The Achilles Project
Persephone, which is the restaurant portion of The Achilles Project, shares a loft with a retail store and the lounge that splits them. Contemporary art (or paint splatters, depending on how you look at it) is prominently mounted on the brick surfaces and a DJ plays acceptable music throughout dinner. I’d tell you what the ambience was like but we were 1/3rd of the patrons there, so I’ll withhold judgment.
Dishes come in small, medium, large, and extra large, which is really all kind of relative. The first category includes bite-sized items like oysters or crab cake. The last features full dinners for two and options like lamb legs. We started off with a platter of oysters (tried each of the four kinds they offered) and an order of scallops from the medium category. The former was fresh and not at all briny as I feared. The scallops (all two of them — how’s that for “medium”?) were accompanied with totally delectable mushrooms. The steak we each ordered for our main came perfectly cooked a medium rare (which is a request I’ve often found ignored by chefs who think they know better than I) No complaints there, besides the slightly overseasoned fries. All other dishes aside, I’d go back for dessert alone. Of the chocolate cake and baklava we ordered, the second was definitely more impressive and memorable.
I ignore wine and cocktail lists because I can’t drink without getting constipated. (Too much info? Yeah, I know.) However, I can imagine the lounge filled with hip young things in better economic times. There’s a bar right by the DJ, improvisational dance space, and plush seats for public procreation, if that’s your thing. I imagine that if some puritanical Bostonian is feeling really frisky, they can even indulge in late night retail therapy. The store’s open until 9pm, no doubt in hopes that someone will be properly smashed by then and ready to hand over the plastic for local, house, and high-end labels which exemplify clean, contemporary styles and the New England aesthetic.
The Achilles Project is located across the bridge from South Station, too far from city center to stumble into on a bar crawl (which may explain why it was so empty on a Thursday). But it’s worth the trip to the Waterfront, if only because it’s the closest thing Boston has to “edgy”.
The Achilles Project
283 Summer Street
Boston, MA 02210
(617) 695-2257
