No pictures yet of our new place in Cambridge, but here I am, blogging from my very own balcony, and it is glorious. More than twice the space of the old place and with lots of cool features for cheaper rent. Also, since the move means that I can't take the train to work anymore, we finally bought a car, ending my 5 years of carless-ness.
Anyway, I used to tell everyone, 'hey, you should come visit me in Boston!' but then I would feel terribly disingenuous. I do want all of you guys to come visit me, but there wasn't really room in our old place for guests. And hotel rooms in Boston are outrageously expensive. So I kind of felt like I was telling people that 'hey, why don't you spend $250/night to come see me.' Which seems pretty jerk-y. But, in the new place, there's room for you, your spouse, and maybe even your progeny! So everyone should come visit. Well, maybe not right now, since we're going on vacation this weekend (new travel photos to blog!) and we haven't bought anything for guests to sleep on yet. But soon!
Monday, August 08, 2011
New Apartment
Monday, August 01, 2011
South End, Boston
After two years, we're moving out of the South End of Boston. We're not going far, just across the river to Cambridge. Even though the South End is expensive and gentrified, full of restaurants equal parts nice and douche-y, it's still a pretty and fun place. Also, it is super conveniently located (south of the river, Back Bay, downtown), and even though Boston is one of the few places in the US with a useful subway system, I hardly took the T and just walked everywhere.
Neighborhood things I'll miss:
SoWa market: A farmers' / food truck / arts & crafts / vintage & antiques market, Sundays in the summer, only a couple blocks from our apartment. We'd get kringle from the Danish Pastry Shop, salted caramel chocolate cupcakes from the Cupcakory, the best iced coffee from the actual bricks & mortar cafe on the site, fresh veggies, decorations for our apartment, and good baby shower presents. And, we'd wander around and point out all the really adorable dogs people have (a lot!).
Don Ricardo's Restaurant: Amid all the fancy-pants restaurants, this is a real neighborhood place. It's Peruvian (plus Brazillan and South American). Everything comes with this burning hot salsa that's so good that you want more even though you're in pain. Other notable items: empanadas (specifically the spinach and cheese ones which sound like they'll taste like Hot Pockets but are actually really great), paella that comes with a lobster tail & claw (for less than $20), and, the dish I couldn't stop ordering, whole fried pampano fish with plantains, salad, and a whole other plate with rice and beans ($15).
J.J. Foley's Cafe: An Irish bar and restaurant, this was our neighborhood bar. We went at least once a week. And the food is significantly better than average bar food.
The dog park: In a neighborhood with a lot of young people with money to burn, we saw a ton of adorable puppies all the time. Even better, the dog park is just one block from our old apartment.
Things I'll have to come back for:
Toro: I wrote about Toro the first time I visited. In short: it's fantastic. Prices have risen significantly, so it's not the steal it used to be. Now it costs about what you'd expect it would and more than you'd want to pay everyday, but it's still great.
Aquitaine: Sean wouldn't let us go to Aquitaine; he was sure it was 100% douche-y. But his parents came for a visit and I argued that we could live with douche-y on someone else's dime. There's no question that it's an expensive place, but it was excellent in every aspect. The interior and ambiance was classic and classy, not douche-y. The service was possibly the best service in a restaurant ever. And the food. The food. (It's French, by the way.) Everything was at minimum 'really good': the arctic char entree and the bread pudding were incredibly and unbelievable good, respectively.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Pufferfish Cake
For Sean's birthday, I bought this cake in Chinatown.
Isn't it awesome? I didn't even bother to ask what it tastes like. Even the box it came in is cool. 
We thought it'd be really funny if it turned out to be durian flavored, but it turned out to be something angel food cake-like. 
There was fruit inside (pineapple, grape, apple, and unidentified others), and the layer that looks like fruit in the photo turned out to mango flavored custard (or maybe more like jello). Yummy.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
My Gym Is Closing!
This post is 100% pure whine. My gym is closing at the end of the month -- just two weeks notice! And I'm very sad about the whole thing. What will I do when it's gone?! Reasons why my gym is awesome:
1.) Conveniently located between our apartment and the train station.
2.) Reasonably priced (including towel service and all the group classes).
3.) Sean and I get to be gym buddies every day.
4.) Nice facilities, always clean locker room, never really crowded, no sign-ups for cardio machines, no waiting for a shower. [These features are probably not unrelated to the reasons for their closing.]
5.) People working there are friendly (some even knew my name) and a relaxed (non-douche-y) atmosphere.
6.) Little things: the big bottles of shampoo, conditioner, and body wash in the shower stalls (and, yes, I used them -- I'm too lazy to tote my own product); hair dryers and lotion too; the translucent glass shower stall doors (curtains inevitably lead to someone ripping the curtain opening while you're inside showering); and probably a lot of things that I'm forgetting but will remember and shake my fist about when I'm working out somewhere else.
And now it I will probably have to migrate to the further away women-only gym and Sean will have to go back to the university gym. Sigh.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
I Made It to Work Today
It snowed a bunch yesterday and I never made it out of my apartment at all. But today, I thought I'd try to make the slog to work. Fortunately, I ordered a pair of waterproof boots the very morning after the last snow storm. They seem to work pretty good. 
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Best Food Day (in Boston) Ever
On Friday, we went to Men-Tei, a tiny hole-in-the-wall Japanese noodle and rice bowl shop near Newbury and Hereford. It was our first time, and it was awesome. I had fried pork chop noodles. It was exactly like the noodles you get in Taiwan -- fried pork goodness and chewy noodles for a good price ($9 in Boston, probably $3-4 in Taiwan).
For special occasions, my Mom makes a roasted duck stuffed with sticky rice dish. Since Sean and I are staying in Boston for the holidays this year, we decided that Sean would try to make it. But my Mom outright refused to tell us how -- she decided that deboning a duck, stuffing it, and sewing it up again was beyond our abilities. (She said she's show us how next year.) Anyway, we compromised and made the duck and sticky rice, separately. The sticky rice is made with sweet rice, onions, mushrooms, chestnuts, and a little ground pork. The key ingredient in the sticky rice, however, is duck fat collected from the roasting duck. For dessert, Sean made raspberry pie. It was a glorious meal: 
Monday, June 14, 2010
Gay Pride Parade 2010
A couple of decades ago, the neighborhood where I live -- the South End -- was considered a gay neighborhood. With gentrification, that identity has faded and now it's more like a 'gay lawyers who live in multi-million dollar houses' neighborhood. The gay pride parade (the 40th!) was held this Saturday, and our apartment faced out onto the very end of the staging area and very beginning of the parade route. 
On the whole, it was family friendly and surprisingly neighborhood-y. Unfortunately, the sporadic drizzle turned into steady rain by the midpoint of the parade and the crowd thinned out. But there was a nice crowd in front of my building (not even on the official parade route) at the start. 
Our corner was the staging area for all the motorcycle clubs. Unfortunately, I didn't get any really good picture of the bikes.
Of course, the mayor and the governor were there:
One of the biggest groups was actually a protest against Hyatt with signs saying "Anti-Worker, Anti-Gay." 
I think the first costume is a lobster, but I'm not sure what the second one is or represents:
There's something about this rainbow colored dumbbell; I think it's the awesome amateur-ness of it. And what is with that Chipotle Grill sponsored balloon? Is it supposed to be something more than an amorphous cylinder?
Monday, May 31, 2010
Eastern Standard
I went to Eastern Standard Saturday night. It is an American/French food restaurant located not far from Fenway Park. I had an appetizer of bone marrow and an entree of lobster risotto. The bone marrow, though good, was ginormous. Three full chunks of bone (one of which was significantly wider at the bottom) with 4 toast points. By the last one, I was just piling the marrow on, desperately trying to balance it. I think that if I had a regular slice of bread, I could have covered it in marrow 1 inch thick. I had no idea that you could get full on bone marrow. (I only made it maybe 1/2 way through the risotto and had to take the rest home. It tasted much better the next day when I wasn't just trying to gut it out.)
Today in Weather
It was hot and clear when I went to the gym this morning. When I got out, it was noticeably cooler. It is hazy in all directions. There is the smell of smoke too, but the haze is everywhere -- way too pervasive to be a local fire. Ash from Iceland? Smoke from fire somewhere? Crazy ideas. I convinced myself that it must be offshore fog rolling in, but checking the weather shows I was right the first time: wildfires in Canada. Unbelievable.
Tuesday, April 06, 2010
I Live in the US, But I Still Cannot Pronounce Anything Properly
Back in the day, I wrote this post about "English" words that people in Germany used but I didn't recognize. I also noted recently that I never pronounced the name of the city I lived in properly.
Well, I live in the US now, but one of the quirks of living in Boston, or maybe in Massachusetts generally or even in the East Coast generically, is that a lot of places have names that you think you know how to pronounce, but don't. I suppose it's carried over from the UK, so the city of Worcester, MA is pronounced "Wooster" (well more like wuhster). And Haverhill is pronounced HAY-vril, naturally. Even words that you're 100% sure you know how to say are pronounced differently. For example, Peabody, MA isn't pea-body as you might assume, but pea-buddy.
I live on Tremont Street. It took me a couple of weeks before I realized that it is not pronounced TREE-mont. Knowing that there was a different pronunciation, my first thought was that it must be TRAY-mont. But no, still wrong. It took me a couple of months, probably, to get it right, and now it's a little difficult to puzzle out how to write what I say. I'll go with treh-mont or maybe treh-munt, unless someone else has a better idea.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Boston Restaurant Week - Uni Sashimi Bar at Clio Restaurant
Sunday we went to Uni Sashimi Bar at Clio Restaurant. They're both projects of Ken Oringer -- who's responsible for Toro (our restaurant week winner so far). Clio is a French restaurant, and Uni is the sashimi bar in a little alcove of the restaurant. There were two tables and we sat at the bar (just 6 seats). It's the only place on our list that's not in the South End (it's in Back Bay) and is a fairly high end, upscale place.
First Course:
Poke with sweet onions, sesame, seaweek & pickled mung bean
Fluke sashimi with jalapeno vinagrette, blood orange, and Thai basil
Second Course:
Chirashi
The rice was cooked in plum wine and maybe some soy (it was red and sweet and maybe a little sour) and consisted of two kinds of rice, white and forbidden rice. On top was pickled daikon, pickled burdock root, fermented seaweed, pickled ginger, and one more thing I couldn't identify. Although I was worried about tiny, tiny portions at a place like this, the fish -- yellowtail, salmon, tuna -- was 9 pieces total.
Third Course:
Coconut tapioca with passionfruit, pineapple & guava sorbet
Japanese Yuzu Curd with coffee croquant & whole milk ice cream
Another winner. The fluke sashimi was awesome -- the jalapeno vinagrette was a nice touch. The chirashi was excellent (loved the rice). And while the yuzu curd was great, Sean managed to form some sort of emotional bond with the 5 spoonfuls of coconut tapioca and the 1 spoonful of guava sorbet. He was ready to order a trough full. As you might expect from a place like that, $33 of food wasn't exactly belly busting. You probably need to spend about twice that amount to get really full at a high end sushi place.
Other notes:
Outside of some fast-food sushi, this is the first time I've seen a restaurant with a non-Japanese sushi chef.
Sunday at 6:30pm is a much better time to go to dinner than a weekday at 8pm. No waiting. Excellent service.
They gave us a $20 gift card to use on a non-restaurant week return visit. Pretty cool. I suppose they're trying to drum up business. While the Uni side was fairly full, the Clio side (not participating in restaurant week) was entirely empty. And while both sides are expensive, they seem to offer some pretty cool weekday deals. I think we'll make it back (the Clio menu has some of the yummy-looking items that we saw on the chef's Iron Chef America episode).
[Updated 11:45 AM] And that's it for restaurant week. We had one more reservation for tonight. But a bad review and a bad report from someone we know, and we just canceled. I declare Toro our restaurant week winner.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Boston Restaurant Week - Sibling Rivalry
Sean and I have actually been to Sibling Rivalry before, and we went on Thursday with friends, so this report will probably be a little shorter, less thorough, than the others. The concept for Sibling Rivalry is that there are two chefs -- brothers -- and each prepares a dish based upon one ingredient. So there's two shellfish dish options, two lamb dish options, etc.
8pm is evidently a tough time for a reservation. We waited 25 minute for a table. And we didn't get out of there until 10:20pm, but it was a far superior experience than at the Butcher Shop: there was a lot more food, we spent a significantly longer amount of time actually eating, the seats were way more comfortable, and the bread came right away. And the basket of bread includes slices of corn bread (I love corn bread).
I had tuna and pork wontons, rack of lamb, and blueberry & apple crisp. The wontons were good, but really the best dumplings are always the ones you make yourself or the ones you get at a real dumpling place like Din Tai Fung. The dessert was fine. The lamb, however, was excellent. I was initially thinking that after all that meat at Toro and the Butcher Shop, I should get fish. That's loser thinking. After I was done with the lamb, I really wanted to pick it up and gnaw on the bones; they were so tender and yummy. And it came with some sort of mashed potato thing that was fluffy and delicious.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Boston Restaurant Week - The Butcher Shop
Wednesday night was the Butcher Shop. A wine bar / actual butcher shop, it's a tiny place with maybe 20 seats at tables and another 10 seats at the bar. A butcher block table is set up in the back where a few (maybe 10) people can stand and have a drink and a snack while waiting for a table. And against the back wall is a set of glass refrigerated cases where you can see the meat, sausages and sides available to take home. The place is supposedly a favorite of Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen.
Where Toro was down-to-earth and unpretentious, the Butcher Shop is the exact opposite. It's not just that it was d-bag central in there; a surprising number of people seemed to have no idea how to behave in public. (Seriously, random person. Are you really going to sit on the butcher block table that people are eating off of like you're in your kitchen at home? Seriously?) And the prices on the regular menu, while not astronomical -- and, yes, that's totally a scientific assessment ;) -- were fairly silly when you could see right in the refrigerated case how much less you'd pay if you took it home. And, then, 1.) you wouldn't be standing around for 20 minutes waiting for a table even though you have a reservation, and 2.) you wouldn't have to hang out with the kind of people who go to the Butcher Shop. For example, the duck hot dog was $16 on the menu (and it's just the hot dog with a bun and a few chips), but I could have bought the hot dog itself for $3. In terms of value, portions were not particular big either. A 20-something dollar entree of meat is just that -- sides are extra. Of course, really none of this (the people, the wait, the money, the portions) was unexpected to me. But what about the food?
This was their restaurant week menu:
Duck Consomme or
Endive Salad
Pork Shoulder or
Skirt Steak
Chocolate Mousse or
Lemon Curd
Since it was the two of use, we got everything on the special menu. The soup, the salad, and the desserts were all fine. The pork shoulder was quite good. The only really excellent thing was the skirt steak. Perfectly medium-rare. The jus was perfect, the crust was perfect (crusty but not at all burnt, so yummy), and finally the delicious center was perfect (juicy, tender, buttery). I didn't know skirt steak could taste like that.
So, not spectacular but quite good. Would I go back? I'm definitely never eating there again (although I'm still a little intrigued by the duck hot dogs). It was not worth the regular prices. Value is, of course, subjective. So what if I were X times richer than I am? Still no because there's still something I haven't commented on: the waiting and the service.
We had reservations at 8pm. When we arrived, the host says that they're not quite ready and puts us at the butcher's block to wait and for drinks. Later, he says that some guests are taking longer than expected and offers us seats at the bar -- which we take. We sit at around 8:20pm. Our appetizers arrive at 8:45pm. It took 45 minutes to get any food -- even bread. The bread, by the way, comes with some fancy honey that Sean quite liked. Our entrees arrive somewhere around 9:20pm. The dessert arrived at 9:45pm. We managed to get out of there at 10pm.
Now, one might think of a lot of reasons for such slow service: 1.) giant influx of people, 2.) not enough waitstaff, 3.) mean or lazy waitstaff. But none of these are what actually happened. As far as I can tell, the Butcher Shop is just completely inefficiently run -- disorganized and possibly incompetent. As I listed before, there's about 30 seats in the whole place (not 30 tables, 30 seats). To serve those 30 people, there was a bartender, 2 waiters, 1 host, and one other person whose exact job was unclear but also added up checks, took drink orders, etc. There was 1 service person for every 6 people in the restaurant. If you include the people who were waiting and got drinks or snacks, there's still 1 service person for every 8 people. You'd think that place that size should be able to get by with half the number of workers. And it wasn't that the people working were sitting around doing nothing -- they were constantly doing stuff and talking about how they can clear a table for new people. But somehow, in some way I cannot fathom, they were incapable of handling everything. Seats went open for 10 minutes or more because no one could get around to cleaning it up or seating new customers. People with reservations had to wait for a seat because 'guests were taking longer than expected' probably because those guests had to wait to be served. And, you might think that maybe the kitchen was the hold up, but most of the menu requires little more than pouring wine and slicing pate, so that's seems fairly improbable too. You would expect a lot of things at a place like the Butcher Shop: the people, the prices, the portions, and hopefully really good meat. But this ineffectualness in the service, the overall dining experience was shocking and completely baffling.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Boston Restaurant Week - Toro
Sunday was the beginning of Restaurant Week in Boston. Actually two weeks, participating restaurants offer prix fixe menus ($33.10 per person for dinners). We live in near a bunch of restaurants which we've never gone to for fear that they would be a big waste of money, so we made five reservations. Sunday night was Toro, a Spanish tapas place. (Toro has a famous chef owner, Ken Oringer. And, coincidentally, we saw his episode of Iron Chef America the day before.)
The restaurant is actually fairly small -- 55 seats -- and was not d-bag-y (as I feared). It's actually more lively and homey. And the service was great. More importantly, on to the food we ate:
Pinchos:
Corazon a la Plancha - grass-fed beef heart with romesco
Cabeza - pig-head terrine with carrots
Okay, let me just go ahead and spoil the ending for you: it was fantastic. Everything. Every little bit. And when we went home and looked at the regular menu prices, it was all fairly reasonable. We're going back (you would be extremely lucky to come with us). Anyway, the cabeza was basically a pate made from pig's head with little tiny shavings of extremely sweet carrots. The beef heart came sliced thin and piled on top of toast smeared with romesco sauce. It was like the best roast beef you ever had, the extremely smooth texture probably the only sign that it was heart.
Tapas:
Boquerones - white anchoives in vinegar and olive oil
I haven't really liked anchoives in the past; they're very oily and fishy. But even though nothing in this dish disguised those basic properties, they were somehow really great anyway. Also, that was some yummy olive oil.
Pulpos - octopus
So soft but not mushy.
Maiz Asado con Alioli y Queso Cotija. La Especialidad de la Casa - grilled corn with alioli, lime, espelette pepper and aged cheese
These just had chunks of butter coating it. You'd think that'd be gross and too rich. I was undeterred.
Asado de Huesos - roasted bone marrow with radish citrus salad and oxtail marmalade
Oh my. As Sean (his first time eating marrow) said: meat butter. Salty, flavorful and flavored, fat. It's awesome. I expect that someday soon, we'll pop in for a drink and this. The oxtail marmalade was really oxtail on toast -- I'm not sure where the 'marmalade' comes in.
Vientre de Cerdo - crispy pork belly, Burgundy snails, fava beans and smoked maple crumble
The very last thing I ate. It was great, but I wasn't that into the fava beans and maple crumble.
Dessert:
Churros con Chocolate - airy crisp fried pastry with chili infused chocolate
Best churros we'd ever had.
Okay, probably not a lot there for any vegetarians to work with. Sorry. To summarize, by far, the best tapas I've ever had. A few more random thoughts: Now I admit that I have a high tolerance for fatty/oily foods. I've eaten lardo. Usually after tapas, you feel greasy. Even though there was oil and fat and butter in everything, I didn't feel that way at all. And though I was worried there'd be tiny portions, we were both satisfactorily full after the meal.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Rain
naturally. There's a couple inches of water on tracks. How very
Miyazaki.
Tuesday, March 02, 2010
I Live in Boston, But I Don't Take the T
One of the nice things about Boston is the subway system, the "T." It means that Boston is one of the few places in the U.S. where one can get along without a car. In fact, Sean and I do not have a car. But since we moved to the South End, I've been on the T less than once a month. Partly this is because we live near the commuter rail station and I take commuter rail to get to work. The other thing is that we live in the most convenient location in Boston. I live in the neighborhood with the fancy restaurants. A 15 minute walk north puts me in the neighborhood with the fancy shopping. A few blocks up my street is Chinatown (with the giant Chinese grocery store). Keep on going and I'll pass downtown and hit the river (not a bad run on a nice day). I guess that helps make up for the 3 hour per day commute.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Boston Is Not a Hot Dog Kind of Town
When I lived in Germany, I never once ate or even thought about eating hot dogs -- even though I actually knew a place where I could get them. It just didn't seem right when I ate sausages (mm, bockwurst, so yummy, so hard to order correctly*) all the time. In the few months I've been back in the U.S., I've found that I've been thinking more and more about the meals I had at Sammy's when I was finishing up my thesis: hot dog, fries, milkshake (~$7). But, apparently, Boston is not a hot dog kind of town. Not a milkshake kind of town either. Admittedly I don't live in a greasy spoon kind of neighborhood, but there's a (at least) pizza joint on every corner (often burgers, but no milkshakes, no hot dogs). So I don't know where to get a hot dog -- let alone a Chicago dog. I don't even know where to find a good diner. Thinking about hot dogs and Sammy's makes me think about going to Salonica's and having breakfast. I miss that too.
* Bockwurst digression: Words like 'bockwurst' and 'Bonn' are not easy for an American to say correctly in German. Yes, that's right, I lived there for three years and never pronounced the name of the city I lived in correctly. When I tried to say 'Bonn' (more correctly, it should come out more like 'bun' than 'bon'), the person I was speaking to would say 'Bern? In Switzerland?' Ordering bockwurst was nearly impossible. For all but a handful of times, I was served a bratwurst. And I'd sigh. And then I'd eat the bratwurst because -- hello! -- it's bratwurst.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Train Hijinks
In college, I lived on campus. In grad school, I lived 6 blocks from my office. In Germany, I lived a 10 minute bike ride from work. Today, I live in Boston, MA and work in Providence, RI. I take an hour train ride each way and spend 3 hours per day commuting. The good news is that I do the reverse commute and the trains are never more than 1/2 full. The bad news is that they run fairly infrequently. And here something to ponder: The train starts at South Station. In Boston. It's the end of the line. I get on at Back Bay. It's the next stop, still in Boston, and not that hard to get to on the subway. Yet, the train arrives full at Back Bay, and most everyone on the train gets off. Can someone explain this to me?
Anyway, usually, the train is pretty reliable. Going home, I walk in the door at 7:08PM. But the past two weeks have been full of odd timings. Last Monday, there was an Amtrak train disabled on the tracks, and I got home one hour late. And the train has been noticebly late (more than 10 minutes) twice more since then. And suddenly, I've been synchronized with the neighbor across the hall. Leaving for work, I walk out the door at 8:18AM. In the past two weeks, I've opened the door to see my neighbor opening his door three times. The doors are exactly aligned, maybe 6 feet apart. It's pretty weird, especially since we're going to the same place (the train station), but aren't really inclined to talk to each other.
Speaking of being synchronized: Back during the many years that Sean and I were dating, we'd occasionally goes clothes shopping together. And Sean would say, 'Should I get this sweater in color X or color Y?' And I would say, 'I like color X.' And everything would be hunky-dory. But I should have been more forward-thinking. Now we live together and our schedules are such that a lot of the time Sean is heading out the door as I'm jumping in the shower. And every few weeks, I get home and I look at him and I look down at me, and he looks at me and looks down at himself, and, yes, we're matching. Not quite as embarrassing and getting to work and discovering that you're matching with your thesis advisor (yes, I've done that too) and now you need to go hide in your office all day. But pretty mortifying nonetheless.
Future blog posts: I'm thinking I should write a few about Boston. Are people interested in Boston?