I’m a jeans and T-shirt guy. If there’s a wedding, an interview, or someone dies, I’ll throw on a suit, but I generally don’t get past jeans on weekends. Sometimes I worry that it may exclude me from certain restaurants, but really, if the rule is, “gentlemen must wear jackets,” you can be virtually assured that I will not be there. I’m not comfortable in a suit, and I’m not trying to impress. I go to restaurants to eat.

I can eat nearly anywhere, and I won’t even think about sending the food back, because I’m not really picky. On the other hand, it’s rare that I’ll give a restaurant anything above an “Ok” rating. That’s the price you pay for growing up with some Italian blood. You are cursed to walk the earth in search of good food, and nothing will ever be as good as a you mama’s a sauce. If a restaurant can impress me with a plate of food, I have no qualms about paying their asking price, whatever it may be. I also don’t mind dropping a chunk of change on the wait staff if they know how to wait a table. I was immensely impressed and paid for it at Tosca’s in Hingham.

Upon walking through Tosca’s doors, I scanned the place quickly to see how much of the crowd was hoity, and how much was toity. Given that it is located in Hingham, Tosca’s seemed to be following town appointed rules of no more than 53% in either direction. Most men were in jackets, and most women looked as if they had stepped out of a Talbot’s catalog. I stood before the host for a minute while he looked at his various plans and charts doing his best to either ignore me in the hopes that I would wander off, or he was truly trying to perfect some very complex seating algorithms.

Upon recognizing me, he smiled pretty genuinely, apologized for not noticing me, and then said that there would be nothing available until 9 PM. He then suggested that I see if there was seating in the “Wine Room.” Ooooh, the wine room. How fancy. I guess the Hingham rule of no jeans while dining applied, which was fine. At least he was nice about it.

I walked back to the wine room (which most people refer to as “the bar”) and took a peek in before asking for a table. Despite the short height of the tables, the room looked quite comfortable for dining. It was dimly lit, and decorated with rich, dark wood. There was a giant wine rack on one wall possibly high enough that it might need a ladder, but a ladder was added, just the same, producing a nice effect. There were murals on the walls, painted in such a way to add to the “Wine Room’s” old world feel.

The only thing that I didn’t like was the fact that there was a TV on above the bar. It seemed totally out of place in this setting, and served solely as a distraction, adding nothing to an otherwise comfortable atmosphere. Otherwise, it was the kind of room that an expensive hotel might use as its bar, and as long as I had cash to pay the bill, I felt right at home, even in my jeans.

I’m not going to lie about it. The menu was pricey. Drinks were $8, starting salads were $9+ and entrees were $20 at a minimum, and soared only as high as $29, with potatoes being extra…$8 extra to be exact. I’ll tell you though, Tosca’s is one of those places that fully backs the credo, “you get what you pay for.”

I ordered the pork chop, and man if it wasn’t the best looking, fattest, most tasty god damned pork chop that I ever ate. I really don’t know what the hell was on the top of it, but it was leafy with some red wormy things on it that might have been peppers, but weren’t. Then came the pork chop, which was 4″x4″. And under the pork chop was a foundation of mashed potatoes, but they weren’t your average mashed potatoes. Noooo, sir. It was as if they mashed them, breaded them, and then fried them. Surrounded by a moat of tangy sauce, the whole thing appeared almost as if it were a tiny tropical island jutting out of the sea to feed me.

As with most high priced foo foo places, the meal appeared to be rather small. It didn’t look as small as other foo foo dinners that I’ve eaten, but the presentation lent itself to thinking that you should be ordering a minimum of a couple of dinners. Looks can be deceiving, because after I had finished it, I was much more full than I would’ve imagined. To aid my digestion, I had a cup of coffee with dinner, which was amazingly smooth. I’m not a fan of the smooth coffees, but I was impressed with this batch which flowed like water thanks to an amazingly astute waitress.

I always have thought that a general measure of a good waitress is whether I can see the bottom of my coffee cup. The waitress let me hit bottom but once in four to five cups, and only because the over-anxious Tosca’s bus boys tend to whisk away plates and cups before you even put your fork down from the last bite of your meal. She was exactly what a waitress should be: friendly, courteous, there when needed, and unobtrusive when not, and seemed to almost have a sixth sense about the job, approaching just as drinks were emptied or courses had enough time to settle in and take hold. She seemed to approach the job not as if she were stuck waitressing on her way to something else, but as if she were a waitress. And that is service that has to be experienced to be believed.

Just after the meal, I couldn’t have been more surprised when a tuxedoed jazz duo set up and started playing as if on cue. They consisted of a keyboard player with a bobbling head and steady hands, and a horn player that not only held a flute, clarinet, and three types of saxophones in his arsenal, but had such a mane of white hair that it looked as if every breath he had blown into those instruments had come back to permanently haunt it.

So, I’m in a “wine room,” I’ve eaten a great dinner, experienced great service, heard great music, and was privileged enough to be accompanied by a beautiful date (yes date, mother f’ers. A date. Not a virtual date, computer, cardboard cutout, hooker, or pet. A date. Ask me no more.) As if things couldn’t have been more perfect, the waitress arrived with the desert menu. There was a lot of good stuff on there, but my decision was guided by one of my favorite movies, Amelie, where one of the simple pleasures in life enjoyed by the main character was cracking the creme brule with a spoon. I have never had creme brule before, but as the night was going so well, I though that I would explore this simple pleasure myself. As foo foo as it is, I enjoyed it.

Dinner was leisurely, taking a scant 3 hours from soup to nuts, creating an atmosphere not of grabbing dinner before going out, but that dinner was going out. I can attribute at least part of this to the nature and professionalism of the waitress. She was like no other that I’ve had, and deserved a big fat tip, no matter what the bill was.

If you have a special occasion coming up, I would suggest reservations, as I arrived at 6:40 PM, and they were already booked through 9…or maybe they weren’t. Maybe you can play dress up.

Posted in #1GF!, Food