The Best Dishes Eater Boston’s Editor Ate This Month

Welcome to Eater Boston’s best dishes column, where we share the dishes we couldn’t stop thinking about each month. See past installments here.

Erika Adams/Eater Boston

Laal maas at Ssaanjh

I stopped by here late on a Wednesday night, expecting a quiet dining room in the mid-week lull. Boy, was I wrong. I managed to get a seat at the bar after a small wait at 8:30 p.m., and the dining room remained packed well past 9 p.m. Service was scrambled — Ssaanjh is only four weeks old, after all — but I forgot any quibbles I had once the food started coming out. Owner Manju Kaushal’s goal for Ssaanjh (which means “friendship” in Punjabi) is to shine a finer dining light on regional Indian dishes in Boston, and she’s starting out strong. I liked everything that I ordered, but the laal maas — a thick, rich Rajasthan curry made with a sweet chili paste served in a bowl with cubes of slow-cooked lamb on the night I visited — warmed me to my core, transporting me far away from the last dredges of this tough Boston winter. For everyone who keeps whispering that Boston’s Indian dining scene leaves much to be desired, get yourself a reservation at Ssaanjh, stat. 1012 Beacon Street, Brookline

Erika Adams/Eater Boston

Rosemary sea salt bagel from Brick Street Bagels

I know I am extremely late to this party, but, as of this month, I’m joining the ranks of Brick Street Bagels evangelists. I risked walking into their pop-up shop at the Buttery to see if anything was left on a late Saturday morning in mid-February, and walked out with two bagels (rosemary sea salt and everything) and a small tub of bacon scallion cream cheese. There’s not a lot of room for error in good bagel-making (are the innards sufficiently soft and chewy? is the exterior just a touch crispy?), and yes, these bagels hit those marks, but the toppings were where Brick Street really excelled. I could smell the toasted rosemary sprigs on my rosemary sea salt bagel straight through the bag, and the generous showering of sea salt provided pleasant little punches of saltiness in each bite. I hear the asiago is another must-order — it was sold out by the time I got there, but I watched other customers happily rip into their cheesy bagels over cups of coffee at the Buttery while I plotted my next pre-order. 312 Shawmut Avenue, South End

Erika Adams/Eater Boston

Potato pancake at Yunnan Kitchen

There are no special bells and whistles on this dish at South End restaurant Yunnan Kitchen, which focuses on the food of Yunnan Province in southwestern China. It’s simply a humble potato pancake done extremely well. The potato slices were crisped up just so, and it hit the table at the exact right temperature for digging in. Plus, it’s served with a little pot of chili powder because, well, it is a bunch of potato slices, after all. It was so comforting, I had eaten half the pan before I realized that there were more dishes on the table and I should probably share. 1721 Washington Street, South End

Erika Adams/Eater Boston

Lamb skewers with an herb and pickle plate at Urban Hearth

Urban Hearth chef Erin Miller has been doing a dead-of-winter pop-up dinner for the past couple of years, where everything on the plate is sourced from within 100 miles of the restaurant. Sounds cool, right? Then, this year, she partnered up with Mahaniyom and Merai chef Thanaphon “Song” Authaiphan to collaborate on the dinner. (Both chefs are James Beard Award semifinalists this year.) Tickets went so fast that they ended up stretching it into a two-night event to accommodate all the interest. There were many highlights in the dinner — Song’s bites of candied chicken skin! The last of Erin’s sweet corn ice cream from the freezer! — but the most surprising were the lamb skewers marinated in a sweet potato miso, served with pickled vegetables and herbs alongside spoonfuls of a pawpaw sambal and a zingy chili jam. It took a lot of pre-planning in warmer months to have the ingredients available in February to pull this off, I’m sure, but it was a very welcome reminder of the region’s riches that are just around the corner. 2263 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge