Boston Common Magazine

Mena Suvari

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 11:24:00 -0500

Cover shoot: Spring 2012 issue of Boston Common magazine.

Sweets Crawl: Boston on 5,000 Calories a Day

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500

It's a busy weekday afternoon in early December, and Taza Chocolate president and co-owner Alex Whitmore and I are standing inside Sofra Bakery and Cafe in Cambridge, sampling the shop’s clever riffs on the kinds of sugary morsels you’d find in places like Syria, Greece, Turkey, and Lebanon. First up is a tahini shortbread cookie, which offers a rush of roasted sesame. Next is the Syrian shortbread made with clarified butter that all but evaporates on the tongue. Whitmore bites into a ma’amoul, an ethereal Arabic pastry softened with olive oil and spiraled with dates, almond paste, orange, and espresso.

“That’s my favorite; it’s like heaven,” he says. He picks up what looks like a tiny Reese’s Peanut Butter cup, called a milk chocolate tahini bite, and then closes his eyes. I do the same. The candy is satiny smooth, the tahini intense—a bewitching mix of sweet and salty. It’s like Nutella on steroids.

Whitmore and I are on a sweet sojourn to sample some of newest and tastiest baked goods, desserts, and confections in the Boston area. I have asked Whitmore to be my escort because he’s the ultimate candy man. In 2006 he founded Taza Chocolate, his small-batch, bean-to-bar chocolate factory in Somerville, with partners Larry Slotnick and Kathleen Fulton. Using organic and sustainably farmed ingredients, he crafts his Mexican-style chocolate into bars, baking squares, and discs blended with spices.

Confectionary Newcomers
Despite the lingering recession, a new confection shop seems to open each month in the Boston area, and the registers keep ringing. Some of the more recent arrivals include Max Brenner in the Back Bay, offering a choco-licious menu featuring toy syringes filled with a “chocolate potion” for kids; 3 Little Figs in Somerville, with homey baked goods such as the succulent avocado tea cake; and Macaron Sweeterie in Lexington, offering colorful French macarons in flavors like passion fruit, coconut, and honey lavender. Then there is the tidal wave of cupcake shops: Kickass Cupcakes, Isabelle’s Curly Cakes, Sweet, and Cakeology, which opened in the financial district last September.

In our quest for the best Whitmore and I are getting buzzed on sugar—that pristine, white, and sparkling ingredient that looks like crushed diamonds but offers a different sort of high for a more modest price. Sweet treats have become a hot commodity around town, especially now that the low-carb fad has faded away and folks have realized that they can have their cake and—with some caloric juggling—their figures, too. What’s more, sweets are pretty recession proof. When your portfolio takes a dive, what better boost than a gourmet cupcake? At three bucks a pop, that’s an affordable luxury.


	Macarons from Formaggio Kitchen

Chestnuts, Cake, and Cookies
After Sofra, next up are the chocolate and pastry cases at Formaggio Kitchen in Cambridge. “They curate the best of the best,” says Whitmore, surveying the imported and local chocolates, like those from L.A. Burdick Handmade Chocolates in Cambridge and EHChocolatier in Somerville. “If it’s not good, they won’t carry it.” Formaggio Kitchen’s cheesemonger and chocolate and tea buyer, Julia Hallman, hands us a glazed chestnut. Glistening in its translucent sugar shell, the chestnut collapses under the tooth, yielding a nutty sweetness that almost tastes floral.

Another treat is the orange olive oil cake—a moist, coaster-size confection glazed with light fondant and flavored with orange. With a dollop of crème fraîche, it would make a great dinner party dessert. For cookies, the store’s best come from Lakota Bakery in Arlington, where, if you’re willing to make the trek, you’ll find an even more extensive collection of cookies than what lies before us at Formaggio Kitchen. The chocolate- dipped shortbread is meltingly tender, as are the sandwich cookies cradling all kinds of fillings, like mocha cream and mint cream.

Boston's Finest Chocolates
As for chocolates, I’m particularly smitten with those from EHChocolatier; owners Elaine Hsieh and Catharine Sweeney have no store, but craft their chocolates and confections in Somerville using fresh herbs, Penzeys Spices, Rishi Tea, and fruit purées from France, along with singleplantation and imported chocolates. Fresh, bursting with flavor, and supremely elegant, these chocolates rival the finest in Europe yet don’t have to travel.

For the obromine freaks like Whitmore and me, L.A. Burdick Handmade Chocolates in Harvard Square is a prime place to get one’s fix of this natural, caffeine- like compound in cocoa beans, which gives gourmands the equivalent of a runner’s high. Good news: A Boston L.A. Burdick just opened in January. Although everything in this store wins a medal for quality, perhaps the famous hot chocolate takes the gold. Heavy, warm, and so robust it could make a meal (even in the four-ounce demi), it consists of steamed milk blended with different chocolates from around the world. For pastries, the aptly named Harvard Square takes the cake, so to speak. Fudgy, packed with walnuts, and topped with dark ganache, it’s so rich and dense it almost requires a knife. Another favorite is the pistachio Luxembourg, a French macaron that when bitten collapses into a sticky heap, like pistachio marzipan. Then there are the chocolates, supremely fresh and cut and shaped by hand (no molds). All taste exquisite, including the signature ribbon-tail mice with dark, milk, or white chocolate coats and orange, mocha, and cinnamon ganache fillings, respectively.


	ChocoLee’s made-to-order beignets have earned a cult following.

Bonbons and Beignets
More artisanal bonbons abound at ChocoLee in the South End (the sesame caramel-filled dark chocolate is fantastic), but it’s owner Lee Napoli’s pastries that shine. Her weekend morning beignets, the size of golf balls, have a cult following. Deep-fried to order, they ooze with chocolate-mascarpone ganache and come dusted with powdered sugar. Her chewy cookies with both milk and dark chocolate chips also have fans, as do her chocolate biscotti, ganache-filled French macarons, and chocolate-topped custard and whipped cream filled-to-order éclairs.

“My rule is everything has to be chocolate,” says the 30-year veteran pastry chef, who teaches chocolate-making classes in the store’s adjacent cafe. I point to a tray of cupcakes and frozen moussicles, and Napoli groans. “If I have to make another cupcake, I’ll kill myself.” Uh-oh, her future looks doomed. Napoli’s chocolate cupcakes are some of the best I’ve ever tasted— exceedingly moist, not too sweet, and crowned with a luscious swirl of creamy, not overly buttery, milk and dark chocolate frosting.

The Unaviodable, Irresistible Cupcake
I also found stellar cupcakes at Cakeology, where self-taught baker-owner Victoria Donnelly offers a rotating roster of flavors, plus everyday favorites including red velvet, carrot cake, Boston cream pie, German chocolate, double chocolate, and vanilla vanilla.

“I describe them as yummy, gooey, moist, and pretty, but not elegant,” she says. True. Despite being the winner of Food Network’s Cupcake Wars in 2010 (for her sushi cupcake, not available in the store), her treats have a homey look, delicious damp crumb, and a flat, not artistic, iced top. “I tried lots of recipes until I came up with the one I liked,” says the native Brit, who now lives in Dorchester. “I needed the cake part to be squidgy, so I use a combination of butter and oil—butter for flavor and oil for moistness.”

One trend I’m seeing on my confections caper is teensy desserts. Beyond those popular cake pops, Cakeology makes tiddly wink-size cupcakes, as do many of her competitors. While Toscanini’s foresaw the movement years ago with its standout micro hot fudge sundae (served in a Dixie cup with real whipped cream), other sweet shops are doing the same, including Bova’s bakery in the North End, which makes some of the best cannoli around, in miniature and traditional sizes. Bread & Chocolate Bakery Cafe, which has two Newton locations, makes Boston cream pie cupcakes (along with excellent scones and caramel-drenched pecan sticky buns), while the petit four selection at Cafe Vanille on Beacon Hill all but dominates the pastry case. Then there is the French macaron craze, which also speaks to this one-bite phenomenon. In addition to those at L.A. Burdick, you’ll find a tasty selection at the Taj Boston’s afternoon tea and Sunday brunch (the raspberry macaron filled with raspberry jam is particularly good). And this doesn’t include the diminutive offerings from the big guns, like Starbucks, which launched its Petites dessert options last March, and Baskin Robbins, which rolled out its Cake Bite line last October. Clearly, the small plates tapas craze has morphed into desserts.


	Batter up! Cakeology’s Victoria Donnelly crafts an array of cupcakes.

Cocktails and Crepes
And desserts, in turn, have morphed into spirits. This is no more apparent than at The Bristol Lounge in the Four Seasons Hotel Boston, where bar manager Michael Mooney whips up outrageously good after-dinner cocktails. For a boozy frappé-like treat, the salted caramel martini can’t be beat. I also loved the fig cookie, a blend of locally made black fig vodka (from Somerville), Frangelico, ginger liqueur, and coffee. For nonliquid desserts, The Bristol Lounge’s Saturday night sweets extravaganza is a sugar lover’s dream, complete with executive pastry chef Tim Fonseca’s Sundaes on Saturdays ice cream bar, where you pick your ice cream, mix-ins, cookie-candy toppings, and sauce.

“We also are offering crepes to order,” says Fonseca, whose favorite dessert is chocolate ice cream. “The most popular crepe is Nutella with chocolate and raspberry sauce.”

The Best for Last
One of our last stops is Tatte Fine Cookies & Cakes in Brookline, though it could be Paris, given the cozy, pastry-packed space with wooden tables. Although Israeli-born pastry chef-owner Tzurit Or has earned accolades for her trademark Nuts Box—buttery, pie crust rectangles cradling handmade caramel and topped with a mountain of toasted nuts—I could not stop eating her flourless Chocolate Halva Bomb, which Whitmore declared “awesome.” The size of an upturned mixing bowl, the smooth Belgian chocolate ganache-covered dome has a walnut-chocolate crust, fluffy Belgian chocolate mousse filling, and a slightly salty center of halva. Swoon.

“In Israel we have lots of chocolate bombs,” says Or, who brought the shop’s bomb pan from her home country. This April Or will open a second Tatte shop in Cambridge’s Kendall Square area, where in the larger space she’ll be able to offer even more sweets, including strawberry bombs and plated desserts like soufflés.

Finally, for an all-out dessert orgy, it’s hard to rival our last stop, The Langham’s famous Chocolate Bar, which has become so popular for its near-infinite display of white, milk, and dark chocolate desserts that it’s now being offered at The Langham Melbourne in Australia.

“We have about 100 items in bite-size portions,” says executive pastry chef Jed Hackney, who easily goes through 100 pounds of chocolate each weekend for the event. “I try to keep the options light, contemporary, and familiar to people,” which means anything from a cotton candy station to a chocolate fountain. Exceptions to this rule are his cold smoked chocolate cake and bacon-topped banana cream micro pie. Delish.

Alas, so many sweets, so little time. More options will arrive this spring, including the infamous Georgetown Cupcake, whose owners are stars of TLC’s DC Cupcakes. Thus, there’s only one strategy: Seize the moment and go get your just desserts.

The Many Facets of Mena Suvari

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500

Bonded dress with sport stitch bodice, Cynthia Rowley ($410). 164 Newbury St., 617-587-5240; Vendome square cuff, Isharya ($250); Ring, Tiffany & Co. (price on request). Copley Place, 617-353-0222; Grecian goddess ring, Melinda Maria ($115). Bloomingdale’s, The Mall at Chestnut Hill, 617-630-6000; Platform pumps, Giuseppe Zanotti Design (price on request). Neiman Marcus, Copley Place, 617-536-3660

As a child growing up in Newport, Rhode Island, Mena Suvari loved to play archaeologist, creating a dig on the four acres that surrounded her family’s 1870s stone house. When she wasn’t picking berries with her three older brothers, she would till through the soil for hours looking for remnants of old civilizations.

“I found a gun, bullets, lots of broken china, crazy stuff!” the actress excitedly recalls. “I’d find all these pieces and spend hours studying them, trying to glue them back together.”

At 33, Suvari is still playing the archeologist. Though her breakthrough came as Heather, the choir girl in American Pie, and Angela Hayes, the next-door Lolita in American Beauty, she has predominantly excelled since then at excavating the souls of broken women in a number of independent films. Roles such as the self-absorbed Brandi in Stuck, in which she, high on ecstasy, impales a homeless man on the windshield of her car; desperate Sandy in Sex & Lies in Sin City, a stripper who is accused of aiding and abetting the murder of a casino owner; neurotic Catherine in The Garden of Eden (based on Ernest Hemingway’s novel), who rebels against the expectations of her male and female lovers; and Elizabeth “Black Dahlia” Short, the doomed fame-hungry actress she played on a recent episode of American Horror Story.

“I am my father’s daughter—I’ve always loved examining the human condition,” says Suvari, referring to her father, Ando, a psychiatrist whose Estonian-American background accounts for her exotic last name. (Candice, her Greek-American mother, was a nurse.) “I’m definitely attracted to things that are deep, dark, and heavy. Taking on these challenges, I’ve learned and discovered so much about myself in the process.”

How Suvari’s eclectic and daring choices have spurred her personal growth is the gist of a recent conversation with the actress on the eve of the release of the film American Reunion. Reprising her role as the demure Heather in the latest American Pie franchise installment stands in startling contrast to the complex, morally ambiguous characters on her résumé. But it’s a reversal she embraces: “I’m so grateful because I love comedy,” says Suvari. “I grew up on Tracey Ullman and singing in a choir.” She adds that she’d much rather do the “crazy stupid stuff” that is the province of her costars. But she promises, without saying exactly how, that Heather will be seen in a different light. “She definitely sticks up for herself.”

Sticking up for herself has also been Suvari’s life lesson. It has not been an easy one, given that she began modeling when she was a preteen and gained national exposure during her teen years, culminating when, at 20, she was catapulted to stardom with American Beauty. In its wake, she has tried to maintain a spiritual balance, coping with the ups and downs of a Hollywood career, the hot glare of celebrity, and the disappointment of two failed marriages.

“I have a wonderful family and a lot of beautiful people in my life, and I’m thankful,” she says. “But I didn’t have time to really grow up with the rest of them. In many ways, I kind of raised myself and had to go through a lot of struggle and growth on my own.”

When the actress was eight, the Suvari family moved from Newport, first to St. John’s in the Virgin Islands, and then to Charleston, South Carolina, finally ending up in Los Angeles when Mena’s modeling career took off. While two of her brothers remained behind at The Citadel, Charleston’s military academy, Suvari, only 14 at the time, felt pressure to be the breadwinner, her parents having retired by then. “We’d taken a chance moving to LA for my career, and I went to auditions thinking, I really have to get this job!”

Success brought with it a whole new raft of difficulties, not the least of them the distorting lens of fame—something she is still dealing with. “I just got into an argument with a paparazzo last week,” she says, laughing at the memory. The photographer had trespassed by following her as she was trying to take a solitary hike. “I said to him, “Dude, you can get me anywhere else!” It’s so violating. I go hiking to relax. That’s my therapy, that’s my time.”

Even more problematic, says Suvari, is the disconnect between the expectations generated by her looks and the person she feels she is. “People look at me and think I should act a certain way and then are shocked that I don’t,” she says. She recounts that she was once in a meeting with a film director who suddenly blurted out, “You’re actually really smart!” Laughing, she says, “My jaw dropped. I thought, Is this an insult? Is this a compliment?” Then, she adds, some years later she was going through immigration just after having shaved her head for a role. The officer looked at her passport picture, looked at her shorn head, and tsk-tsked, “And you’re such a pretty girl.” Suvari says that she has always resisted the limitations that such a label would place on her. “Is that what defines me? The length of my hair?”

The actress is likewise astounded when people are surprised that she likes reggae music—she has a tattoo on her back that reads WORD SOUND POWER, which is taken from a reggae album—and that she would prefer playing oddballs in independent films to making the more “political” career moves like “running around in a bikini” in the next Hollywood blockbuster.

“I’ve always followed my heart and my passion, I’ve always followed the creative aspects of what I do,” says Suvari. “I’m hypersensitive, so I’m aware of what other people think I should do, and I’ve been influenced. I’ve struggled many times, trying that hat on and trying that hat on. You finally have to surrender to who you really are.”

Filling out the pieces of the puzzle for Suvari are her involvement in charity work—she is an ambassador for Amref (African Medical and Research Foundation) and is active in feminist issues—and in the world of fashion. The latter stems from her “thirst for art” in all its manifestations. “I appreciate the workmanship, the extremely creative and unique expressions,” says the actress, who also models for Lancôme. “When I see people who make choices that aren’t influenced by other people, I see the person that I’ve always wanted to be, somebody who really owns who they are.”

The actress feels that she has made significant headway in that direction, despite—or because of—her recent split from Italian concert producer Simone Sestito after only 18 months of marriage. She does not talk directly about the breakup, except to say that it was not because of celebrity pressures. “Definitely not,” she says. “I don’t let that affect my personal relationships. I’m very Aquarius that way.”

For Suvari the recent turmoil is simply another one of the “dark passages” in her life that she has come through, emerging as a much stronger person for it. “It’s taken years to get to know myself. I had never really taken time to cultivate who I was,” she says. “I’ve felt drained by it. But I feel like I’m really, finally, content at this point in my life. I’m accepting of who I am and how diverse I am and honoring that. All of it.”

The Boston Ballet Pushes the Envelope

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500

Altan Dugaraa, Sarah Wroth, and Yury Yanowsky in Bella Figura

Boston Ballet artistic director Mikko Nissinen loves to play with fire. Literally, he lights The Boston Opera House stage with it. Musically, he pumps the Rolling Stones’ hit of the same name through the theater’s speakers. And figuratively, he absolutely relishes testing audiences and pushing boundaries. From March 1 through 11, Nissinen interrupts the company’s season of more classical programs with the aptly named “Play with Fire,” an evening of jolting modern works. “It represents a little bit of the strategy of introducing contemporary dance to Boston Ballet,” he says. “It’s a little risky and it’s interesting, but it’s really paid off.”


	The Boston Opera House

	Sabi Varga and Andrea Schermoly in Sharp Side of Dark

Celebrating his 10th anniversary season with the company this year, Nissinen has made unconventional performance one of his hallmarks. “Mikko has a revolutionary way of bringing contemporary dance to Boston,” says principal dancer James Whiteside, who appears in all three of the evening’s works. “There’s a certain thrill that comes with doing new work.” Especially when it moves like Jagger. A highlight of the evening is choreographer Christopher Bruce’s Rooster, set to a playlist of eight Rolling Stones songs. In a cheeky look at the battle of the sexes, men in tight velvet jackets dance alongside women in slinky dresses. “I’m a huge fan of Christopher Bruce and his choreography, and for a long time I’ve wanted to do some of his works,” Nissinen says. “Artistically it’s a no-brainer. It’s a great piece, it’s a fun piece, everybody is going to love it.” Asked to describe the choreography, Whiteside answers with a laugh, “the same way you dance at a party, but with more technique.”

Also on the bill is Bella Figura by Jirí Kylián, the master choreographer for the preeminent dance company Nederlands Dans Theatre, based in The Hague. First presented by Boston Ballet last year, Bella Figura is a piece Nissinen had waited six years to present—the time he says it took before the company and audiences alike would be prepared for such a technically challenging work. “It would be an absolute waste if we didn’t see it twice,” he says. Visually arresting, with an ethereal, dreamlike quality, Bella Figura conveys the palpable intensity of sexuality and sensuality, and is performed with partial nudity. “It’s like white-hot love, and your heart just opens. It’s a direct emotional conversation between the audience member and the piece of art,” Nissinen says.

The evening’s other piece is homegrown—crafted by Boston Ballet’s resident choreographer, Jorma Elo. First commissioned for the company in 2002, just as Elo was ending his career as a dancer, Sharp Side of Dark is performed to Bach’s Goldberg Variations and features epic architectural sets and haunting lighting. “Let me tell you, it’s a completely new piece,” Whiteside says. “It might as well be called a world premiere. One of Jorma’s favorite things is to tailor dance to specific dancers. He creates in a contemporary realm of choreography,” Nissinen adds. “It has very unique movement that is infused with classical ballet.” In total, “Play with Fire” should blaze. “Play with Fire” runs March 1–11 at Boston Opera House, 539 Washington St., 617-695-6955