Northshore magazine showcases the best that the North Shore of Boston, MA has to offer.
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/514590
142 finding summer jobs on Cape Cod, but soon started thinking about a bigger endeavor, a restaurant of their own, perhaps. Then they heard about an old empty waterfront restaurant—in the past it had been a basic breakfast joint—in Amelia's hometown. They leased the place sight unseen, and within two weeks they had opened The Market, Nico remembers. "We said, 'I'll bet if we just started cook- ing food, people will show up.'" That first summer, they oper- ated with just a handful of staff, and Amelia and Nico cooked every dish that left the kitchen. They wanted to work with locally grown ingredients but didn't yet have any relation- ships with area growers, so Nico's brother set out in an old Subaru, knocking on farmers' doors and ask- ing if they had any food they could sell him. "When the little car was full of produce, he'd come back to us and we'd say, 'OK, that's what's for din- ner,'" Nico says. "We were just this little ragtag band of restaurateurs The philosophy behind The Market menu is to find and use the best local ingredients and do as little to them as possible. They let the food stand on its own. figuring things out." Today, the operation has a more regular system in place, but the spir- it is still the same. Nico and Amelia are in regular touch with local farmers, finding out what produce is going to be ready and flavorful each week. They buy their fish from local sellers every day. Each morning, often over coffee, they write a new menu featuring the ingredients they have available that day. In spring, dishes might include English pea and goat cheese ravioli or fish stew with local scallops, squid, and haddock. Tomato-zuc- chini fritters might show up mid- summer, and pork Milanese with bacon-sautéed apples might make an early autumn appearance. Many menu offerings list the farms from which ingredients were sourced. Amelia takes particular pride in crafting a course she says many restaurants too often overlook: the salad. Her versions often include unexpected components like spiced pistachios, tuna confit, and preserved lemon. "We think about salads as