Neptune Oyster

My father-in-law, Arthur Sirrico lived as a boy in Boston’s North End.  Some men visited his apartment and demanded money to get an associate out of prison.  His mother gave it to them.  When the child asked why, she said she had to.  Later the family moved to Plymouth where Arthur could work outdoors.  He managed the gardens on the Hornblower estate, and later became Park Superintendent for the town.  He owned a garden center on South Street near the playground that bears his name. 

When I visited the North End as a young adult, I remember groups of men in tailored top coats and pearl gray fedoras who we liked to think were Mafia. If they were, they had their own lawyers and didn’t have to extort bail money from the locals.

When I taught history in high school I had a class on World War II.  My students were all boys, and if a girl signed up for the course she felt uncomfortable and transferred out.  I used to collect first person accounts of the war.  I would bookmark lurid passages, and once a week I would read them to the class. I called this gory story time.  One student said, “Oh Mr. Talbot, that’s gross! Tell us some more.” 

Gory story time was so popular; I tried it in a U. S. History class.  It didn’t go over well, and one girl in particular complained it made her sick, so I abandoned the practice.  I took the kids on a field trip to the North End.  They found the neighborhood more interesting than the Paul Revere’s House and the Old North Church.  I happened to be walking next to the girl who had complained about my stories, and I noticed a pig’s head on a plate in the window of a butcher shop. I didn’t mean to tease her; I just thought it was interesting and I said, “look.”  She turned her head and fainted.  I caught her under the arms before she hit the pavement.  The North End was a foreign place.   

  

I hadn’t been back for years, but a short while ago Annette and I made the trip.  Gone are the butcher shops with skinned rabbits hanging in the windows with their paws left furred so shoppers could be sure they weren’t cats.  Gone are the lambs hanging on hooks, and I saw no pigs’ heads.  The buildings looked different.  Bricks had been power washed, and buildings reinforced and renovated.   I heard no Italian spoken and the school children were a mix of ethnicities.  Some of the stores that used to cater to the tastes of the Italian population are gone, and those that remain have a gourmet shop quality. 

We had coffee in a cafe and there were two men at a nearby table who looked as though they might have been Italian.  They were contractors, but not the kind who were going to whack cousin Sal who is skimming off the top and has no respect; they were going over building specks and talking about subs and portions of the job which would cost hundreds of thousands.

There are more restaurants than there used to be, and we headed for Neptune Oyster at 63 Salem Street.  There was such a long line waiting for the restaurant to open for lunch we worried that we wouldn’t get seats, and, indeed, we were the last to be admitted to the small space.  I missed the European feel of the old North End, but we gain and we lose as time goes by.  When I tasted an appetizer of yellowfin “coyne” crostini, I didn’t pine for veal cutlets accompanied by pasta and red sauce. The raw tuna was heaped on a toasted slice of fresh Iggy’s bread that had been spread with avocado.  The chunks glowed like jewels and were the best raw fish I ever ate anywhere.  Another best was a tentacle of Spanish octopus with a Marcona almond Romanesco sauce, and Basque pepper. I’ve eaten octopus on Mykonos bathed in sunshine with a view of the Aegean Sea, but this was better.  

Fried clams are everywhere, but those at Neptune Oyster were freshly opened and expertly fried, making them a rare experience. We asked the waiter about the tartar sauce, and he said it was made with mayonnaise.  Perhaps so, but the Neptune Oyster version was lighter and full of flavor.  It was light years away from the clam stand version you get in the little paper cup, and if the restaurant comes out with a cookbook I’ll buy it for that one recipe.

The Neptune Johnnycake was sweetened with honey butter and topped with a pile of smoked trout topped with caviar.  You got sweet corn meal smoky fish and salty sturgeon roe.  It was lovely. 

Back in the times I’ve been reminiscing about you couldn’t have found food like this in the North End or anywhere in the whole city.  A short distance away from the Restaurant the trees on the Rose Kennedy Greenway were coming into leaf.  It is certainly an improvement over the dirty gloom that lay under the old Central Artery.  I’m not a fan of the tunnel that’s under your feet, but as I said, time changes and you gain and you lose.