New Seaport Restaurant Chickadee Gets Double Praise From Critics This Week

“Ease Alongside Excellence”

Chickadee (21 Dry Dock Ave., Seaport District, Boston), which opened at the end of July, hit the double review jackpot this week. For the Boston Globe, Devra First awards it an enviable three and a half stars out of a possible four, between “excellent” and “extraordinary.”

“Some meals here are magic,” she writes, “everything cooked perfectly, making you swoon.” Highlights include “irresistibly of the season” gnocchi with hen-of-the-woods mushrooms and smoked chestnut; “impeccably unctuous” porchetta; and a “dreamy, rich” crab gratin. Even the meals that don’t reach that full magic potential are “a more ordinary version of excellent.”

This is the “most-polished opening Boston has seen in some time,” writes First.

Go Beyond the Seaport’s “Glitzy New High-Rises”

The Improper Bostonian’s MC Slim JB, too, heaps praise on Chickadee this week, with Slim finding much to love, from “elegant craft cocktails boasting of-the-moment accents” to “fine technique hiding even in seemingly humble dishes.” The aforementioned crab gratin is “a delectably airy, custardy, nearly sweet dip,” he writes, while the porchetta — “a dramatic swirl” — comes with “accompaniments that sound bizarre...but yield a smashing synthesis.”

Other favorites include a “vibrant” cucumber gazpacho and a grilled lamb harira that “reads like a novel gloss on cassoulet” and makes for a “fabulous fall/winter dish.”

Chickadee is located in a “remote, still mostly industrial corner” of the Seaport District — but the area will soon enough be taken over by Boston’s “relentless tide of development,” Slim predicts. But for now, a meal at Chickadee is worth the trek.

• Chickadee Is Off to a Flying Start [BG]
• Pretty Bird [IB]
• Chickadee Coverage on Eater [EBOS]