The No-Go Cafe

If there is something new and improved about the new and improved Bintliff’s American Café on Portland Street, then I failed to find it the night I was there.

The interior is somewhat changed since my last visit about 6 years ago when I was a fledgling visitor to this city whose wondrous culinary highlights were only Back Bay Grill and Fore Street.

As to the décor it seemed more subdued, or perhaps my eye is more used to the kickshaws of decor found in too many restaurants around town.

The downstairs, with its several bar tables tucked into a corner, is almost cosmopolitan, like a Midtown lounge in a larger city.

From Luxe to Lounge

Some restaurants leave me cold. Some make me feel trapped like a spellbound bug in the hothouse, flitting haplessly into the corolla of a carnivorous plant from which there’s no escape other than to pay the check and run.

Fortunately I can avoid such places. Why cast the heart of a hungry fool into a house of dearth when dinner from a street vendor might be just as good?

Traveling lately in a very limited circle of dining options I stick to the tried and true, to places where I feel welcome and where money is well spent because I leave happy and well fed. I won’t name these places because we all know who they most likely are: my favorite neighborhood haunt on the West End; or that downtown legend that never disappoints; onto the wondrous Italian duo on Dana or Wharf streets; to the sleek surrounds of a Congress Street bistro that gets better and better and ultimately our Bayside Citadel of fine food lolling incongruously in the parlor of the squalor zone where forgotten men and women lounge.