The Critics Ate Squid Ink Pasta and Excessive Amounts of Ramen

Wood-Fired Glory

The Improper Bostonian’s MC Slim JB pays a visit to Prairie Fire in Brookline. Pizza alone is “a fine reason to visit,” he writes, adding that the Margherita version “would do a Neapolitan pizzaiola proud,” while the fennel sausage version “offers meatier complexity.” Aside from that, Slim recommends the wood-roasted oysters and calls the fluke crudo “pretty, not overchilled, delicious.” The restaurant’s wood oven deepens the flavors of the vegetable dishes, while the squid ink campanelle is “phenomenal.”

Ramen Nirvana

Boston Magazine’s Jolyon Helterman checks out Ruckus — the ramen spin-off next door to Shojo — which has a simple, 10-item menu. Helterman makes 10 visits to the restaurant (more than usual for a review), assessing its consistency (80% of the meals were “fantastic”), and writes that Ruckus’s dope yolk dish is “at its proverbial dopest” when the yolk slowly flows over the bed of sushi rice, sweeping up the roe, garlic chips, and “crisped-up ground Chinese sausage” along the way. And then there’s the pork-belly onigiri, which distills “everything magical about bao buns and arancini into a single molten knob,” Helterman writes. As for the ramen itself, Ruckus makes its noodles in-house, and Helterman’s favorite is the black-garlic mazemen with tender lamb and an array of toppings that catapult it to “extraordinary” levels.

• Fire in the Hole [IB]
• Review: Ruckus [BM]