Mr. Childers is the restaurant and food reviewer for the Apastani Times. The following material is from his column dated February 29, 1995. All material excerpted here is copyright by the Apastani Times and is reprinted by permission.

Recently yours truly checked into the old Beantown and dined at Boston’s hautest of haut cuisine, the Cafe Burgerpest. Simply scrumptious, let me tell you. The Cafe Burgerpest confirms everything you have ever heard about Boston’s good food.

First let me say a word about the particularly excellent service. Many restaurants are in a boorish rush to serve you. Not so at the Cafe Burgerpest. Most posh restaurants have a rather snooty character who won’t let you sit down where you please but instead very officiously makes you stand in line and then sits you where he wants you to sit. It wasn’t like that at all in the Cafe Burgerpest. We wandered in, picked out the place at the counter whre we wanted to sit, and sat down. Many restaurants will have someone hovering over you trying to take your order right away. At the Cafe Burgerpest there is a nice leisurely two hour wait which you can devote to scintillating conversation before someone bothers you about ordering. The only flaw in the service was a slight overeagerness which led to our counterspace being wiped while our food was still in front of us.

Excellent service means nothing unless the food is first rate and the food at the Cafe Burgerpest is truly distinguished. No other word than distinguished will do.

We began with clear rock soup, a delicacy not readily found. It was, as a good rock soup should be, thin but tasteless. Next came the salad. This was a Cafe Burgerpest specialty, organically grown wilted lettuce with rancid mayonaise. The fact that the salad was organically grown was attested to by the delicate specks of night soil still adhering to the lettuce.

Next came the wine. This was an apple cider Sangria. It was Tuesday’s vintage. The wine steward explained that Wednesday’s vintage was still too young. (We were dining on Thursday.) He was certainly right – Wednesday’s vintage would have been too young.

Then came the main entree, Roast Hogs Nose fillets individually wrapped in sour dough pastry shells. This is a dish that you will seldom see in even the finest of restaurants. Despite its unusual nature it was everything that one might expect it to be. In praising the main dish, one should not neglect the vegetables. There was the standard dish, gooey mashed potatoes with cigarette butt gravy. The distinguishing touch here is that the cigarette butts were aged – a touch overlooked in most restaurants. Another delicacy were the radishes stuffed with fish paste, a delicacy which cannot be found in many four star restaurants.

Then came desert and coffee. One of the many points of class was the use of fresh dishwater in the coffee, a point skimped on by many restaurants which let their dishwater get stale. It is my feeling that the house specialty, turnip strudel, is the most fitting cap for the meal. However those wish to finish off with something light will find a wide selection of hard cheese, moldy fruit, and sanforized cotton candy to choose from.