The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum has reopened with a new wing and updated restaurant. Cafe G is in a great space with three glass walls that let you look out onto the city, and there are a bunch of small dishes to choose from, or heartier fare like this grilled comté sandwich with roasted grapes and frisée.
It was the perfect venue for our Jane Austen book club get-together because we were reading Laurie Horowitz's The Family Fortune, a modern retelling of Persuasion in which the protagonist's fictional ancestor was a rival of Isabella Stewart Gardner, Boston patroness of art. Gardner served Champagne and doughnuts at the museum opening in 1903, and this impossibly tasty dessert I ordered -- warm doughnuts served with a Champagne crème anglaise -- was a tribute to that history.
For more on the small and elegant dishes my table sampled, head to my post at Boston Tea Party.
