Material Morsels
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MATERIAL MORSELS Reviews with a materials angle.
Merrilea J. Mayo, with contributions from Altaf “Tof” Carim, presents a review of Legal Seafoods, a restaurant located within an easy walk of the Hynes Convention Center, site of the MRS Fall Meeting in Boston.
Legal Seafoods 26 Park Plaza Boston, MA 02116 617-426-4444 Mon.–Thurs., 11:30 a.m.–11:00 p.m. Fri.–Sat., 11:30 a.m.–midnight Sun., 11:30 a.m.–10:00 p.m. Legal Seafoods, like McDonalds, is an American icon. It is dependable and has had an enviable nucleation and growth history that shows no sign of saturation—airport mini-restaurants seem to be the latest mode of Legal expansion. Its New England clam chowder has been served at every presidential inauguration since 1981. Unlike McDonalds, Legal Seafoods is actually worth visiting for reasons more sublime than the use of their clean restrooms. Legal Seafoods knows how to cook its fish. I have never had fish here that exhibited any of the common failure modes: still frozen in the middle (LN 2 dewar fish), cooked to a rubbery conclusion (cross-linking experiment gone bad), or
cultivated for medicinal purposes (the exquisite 4-nines-pure reek of NH4OH from, e.g., old swordfish). Certain Legal Seafoods establishments are better than others. The ones at the Copley Place Mall/Hynes Convention Center—where most conventiongoers congregate—are very good, about average for Legals, but not worthy of writing down in the ol’ lab notebook. The one in the Park Plaza Hotel, however, was for years a statistically significant cut above. This was Legal’s flagship restaurant. It still is, theoretically, even though it has since moved to 26 Park Plaza, about six blocks away from the Westin Copley Place Hotel/MRS Fall Meeting. Though
not quite as excellent as before the move, it is still worth the walk. Once inside, you will discover that the ambiance is more elegant here, the seafood casserole has more lobster in it, the list of available fish is more extensive, and the sauces on some of the dishes are actually a different recipe than in other Legals, despite having identical names on the menu. The downside to the Legal Seafoods Park Plaza is that you will have to make reservations, since a large number of Bostonians also prefer this site. One last thing: You must try the bluefish paté. It is a signature dish offered nowhere outside of the Legal Seafoods establishments: an awesome combination of salty, sweet, smoky, and buttery flavors. Add a few deciliters of Chardonnay, and you may collapse in a small bubble of heaven, conveniently forgetting that you still have to prepare your talk for the next day and review five papers. For those taking a side trip to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: The Legal Seafoods at Kendall Square is also worth a visit.
While sipping wine rarely elicits thoughts of solid-to-liquid transformations, chemical sensing, or other materials science phenomena, it is true that wine flows from solid grapes and its aroma tickles the senses. Therefore, we step beyond our usual coverage to present a mome
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