Creative Comfort Food: The Gallows, Boston

My boyfriend and I hit The Gallows in Boston’s South End just before 6:30 PM on a Friday night. After a brief wait, we were seated in the cozy restaurant, lit by candles at each table, and glowing birdcages hanging from the ceiling. The Gallows has a bar at the front, with windows on two sides, one facing Washington Street. Come here late and you and your date will have to sit side by side at the stools facing the window. And by late, I mean around 7 PM. That’s when all the tables were filled.

We started with two appies – the Scotch egg and a stuffed corn muffin. The Scotch egg was a soft boiled egg wrapped in a thin layer of sausage, crunchy on the outside. The yolk was a deep orange, gooey, and oozing slightly as I cut into it.

The pulled pork stuffed corn muffin was sooooo good. The muffin itself was soft on the inside and crisp on the outside. The pork was delicious, both smoky and sweet. A jalepeno pepper jelly added both sweetness and spice, cooled by the avocado, and kicked up again by pickled cabbage.

We saw several orders of poutine pass by our table. Served in large, deep bowls, theses are a great for four people to share, or a most indulgent heart attack for one. There’s even a vegetarian version that replaces gravy with Bearnaise sauce.

The Carpet burger – topped with a fried oyster – was definitely creative. The burger itself arrived a juicy medium-well as we requested, with melted American cheese and pickles. The fries were nothing special, but they did come with a barbecue-like ketchup.

The Fish Special was a Portugese stew – three plump and peeled shrimp, scallops, mussels, and lots of fava beans in a tantalizing tomato-based broth. Two garlic butter-soaked toasted focaccia triangles completed the dish – you definitely want to soak up all that amazing broth.

Everything was delicious, but the appetizers were really amazing. We overheard that even the Brussels sprouts are good! We skipped dessert, as our server explained, The Gallows is a “one dessert place”. The dessert that night was a bananas foster peanut butter fluffernutter – that is, a peanut butter mousse with bananas foster and marshmallow fluff. Definitely intriguing but not exactly my type of thing.

The Final Word: I’m definitely coming back, for the hip atmosphere, the creative food, and especially the awesome appies.

Info: The Gallows, 1395 Washington Street, Boston, MA 02118 USA