My spouse and I dined at Asta for dinner on a Saturday night
in late May 2017 along with two family members. We made a reservation online
using the Reserve application. Although we expected to receive a request to
reconfirm the reservation that we made 30 days previously, we did not receive a
call or an email. Asta serves dinner only on Tuesdays through Saturdays. The
chef from Asta also works at Shepard in Cambridge.
Asta is located on Massachusetts
Avenue in the Back Bay neighborhood. We walked from our nearby hotel, the
Hilton Bay, but the restaurant is also convenient to Copley Place hotels such
as the Sheraton, Marriott, and Westin. The restaurant occupies the street level
of a multi-use residential and commercial block of “row homes”. The interior
features high ceilings, exposed brick walls, and hardwood floors, with an open
kitchen at the rear fronted by a 2-part chef’s counter/bar arranged in a sort
of open V shape. Regular wooden tables fill the front half of the space, with a
shared wooden banquette positioned on one side of the room, and tables and
chairs in front. Restrooms are located down a hallway that seems carved from
another storefront, separated by a sliding door and decorated with animal
stencils.
Asta serves creative American cuisine. The restaurant offers
a tasting-menu only format. Currently, you can choose either a 5-course menu or
an 8-course menu. We chose the five courses, which included the following items:
- Champagne toast to start
- Amuse bouche from the chef
- Shaved asparagus salad with sesame puree “dressing”
- Johnnycake served atop grains with a chopped mussel
- Spring onions and a quarter sour onion topped with venison powder
- A mild white fish served atop a sunchoke puree
- Sunflower cake topped with buttermilk mousse and herbs
- Popcorn with spicy mini rabbit-shaped cookies and tiny chocolate cookies
We have participated in many tasting menus, and we thought
that the 5-course menu at Asta was weak. In our past tasting experiences, we
have always received both a fish and a meat dish as “entrees”, so the one tiny
piece of fish protein that we received at Asta seemed undersized and solitary
because no meat dish was presented. The onion dish was our least favorite;
however, the dessert sunflower cake was our favorite. Perhaps the 8-course menu
was better? Or perhaps our expectations were unnecessarily high after reading
that Asta was reminiscent of a famous Nordic restaurant and because the chef once
staged there and also worked at notable restaurants in Boston, NYC, and Paris?
Or perhaps things have changed now that the chef/owner has started working
simultaneously at another venue? Or maybe it was because we visited on a
holiday weekend.
Regrettably, Asta was probably the least favorite tasting
menu that we’ve ever done, which is a shame, because they have an excellent
set-up for their chef’s counter.
