The Critics Ate Seafood, Dumplings, and Bar Food This Week

The Boston Globe’s Kara Baskin stops in at Waypoint in Harvard Square for some seafood, pizza, pasta, and more. She describes the scene as loud and jubilant, with tables of families giving way "to rowdier groups of ladies in skinny jeans, men in skinny ties, and bewildered-looking students in statement eyewear," as the night wears on. The pizzas have unusual toppings like duck tongue and pig’s face, and she recommends the bone marrow and lobster salad or the clam cakes with bacon fat aioli. There are also raw bar items, snacks, and plenty of absinthe drinks.

Ellen Bhang visits the newly opened Dumpling Kingdom in Allston for the Globe, where she finds appealing xiao long bao, or "mini juicy buns," filled with pork and crab meat. "Dumplings alone can make up a meal," she writes, recommending the roast duck buns that have a seared crust, the roast beef with scallion pancake, and the oyster pancake. Though she finds that the salt-and-pepper shrimp leave something to be desired, "you can always count on the dumplings."

Finally, the Globe’s Sacha Pfeiffer reviews Blackmoor Bar & Kitchen, which has had quite the turnover of chefs (four) and bartenders (15-20) since it opened in May, she writes. "I had two mostly lousy meals at Blackmoor," she writes, "but while I can’t recommend you eat here...I feel a need to cut the restaurant a little slack, because its travails tell an instructive story of an industry," namely, the current personnel woes restaurants around Boston are facing. "The menu is all over the map," she writes, though seafood is one of its strengths. Pfeiffer notes that the calamari is "fresh and flavorful," praises the sauteed salmon and roasted cod, and writes that the fish tacos need "pep."

• Choose your own adventure at Waypoint in Harvard Square [BG]
• First a cafe, then a palace, now a kingdom, all built around dumplings [BG]
• Four chefs later, gastropub Blackmoor limps along [BG]