liryon.net

About a month or so ago, on March 12, Chipotle finally opened a restaurant in the most brain dead obvious place in the entire city. This, more than a year after opening their first Boston restaurant in what amounts to the middle of no where. It was a Wednesday, and WND can’t go to a (non-local) chain, so we had a pre-dinner at Chipotle to check it out.

The Harvard location holds a lot of promise. Like Davis Square, and just about every where else in Boston there is stiff burrito competition. Of course, Chipotle tops them all, but they pulled out all the stops on the first night. They were ready to go with tons of food and enough people to keep everything on the line fresh, continuously, as people streamed by for hours. I have to say the freshness made a lot of difference; it was the best burrito I’ve had in quite some time. That will hopefully convince everyone who was there of Chipotle superiority.

I say hopefully because I don’t have to stand in line at the Harvard location — I’m going to still be going to Davis because its much closer to me most of the time. Davis, does have some problems, that the Harvard location would do well to solve. Davis lacks room, and they often have just one employee on the line, and at most two, even at peak times. Also, Davis lacks seating, it can seat about 34 people by my rough count, but only 16 of those are in chairs; the rest are stools. The Harvard location is much more equipped to handle lots of people. In fact we didn’t even have trouble finding a seat in the free-for-all. They also have a huge 8 person table, which is a good addition.

After pre-dinner we went to Lizzy’s Ice Cream, my choice. It was small, but kind of alright, sort of. It was better than Herrells, but just goto JP Licks, you’ll be happy you did.

This past week’s Wednesday Night Dinner was at Bartley’s Burger Cottage, a self proclaimed and somewhat accurately so, Harvard Landmark. As you can see from the larger version of the picture, they lay claim to having the best sweet potato fries and onion rings in the country, or at least Boston (it’s somewhat ambiguous). The burgers were, as claimed, scrumptious. Aaron got The George Bush Jr Burger, which was larger than a fist, but not quite as large as a head. They have a whole menu page of politically named burgers, which is quite up to date. I had the Condleeza Rice burger. I’m sorry, but the Obama burger looked awful (had mushrooms); the Hillary Clinton burger looked worse (had mushrooms and sour cream ewww!). The walls were covered with what looked like 50+ years of trickets and junk, like an overdone Applebees, but authentic.

The onion rings, which only Martin got, seemed over breaded and way too oily leading them to become inedible beyond a certain depth. The sweet potato fires tasted exactly like sweet potatoes, and not at all like fires, though, they did appear as fries. That is not exactly what I am looking for in a sweet potato fry, but I can see why they might be considered good. We postured that they would be better with a more traditional sweet potato topping, such as butter and brown sugar, than ketchup. This lead to a rather lengthy discussion of all sorts of food combination, mostly centered around burgers. Notes were even taken, but I don’t have them, lucky for you. The highlight, I think, was severing a bugger, like the huge The George Bush Jr in a bread bowl, so as to reduce mess and maintain taste and size.

The conversation continued to Herrell’s Ice Cream, which has the novelty of being located in a former bank building, and allowing you to eat in the now aquarium themed vault. Herrell’s runs a deal (at least in the winter) that for every ice cream you buy, you get a “Herrell Dollar,” which is as good as cash there. They proceeded to complain, however, when we took the obvious tactic of spending the one “Herrell Dollar” the group had, to get another for the next person to use. If you are going to offer such a deal with such a blatantly obvious optimal strategy, you can not complain when the strategy is used. The ice cream, which had limited flavors to choose from, was the worst I’ve had from an actual ice cream shop in some time, certainly since 2005. I will not bother to go back, despite the rest of the group’s fandom of Herrell’s.

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.

Pescatore Seafood is a tiny new place in Ball Square. It specializes in Italian Seafood, which probably the most common specialization in the Boston area, ensuring that there is plenty of competition to go around. The big draw here seems to be that the most expensive thing on the menu is ~$15; although, the average bill came out to ~$21, higher than I expected. The place seats about 2.5 people in the front, but there is unmarked back door with seating for maybe 18 people, of which our group constituted 11. I got, much to the not surprise of those who know me, some sort of seafood pasta. It wasn’t up to the quality in the North End, but it sure beat Out of the Blue and Basta Pasta in my book. There were some complains over some squash ravioli, and the fisherman’s platter was piled about 5 inches high with fired sea creatures, which turned out be a little much, but that is hardly a complaint. If this place gets popular, it won’t be worth the huge line that will result due to its size, but its certainly better than the Camberville alternatives I’ve tired.