This week Paul picked Island Hopper, which is, what I would call, some kind of Asian Fusion Restaurant. Its on Mass. Ave. and Newbury St. I had the Mango Chicken, which was served in mango halves, and was yummy. If anything there just wasn’t enough of it. But, apparently, the item to get was Beef Randang, 3 people ordered it and they all liked it, as far as I could tell. Topics of conversation included numerical methods and creative methods for asking girls out on dates as practiced in small town Idaho, near where Napoleon Dynamite was filmed; we had an expert on hand.
After dinner we went to JP Licks, which is a yummy local ice cream place. I always go with the Cake Batter flavor, once I tired to get Oreo Cake Batter, but I screwed up my order and just got Oreo, so now I keep it simple. While eating we noticed this sign for their ice cream cakes, which left us with the intriguing question, “When, exactly, are Oreos in season?” Any ideas?
This week Caroline picked Basta Pasta for Wednesday Night Dinner. It is this tiny Italian place near central square specializing in lots of pasta for not much money. I got there early, as I am prone to do so I walked down to the river and took in the sights. It was a little hard to find, as it is not nearly as well marked underneath that overhanging awning as it is on the pictured side. We had 12 people this time, which is possibly the most since I’ve been with the group. That left exactly 8 seats remaining in the place. I got the Meatballs Pomodoro because home made meatballs sounded good; as it turns out, they weren’t so good, but the pasta was excellent. Everyone seemed to agree about the pasta. And there definitely was enough (Basta) pasta.
There was a bit of drama between a foreign friend of Jed’s and some locals occupying 4 of those seats. This was the kind of place where you stand in line, order, and then wait for your food’s name to be called out by a difficult to understand Italian. I’m not sure what the term is for that kind of restaurant, other than difficult. It seems that Jed’s friend and one of the locals order the same thing, Chicken Cacciatore (if memory serves), and the food did not come out in the same order in which the orders were placed, which is confusing enough. Jed’s friend ended up with what the local thought was his food. However, it took the local about 25 minutes to notice, well, maybe not to notice but to come over and yell at our poor friend. I, at the time, was clueless, and his yelling didn’t clue me in, and I speak English, so I don’t think the local was satisfied with the quite huh, he got, but he went away and continued eating the food he had received.
The last word on this place, and last week’s Italian place is that if you want really good Italian food you should goto the North End, even if it is more expensive.
I picked Out of the Blue for this weeks Wednesday night dinner. This was the first time that I picked a place. Out of the Blue is a little Italian Seafood place in Davis Square. I got pasta and shrimp in a marinara sauce, which is one of my favorite dishes anywhere. It was good, the sauce was really rich and it dominated the flavor. I’m not sure that the place would stack up well against other Italian seafood options in Boston.
Last week we went to Jed’s pick Taqueria La Mexicana in Union Square. I had intended to walk, but I got caught up playing Wii tennis and was late when I left, so I drove. I didn’t take a picture of this place and I didn’t blog about it last week because, well, it is forgettable. What is not forgettable is that they are expanding into the storefront next door and getting a liquor license, which the owner was very excited to tell us many times. The food was the most bland “authentic” Mexican I’ve ever tasted. I got a burrow, which is just a burrito, and I think both Chipotle and Anna’s have better burritos. This place was similar in style, order in line, and such to those places, but did have a much larger menu.
And so were hundred of other loyal xkcd fans from all over the world. There was a guy from Russia, and from The United Kingdom. My friend and board gaming buddy, Post, hosted a group of his friends from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, and even my college and robotics buddy Josh drove up from Jersey to attend. Oh, and collect on one of his two free meals because the Red Sox came up short against the Yankees. At least the Sox have locked a playoff spot. Ok back on topic.
There were a lot of hot girls[1, 2] [3, 4, 5] [6] there, hot nerdy, possibly lesbian girls. Well the last part is wishful, but I did read on the comment white boards that “The Dream Girl went home with a Wellesley Woman.” I mean, maybe not a lot compared to the general population, but compared to the expected audience, wow. Also of interest is how little photographic evidence of this there is, its like there was something more exciting that hot girls there ;-).
I didn’t get anything signed, I didn’t bring anything to get signed, and random bits of signed paper, well those seem lame, but I did stand in mob (thats kind of like line) to get Cory Doctorow’s blog signed.
Afterwards Josh, Post, his friends, me, and some random other people, including the guy from the UK went and had dinner downtown at Quincy Market. This was my first time eating there. I got some New England Clam Chowder, which was not as good as it should have been in the touristy part of town. The guy from the UK, Alex, was interviewed, and had his musings included in this article on the event. I was also interviewed, the reporter girl was riding in the subway car with us down to dinner, at least as far as Harvard Square. My contribution was a musing on “where are we going to do this next year!”
I guess that is it for now, nothing is sparking any stories. I did take some video’s while I was there, which went a long way towards filling up my 1GB SD card. The best of them are up on you tube now, and embedded below:
Randall Munroe Enters and the Dream Girl Countdown
Sorry, this one is a bit sloppy with the camera work.
Xkcd Meetup Conversation Game
Randall Munroe on being a Roboticist
This one follows the previous one by maybe 10 seconds.
Randall Munroe on Early Advertising for Xkcd
Later on, the crowd has gone down a lot so now you can hear him talk about interesting stuff
So, I’m a little late here, I’ve been busy, and then lazy. Last Thursday was my room mate Srirams’ birthday and one of his friends organized a celebration dinner at Addis Red Sea, an Ethiopian restaurant, in Cambridge. This was the second time I’ve been to an Ethiopian restaurant. The first was with Paul and his friend Kate at OSU. North of the OSU campus on High St. was a hole slew of ethnic restaurants and the Ethiopian one is the only one I ever went too, and that only happened because Paul and I let Kate pick the place. Given recent love affair with Indian food I should totally have tired more of them. Anyways, this experience taught me that Ethiopian food a very communal thing. Everyone eats from the same central dish, and spongy bread is used as both plate an utensils. Addis was much the same, but I was surprised to see a whopping $7 “plate” charge for sharing an entree. Mind you, there are not plates, just spongy bread. I know its Cambridge, but to me it just flew in the face of what little I know of Ethiopian dinning. The service wasn’t very good, it took over an hour for us to get our appetizers, and then another half hour for the main course. Granted, there were maybe 11 or 12 of us, and each of us ordered an entree (to avoid the plate charge and increase variety), but that is a long time. The food was pretty good, but not worth that kind of wait.
The long dinner cut into playing with Srirams’ new toy afterwards. His new toy is a Nintendo Wii. He managed to find a split second when Amazon.com had them in stock and swooped on right up with free Amazon Prime shipping that got it to our house in < 24 hours. He only has the games Wii Sports and Wii Play for now, but everyone in the house is eying new games to get. I am eying Mario Cart Double Dash, which is a game cube game, but the wii will play it if you have all the old game cube controllers and memory cards to use (which I don't). I've been trying to locate a not outrageously expensive way to get this stuff, the hardest part being finding 4 of the wireless controllers. Luckily, I think we'll be satisfied with Wii Sports for a while. Everyone loves tennis, but I alone seem to be enjoying baseball.
This weeks’ Wednesday Night Dinner was at the Elephant and Castle pub (whats with the craptastic flash websites these places have) in the Financial District. This time I transcribed the address correctly, and stared at a map long enough to get my photographic memory for maps accustomed to the area. I’ve never actually been to the Financial district before. Not 20 steps above ground coming out of Government Center station a couple in an SUV of some kind asked me for directions. I am usually quite happy to provide directions, and I take some pride on being able to provide good, correct ones, but I had just not 1 min before come above ground out of a new subway station for the first time. I hadn’t yet figured out where I was so I was no help to them. It turns out that I was right next to this pipe that had exploded and launched asbestos into the air earlier in the day. I didn’t know that at the time, just saw it today on the web. It certainly explains why there were so many news crews at what looked to be a standard pipe repair job site.
The restaurant was large, much larger than our usual hole in the wall places. It was picked by an actual Englishman in our group, who docked it a fair number of points for not being as authentic as it’s made out to be. Most importantly the flat screen tv with the red sox game on it was highly unauthentic for an English pub in his opinion. I was apparently the only one watching the game though (there goes the theory that I’m an authentic Englishman), because when Ortiz hit a 3 run homer in the 3rd I was the only one who clapped, boy did I look silly. Anyways, the food was good, I got steak tips, and my portions seems kind of on the small side, but everyone else’s portions looked alright. Other than the fact that I am writing home about it, I wouldn’t say its anything to write home about.
So, to quench my thirst and my thirst for exploring Boston area restaurants, I joined a little dinner group a while back. The group mostly consists of Jed’s MIT friends, their friends, and other random people who are about as connected to the hub of the group as I am (not very). We meet on Wednesdays and never goto the same place twice. I’ve gone to 3 places with them, and I only write about it now because I finally remembered to take a picture of the place. Which I decided was a requirement after using an online photo for my dinner in the north end post. This group tends to stick to Cambridge, especially in the winter I hear, since who wants to walk around in the cold unnecessarily.
Last night we went to a Thai place, thats supposed to be quite good, Dokbau, in Brookline. I had this mango fried rice with chicken, possibly not in the mainstream of traditional Thai food, but it was excellent; lots of big chunks of mango, yum. The place is pretty close to where my parents will be staying when they come visit in October, so its on this possible list of places to take them, which needs lots more filling in. But its not as close as I thought it was. Due to their awful flash site complete with annoying whooshing sounds ( I only link so that Google will pick up that comment ), I transcribed the address as 144 Harvard St, which if you check the picture, is not the address. So that was fun, 144 Harvard St. is some sort of nail salon; luckily, 4 blocks isn’t that far off, and Google on the phone came to the rescue yet again.
Chris, of liquidorange founding member fame, and Elsa, also of liquidorange fame are now in Boston. We went out for dinner in the North End to Antico Forno tonight. It was good to see them, and well to go explore a new restaurant. We split two pizzas which, while yummy, were strangely not filling.
I was also formally introduced to Mike’s Pastries and cannolies. I had a yellow cream one, it was really good, although I sadly was unable to consume all the scrumptious cream before it got all over the wax paper and there was no more shell remaining. It was good, but I can’t recall if that is the place Erik recommended or if thats the place everyone else recommends and he recommend some other place. All I remember is that he recommended a place other than the one everyone recommends. It was a really excellent ~65 deg. F. night in the city, its July, my birth month, and possibly the best weather I’ve ever experienced during it so it was great to have something to do to take advantage.
This week Paul picked Island Hopper, which is, what I would call, some kind of Asian Fusion Restaurant. Its on Mass. Ave. and Newbury St. I had the Mango Chicken, which was served in mango halves, and was yummy. If anything there just wasn’t enough of it. But, apparently, the item to get was Beef Randang, 3 people ordered it and they all liked it, as far as I could tell. Topics of conversation included numerical methods and creative methods for asking girls out on dates as practiced in small town Idaho, near where Napoleon Dynamite was filmed; we had an expert on hand.
