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Catching up from last week, the first WND (Wednesday Night Dinner) of 2008 was at Cafe Kiraz, a sandwich and pizza shop sort of in the middle of East Cambridge. I had been there before, and had a good sandwich so this time I ordered a calzone, a Hawaiian large one. It was awful! There was way too much cheese, the ham and pineapple were substandard at best. The crust was strange, not your traditionally pizza bread. I had ordered a large so that I’d have leftovers, which I managed to eat about half of over the next few days, boy was that a mistake. Some of the other guys got small buffalo chicken calzones, which they liked better than I liked mine. Aaron got a sandwich, the safe play, which he said was good. So go there, get a sandwich and you should be set.

Aaron also had some great stories to tell, the best of which was about how his neighbors threw a new years eve party and burned their house down! Apparently the kid, who lives with his grandmother often has parties to which the police are called. This time the grandmother was out of town, and someone at the party managed to start a fire in the garage, which had two cars in it. They quickly exploded and the fire spread. It didn’t appear that anyone was hurt; all of the party goes managed to leave before the firemen arrived. At one point half of the house was engulfed and the lights were on and everything seemed calm in the other half, which I think would have been a strange dichotomy to see. On one hand, I’m glad no one near me’s house got burnt down, but it does make my new years eve party seem just a bit more tame.

I’ve had a pretty busy holiday, and unfortunately I never got around to that last Wednesday night dinner post. We went to a new Italian place I picked in Davis Square; I was particularly proud of the invitation:

Twas the last Wednesday Night Dinner before Christmas and all through the city the dinners were chanting, “lets go someplace that’s not shitty!” When what to their wondering eyes should appear but an invitation to Alfresco…. my dear.

The menu was hung on teh interweb with care, In hopes that they all soon would be there. The dinners were rushing (to make it by ~7:30) in their Keds, while visions of yelp reviews danced in their heads.

He whistled and shouted and called them by name, “now, tell me if you can make it by 2 o’clock.” He spoke not a word but when straight to his work, providing directions from Davis. Just head down highland two blocks.

I had scallops in pasta (how not surprising), and wow the scallops were awful and dry, but the pasta sauce was yummy, and everyone else liked their meal. Its close to home, is always empty, and good enough that I may go there again.

India Quality was true to its name, and its sign, it did indeed have “excellent north India cuisine.” The service was also quite good, I came in after pacing about in the cold still waiting for my compatriots to arrive, and they immediately took care of me despite my not knowing even how many of us there would be. It turns out, only three of the many many people in the group could come. It is, of course, finals week, so that had a significant affect on attendance.

I have this problem, where by I am always early or at least on time to things. I check how long it should take to get there adjust a bit for unknowns, variability, and errands intend to run and set out. Of course, I always get there way too early. This time I got there at ~7:10 for a 7:30 dinner. This is not a problem specific to Wednesday Night Dinner, and as such has no bearing when others arrive. I do specifically remember one time where being way too early went a long way to impress a landlord and may have helped me cut a deal, but beyond that I can’t say as being early so often does me much good. My usual delay tactic is to walk aimlessly up and down the street. This time it was interesting because I had never ventured towards town from Kenmore square, and I had my camera with which to amuse myself, so I did:

They are not particularly stunning pictures, there were other good city skyline shots, which I always like to take, but always turn out badly at night. I swear Boston looks like a jewel on every clear night as I drive home, but the camera just can’t capture night scenes as well as I would like. Most of the best of those shots were marred by the elevated highway, so I didn’t even waste flash disk space on them.

I met with some of the Wednesday night dinner crowd at Takemura, before skipping out on the restaurant for the night which was Herrell’s Ice Cream. You see, the group went to Takemura, a sushi and other Japanese fair restaurant in the basement of a building near Harvard Square, on April 4th 2006; so, clearly, that is not the restaurant for tonight. If it were, that would mean we went to the same place twice. The pre-Wednesday-night-dinner snack I had was pretty good, just some steak tips in a yummy teriyaki sauce with rice, which is exactly what I had in mind last night when I voted for it over some pizza/sub place. But that place got a lot of support, so we’re going there next week.

On another note, you know its Christmas time when you can’t walk within a hundred meters of a super market (@ porter square on the way to the T) without thinking for a moment that you are at a train crossing due to the incessant bell ringing of the salvation army.