Northshore magazine showcases the best that the North Shore of Boston, MA has to offer.
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/482452
158 differences between its suburban clientele in Burlington and that of Columbus Restaurant Group's five Boston eateries. In the city, busy times are spread out over the course of an evening, while "the window in a suburban restaurant is very small. Everyone wants to eat between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m.," explains Mammano. That makes for a very intense hour for kitchen staff, and the occasional compro- mise on the menu. Mammano says sometimes a chef will suggest a new menu item, but it is too com- plex to guarantee perfection when things get busy. "If I question [if] it can be executed under pressure, it won't go on the menu," Mam- mano says. Just because something isn't on the menu doesn't mean a customer can't have it, however. Posada has been surprised by the number of substitutions requested. "People in the suburbs make more special requests—even things that are not on the menu," he says, recalling a time when a customer requested a vodka sauce. "I'd never made a vodka sauce before," he notes. After a quick Google search, Posada put something together with a L'Andana spin on it—and the cus - tomer was happy. Of course, the majority of cus- tomers keep coming back because of what is on the menu—not what isn't. While about a third of the menu changes with the seasons or what's exciting to the chefs, the oth- er two-thirds features the familiar. "We tried to change the rigatoni Bolognese," he says, by substitut- ing fresh pasta for dried, but it just wasn't the same. "It's the only dish we serve with dried pasta," he says, explaining that, for Bolognese, the sauce just doesn't cling to fresh pas - ta in the same way, and it doesn't have the right bite. That attention to detail is at the heart of everything at L'Andana, where they make as much as they can in-house—right down to aging their own beef for a minimum of 40 days—a process that took a lot of work to perfect, according to 3osaGa. Ȋ:e KaG to fiJXre oXt ZKat temperature the cooler needed to be, the humidity level, and what types of beef worked best," he says, adding that the restaurant uses Omaha Prime beef. Occasionally, if there is a run on steak, it comes off the menu until more can be aged, ensuring that the diner has the same experience every time. "Everything here is unique," Posada says of their approach. "The ricotta you eat here—you won't have it anywhere else." CO N TAC T L'Andana 86 Cambridge St. Burlington 781-270-0100 landanagrill.com Tortilleria La Nina 189 Elm St. Everett 617-889-6462 laninatortilla.com One might think that running six top area restaurants would be enough to keep chef Jamie Mammano busy, but his passion for authentic cuisine has driven him to pursue a new "hob- by," he says, and a very successful one at that. Four years ago, he launched Tortilleria La Nina in Everett, making corn tortillas and tortilla chips by hand using non- GMO, U.S.-grown corn and a centu- ries-old method for crafting the chips. Mammano's wife is from Mexico, and after every trip to visit his in-laws, he would haul back suitcases full of handmade tortillas. Finally tired of wait- ing for shipments from south of the border, he decided to start making them himself, to delicious effect. "We are making tortillas and corn chips the way they were made 100 years ago," Mam- mano says. That entails cooking the whole-grain corn with water and lime (from limestone, not the citrus fruit) and then using hand- carved volcanic stones to grind the corn mixture. The process, called "nixtamalization," improves the corn's nutritional value and enhances the flavor. Though Tortille- ria La Nina opened in 2011, Mammano says it's really just taken off in the past year, espe- cially since Whole Foods started stocking his tortilla chips in all its New England stores. With the Everett bakery now at capacity, Mam- mano is looking to expand. And his "hobby" is quickly growing into some- thing more. C H I P O F F T H E O L D B L O C K