Whiskey Cotton Candy & Some 'Excess' at STRIP; Mild Taiwanese & Marine Murals at Dolphin Bay

In her Boston Globe review this week, critic Devra First visited "the most Vegas spot in all of Boston," STRIP By Strega. Amidst "female skin on display" and "someone who might be a Bruin," she finds "really good food" and genuine service. The Park Plaza Hotel restaurant earned three out of four stars.

"Executive chef Farouk Bazoune’s porchetta is deal-with-the-devil good," she writes. The roast pork dish is "rich, crisp, tender" and "sweet, sharp, [and] savory." A bone-in fillet is too rare, and also too fatty. Pork chop Milanese, a restaurant dish First often finds "flubbed," is "simple, [and] well seasoned," at STRIP, with a crisp exterior and juicy meat. The traditional steakhouse fare is actually the weakest, she assesses; other dishes, like bolognese with Wagyu beef, pancetta, veal, and tomato; and the bone marrow, "suffer from excess."

There's also whiskey cotton candy served with Pop-Rocks, and that one "should be STRIP's signature dessert."

Elsewhere in the Globe, reviewer Ellen Bhang stops by Allston's new, nautically-themed Taiwanese restaurant, Dolphin Bay. It's not a seafood-focused spot, though oysters (that, Bhang admits, "taste like they came from a jar") bring "briny delight" to a dish called oyster pancake.

Most entrees she tries lack heat, even when chili oil (spicy wontons) or a dusting of spice (popcorn chicken) is visible. Speaking of visible, "nicely flavored and satisfying" stir-fried beef noodles with jalapeno gravy "won’t win any beauty contests."

Roving drinker Luke O'Neil stopped by the new Boston Harbor Distillery to try the Dorchester spot's four spirits. The rye whiskey is "exceptionally drinkable," even at 120 proof. Lawley's New England Spirit, distilled from molasses with maple, has a different character in un-aged versus aged versions. In the un-aged taste, maple is there, along with vanilla bean flavors. Aged, the sweet sap is "a lot more prevalent, albeit with the oak rounding off the edges."