It wasn’t supposed to be like this: a stylish and inviting sorta-Mediterranean spot with creative, family-style, served-as-we-make-em plates, helmed by 2025 James Beard Award Best Chef Northeast Semifinalist John DaSilva. Shouldn’t I of all people be frothing at the mouth over this place? How did we get here?
Let’s start with what works: the smoked sea trout dip with salt-and-vinegar flavored housemade rye chips is a playful, clever, and delicious deconstruction of the flavor profile of a lox bagel. What a sheer delight — the kind of creative lateral thinking that I love most in food! Both pasta plates shined: comforting, creamy-crispy chive spaetzle and vivid, rich squid ink farfalle were each Chris’s and my favorites, respectively. And anyone would love the duck, prepared three ways (seared, sausaged, and fried rice) and paired with a tangy and acidic sugar snap pea slaw.
Chickadee starts with the pieces of a great meal, and then starts negotiating down from there. Upon placing our order, our server asked if we were interested in ordering less food (?!), forgot one of our large plates, and seemed generally perplexed by our tasting-menu style approach — confusing at a restaurant that only offers shareable portions. From there, plates and drinks arrived at a consistently sluggish pace, one or two at a time. The panisse for the chickpea fritters was scorched, resulting in an acrid, burnt taste throughout the entire batch. And the slow-roasted porchetta was bland, with an underseasoned sidecar of broccoli and fried peanuts.
And the prices — $18 for scorched panisse fritters, $34 for tasty squid ink farfalle, and $48 for bland porchetta. When everything is this expensive, spinning Chickadee’s wheel of fortune is a lot less fun, and the basic fumbles become very difficult to overlook.
So who can I recommend the daydream-worthy sea trout dip to, other than extremely patient trust-fund gormands who aren’t very hungry and don’t mind taking chances? While dining at Chickadee, the restaurant I was consistently reminded of was Waverly, an extremely local spot that I also feel snatches defeat from the jaws of victory. But Waverly’s prices and convenience make it so much easier to recommend than Chickadee, despite everything that Chickadee does right.
When trying a new restaurant, Chris will usually ask the server for a favorite dessert and give it a try just to see what they’re working with and formulate a complete opinion. At Chickadee, we just asked for the check.