Patrick Bottex Bugey-Cerdon

Assorted Mignardises
with
Coffee or Tea

Rabbit Confit Tortellino
with
Eric Bordelet “Poiré Authentique”
sparkling perry; Normandy, France

Early Spring Salad
with
Ariana Occhipinti “SP68 Bianco”
2009; Zibbibo/Albanello blend; Sicily, Italy

Scallops
ham, egg, hawaj
with
Domaine Belliviere “Les Giroflées”
2009; Pineau d’Aunis/Grolleau blend; Loire Valley, France

Pork Belly
pommes boulangere, sauerkraut
with
Massa Vecchia “Rosato”
2006; Malvasia Nera/Merlot field blend; Tuscany, Italy

Hazelnut
sweet potato, apple
with
Heidi Schröck “On the Wings of Dawn”
2006; Ruster Ausbruch; blend; Huggeland, Austria

Assorted Chocolates
made by Elaine Hsieh with single varietal ganaches from Michel Cluizel
with
Trio of Barolo Chinati
Cappellano Barolo Chinato; Roagna Barolo Chinato; Cocchi Barolo Chinato

The commentary has ranged from bombastic praise to pure disgust. This is, in many ways, unsurprising; who takes the time to write a review that says “it was OK?” It seems most likely that people take the time us because they feel strongly. We understand and appreciate that, and we try to read reviews with the understanding that what we’re seeing represents the extremes of people’s opinions about us. These daily reviews are what prompt most of the changes we’ve enacted since opening: how we describe dishes, what we say about the restaurant to first-time guests, how we represent ourselves in social media, and more. Those reviews are the bread and butter of our viability, but that doesn’t seem to fully replace the power of the BIG REVIEW.

Tse Wei has written a bit about our response to our first big review in the Boston Globe on the Public Radio Kitchen blog (available here), but from my perspective in the dining room, there was more to it than that. Our first big review felt like prognostication, Devra First came to our restaurant at least three times, and she had the ability to scry our future in the sauce smears left on her plate and the dregs of drinks delivered to her by our servers. A professional restaurant reviewer knows the business of restaurants, the palates of diners, and the fates of many more restaurants than the one currently in her sights; what she says about a restaurant may well be based on intangibles that no one else could see.

I had a rare chance to eat at my own restaurant on Friday night; due to my graceless attempt to run for a bus on icy ground, I couldn’t walk well enough to serve and host, but I didn’t want to leave my staff in the lurch either. The solution was to sit at the bar and eat and drink, ready to answer their questions, and ready to test them with bizarre requests and tough demands. I’d like to think that I, too, had a chance to see intangibles that no one else might, and since I’ve never seen a business owner review their own business, I thought I’d try. There are some flaws here — I’m biased, I’m reviewing off my own personal ideal rather than a deep knowledge of the Boston restaurant scene, and of course I’m posting it to our own blog rather than to a third party website — but caveats aside, here goes.

Dinner starts slowly at Journeyman: you’re seated, your coat is hung, your water is poured, your menus arrive, and then, you stare at the menus. Devra First is right, you have to start suspending your expectations early here, because the menu is not a well-lit, carefully-worded script for the night. There are no markers of origin for ingredients, no names of dishes, and no indication of preparation technique, only a listing of a few ingredients in each course. On those stark words alone, you’re expected to choose your plan for the evening (vegetarian or omnivore, seven courses, or three or five). Servers, when asked about the menu, will describe the dishes for you but sometimes what they say doesn’t prepare you for what arrives; sardines with horseradish and scallion doesn’t indicate anything about the cubes of horseradish jelly, the salad of hard-boiled egg and scallion, or the finely grated radish atop the fish, but that’s what I pay for when I go out. I go out to eat foods that I wouldn’t or couldn’t make. I pay extra for the inspiration, love, and art that goes into those dishes.

Drinking is almost as hard at Journeyman as the eating, the standard cocktail requires a myriad of choices and the wines by the glass aren’t always the most familiar or approachable: nothing gets in the door of the restaurant without a story, nothing floats effortlessly to your side, and that can be rough. I asked my server for a cocktail with gin and I got a series of questions about what other flavors I like, what I was eating, how sweet I wanted my drink, and if I minded if she conferred with a colleague. Her colleague turned out to be the kitchen, and when my drink arrived 10 minutes later, she told me it should accompany my next dish.

The kitchen is perhaps the most remarkable part of Journeyman, a nearly silent team turns out plate after plate of food and even with my eye trained on the dining room, I have no idea how they keep the pace they do: tables receive food every 15-20 minutes quite consistently, and while I know what the servers do to facilitate that easy-feeling pace in the dining room, the chefs seem to have a myriad checklists in their heads, each dish must get 5+ elements, each table must get 5+ plates, each cook must plate innumerable things each night. I’m used to talking to them through the pass to say that a guest at table 12 isn’t eating much, or to ask if I can get an extra dish of some sauce or element for the guests at table 3 to try, but watching them for the several hours I am eating is surreal. There are no visible emotions, just calm and measured perpetual motion. I find myself speaking with a hushed voice, like I would in a library or museum, as if I am dwarfed or humbled by the concentration I can sense all around me.

My server’s silly jibe about a clean plate (“oh, did we forget to put any food on that plate?” as she clears a course) punctures the reverence and reminds me that I am here to enjoy myself, even as I point my employees toward tables that need more bread or water, or answer questions about how to pronounce the name of of an Austrian grape (Zweigelt, or schvai-gelt, roughly). Their relaxed and cheerful demeanor makes it easier to break the spell of intensity cast by the kitchen, and easier to appreciate what’s bare and stripped clean at Journeyman: there’s no diversion here, no centerpieces, no tablecloths, no silver pitchers pouring water into each glass, just food and drink and guest and staff.

I finish my courses by mopping the plates with bread or surreptitiously smearing my finger through the dregs of the sauce, behavior I’d be embarrassed to indulge in if I hadn’t been encouraged by the chefs, by my server, and by my tongue, clamoring for one last taste of yuzu jelly, walnut terrine, and foie gras. Guests at another table nearby catch me licking my fingers and grin & wink at me, I feel like we’re all in this together.

By the time I’ve finished my meal, I know the names of the next table’s inhabitants, and that they’re at Journeyman celebrating a birthday. I know more about them than I’d expect, given the distance between our seats, but the atmosphere here seems to invite collegial cross-table chatter. On a night when I was working, I watched two tables who didn’t know each other broker a deal to split a bottle of dessert wine that they’d both been thinking about and had ruled out as too steep an expense. Devra First is, again, right, the feel is dinner party-ish, where guests mingle and meet. To me, though, that doesn’t mean amateurishness, it means that Journeyman encourages breaking a classic fourth wall of dining, the expectation of privacy. The only other restaurant at which that has ever happened to me was Grant Achatz’s temple to leisurely exploratory meals, Alinea. On the night of my 30th birthday dinner, the table next to my companion and I at Alinea traded sips of drinks, took each others’ pictures, and even traded email addresses at the end of the night; that was a big plus, even though our goal had been to be celebrating together, just the two of us.

Jumping from an a la carte menu and a “how would you like your steak prepared” restaurant to ours takes courage, for even for the adventurous, and I’ve asked my servers to respect that. So far we’ve found that being friendly, casual — and yes, unpolished — is what seems to make most of our guests most comfortable. At its best, I hope that our restaurant invites strong response, the need for communication, and an exuberant interest and involvement that almost begs ineraction. We’re never going to be a posh and sumptuous establishment, we can’t — it doesn’t suit our location, our passions, or our personalities. The closest comparison to our price points and to our attention to detail is, certainly, fine dining, but that doesn’t mean we have to fit into that model. We don’t see that as hubris, we see it as a simple acknowledgment: we can’t do that, but we can do this.

What it comes down to, for me, is that eating is a social activity: we base our holidays around meals, we socialize by eating and drinking together, and we go out to eat to see, to be seen, and to taste someone else’s food. There is nothing, to me, private about eating out: there’s intimacy, and there’s dyadic personal relationships, but at its heart, eating out is just that, out. I don’t mean to go into an anthropological treatise on performance and public space and food, but I do mean to state that my biggest disagreement with Devra First’s review is that she seems put off by the fact that I have asked my servers to be themselves. They are not there as actors or to keep each guests from walking up to the kitchen to ask for their food, but as humans who want to take care of each guest and help create an environment in which dining companions shouldn’t have to whisper sotte voce to each other about their hunger or their frustration. I wonder how differently Ms. First’s devastating five course meal would have been if she’d asked her server to speed up the pace or to bring them additional food.

I am thrilled to work at a restaurant that believes that eating is social, and that allows for interpersonal relationships to exist in ways that feel natural and leisurely to me, rather than formalized and structured. It may not be for everyone, but it is certainly for me. My biggest regret about working for and at Journeyman is that I cannot eat there more often.

Yes! Every major type is accepted at Journeyman, though you’re still welcome to pay in cash.

Do you have gift certificates?

Yes! Our gift certificates can be purchased in person or over the phone (we’ll mail you the certificate). You can give a gift certificate with a dollar amount or by the experience you’d like your recipient to have (3, 5, or 7 courses, with or without wine pairings).

Can I reserve seats overlooking the kitchen?

Yes! We have a few tables that can see into the kitchen well, and we also have a counter overlooking the kitchen, the seating for which is generally first come, first serve (though you can request it when you make a reservation).

Do you host private parties?/Do you cater private events?

We do host parties, though we do not cater off-premises. Please email Meg to inquire about scheduling, pricing, and menu, or to see photos of past private events.

Are you open on Christmas Eve/Christmas? New Year’s Eve/New Year’s Day? Valentine’s Day?

We will be open Christmas Eve for a small, intimate meal. Email us for a reservation. We will be open on Valentine’s Day as well, serving a special menu. More details will be posted closer to the date.

We will not be open for Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve, or New Year’s Day.

Do you have a dress code?

No. We are a low-key restaurant, and people have been equally comfortable in shorts and t-shirts as they have been in formal wear.

Do you serve vegan meals?

Not with any regularity. We do our absolute best to accommodate dietary restrictions whenever possible, and offer full vegetarian meals every night of the week, but we have found that offering a vegan menu requires completely different sets of ingredients and mises en place, for which we have little storage space on a daily basis. On special occasions (two so far) we have offered vegan meals, and we will do so again in the spring, when new veggies start flooding the markets again. Please watch our events page for announcements about vegan menu nights.

Do you have a bar?/Can I bring my own bottle of wine?

We are decidedly not a BYO establishment. We have a full liquor license, and have a wide range of wines and beers available every night, as well as a selection of apperitivi and digestivi and a limited cocktail menu.

How often does the menu change?

We officially change the menu every week. That over-simplifies the process, which is in fact a more organic evolution. Some dishes change slightly in execution every night that we serve them, variations on some dishes live on the menu for a few weeks, and some nights we have some special cut of meat, fresh seafood, mushroom, or vegetable that we want to feature, even if we don’t have enough to put it on the menu.