Boston Restaurant and Food Blog » Allston

My Post-Harvard Life, Part 1

Lingbo Li — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 08:06:59 +0000

Dear Internet,

WTF. I owe you an apology for never posting – or maybe you’re thankful I haven’t besmirched your walls with more image-laden food posts. (Then again, 4Chan and Space Ghetto really have me beat in the besmirching department. I’m not linking to them for a reason.)

My college roommate Felice, on Space Ghetto: “Don’t look! It’s a dead woman… in a bathtub… [redacted]”

Me, covering my eyes in genuine terror: “Oh my god! Tell me when there’s a picture of a kitten.”

What has happened in the past… oh, 6 months?

WIth the inimitable Quincy House masters, Deb and Lee. Thank you for the incredible support and being totally candid about life/the universe/42/evil people.

For one, I’m now a “real person.”

My last semester of college was a blur. I took 3 computer science classes and ran a full-time freelance web design business. Mostly to test the theory I’d be able to support myself without a real job. (Verdict: Can definitely afford my sub-$500 rent on my Allston sublet. Rock on, Craigslist.)

A week of rabble-rousing, two days of graduation ceremonies, one 6 a.m. wakeup call, and one red enveloped diploma later, I am a Harvard grad. I have a degree in Social Anthropology, and it’s actually kind of useful as a designer and business person. Eat it, doubtful Asian parents! (Not my own, they didn’t care what I majored in.)

Dat's right. Hot dog fried rice.

So now I’m subletting in Allston, cooking Thai food in the sticky, poorly-ventilated kitchen, reskinning a little corner of the Internet for mostly startup clientele, as well as working on a website concept with some friends. Who knows what will happen at the end of the summer, but I have a nice setup for now.

I drink bubble tea everyday and cook Pad Thai for my friends. We don’t have a living room, so they have to eat sitting on my bed and drink out of foam cups.

One of my two pairs of heels (~$20 from Forever 21), an American Apparel lace print dress worn under a skirt with zip back from China.

I only brought along 5 pairs of shoes, 2 pairs of jeans, 5-7 shirts, and a few dresses. I don’t have a hair dryer. I clip my nails with my Swiss Army Knife scissors, a graduation present. I clean floors, dishes, and toilets; it’s great. My only luxury: borrowing $300 Bose sound-canceling headphones from my Belgian friend… indefinitely.

Coco the Rat ISN'T SHE CUTE!

My roommates are also eminently likable, another Craigslist victory – Chinese nationals heading into consulting gigs who are charmed by the pet rat in my room (I am pet sitting Felice’s white rat Coco Chanel) and who blankly ignore my attempts to use Mandarin vocabulary. When I break out coconut milk or tamarind pulp to cook, they are fascinated – as I’ve brought home a chimp speaking in a particularly idiomatic Queens accent.

Sometimes there are particularly unfortunate translation problems.

Anna (name changed): Do you have any uh, I don’t know how to say this… wei jing?
Me: Pads? Don’t have any. I do have tampons.
Anna: What?
Me: I have tampons, do you want one?
Anna: What?
Me: Are you talking about your period?
Anna: What?
Me: You know, li jia [Chinese for period].
Anna: What?
Me: [Finally dawning on me] OH. YOU MEAN MSG.
Anna: What?
Me: [Grabbing a jar of Ajinimoto MSG off the shelf] Here. MSG.
Anna: Ahh, yes. What do you call this in English?
Me: Uh, monosodium glutamate…

I’m glad she doesn’t understand everything, so I can get away with pretending I didn’t embarrass myself.

Despite my spare closet, I still manage to put together some outfits from what I had on hand for a graduation photoshoot (taken by my friend Sam and his trusty Nikon):

SWINGS! I hurt my hands on them in elementary school... today, no improvement.

One of those well-timed hair-adjusting moments.

"Ok, done weaving my hair into the flower bush. Time to pretend I'm in a perfume ad." ...

... OR THAT I'M COCO THE RAT. (Body con dress from Bebe)

While I was taking some of these photos on Widener steps,an Asian tourist kept very obviously circling around Sam and me. Gotta love them and their urine-soaked John Harvard's foot touching ways.

Something I was supposed to have done more of in college.

Side note: I’m in love with the Urban Renewals thrift store in Allston. I got a cute yellow Abercrombie skirt (wool and cashmere blend, with a silk lining) for $2! $2!!! I spent $4.76 buying a drink from Starbucks! That’s like, two skirts and a pair of sunglasses! Unreal.

So to take us back to the food topic of this blog:

I had a really nice dinner recently, sponsored for media, at the newly opened Nubar in the Sheraton Commander (Harvard Square). Outside of the swordfish being a bit bland, the other dishes were great: creamy, rich polenta topped with spinach and fried egg, its yellow yolk oozing; lobster arancini with morels, arriving as a softball-sized vehicle of joy. Arancini is one of my favorite dishes (rice! fried! with cheese! you can’t go wrong).

Polenta and FRIED EGG.

I think the polenta is a stiff contender for favorite topped-with-fried-egg-appetizer in Harvard Square. The former title holder being Russell House Tavern’s crispy poached egg on brioche. Nubar’s appetizer is closer to entree-sized, and sufficiently heavy-handed with the fat content in the polenta that it renders any prior distaste for polenta superfluous.

Rock on, appetizers. Just don’t confuse the MSG with tampons… that would be bad.

Who moved my vegan cheese? – Peace o’ Pie in Allston

Lingbo Li — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 05:59:33 +0000

In my free time, I like to club cows and steal milk meant for adorable, doe-eyed little calves from their udders.

No. Not true. But I do eat real cheese. I have no qualms about dead animals and animal products. But I did, however, eat at THREE vegan places last weekend, with no morals attached. I’ll talk about one now.

So how is vegan pizza at relatively newly opened Peace o’ Pie in Allston? Suprisingly awesome, that’s what it’s like. It’s right next door to vegan powerhouse Grasshopper (which I also ate at) and it’s a small, brightly lit and cheery spot that has a sign declaring, “Please do not consume non-vegan food in here,” or something like that. I mean, is it really that offensive if I bring in a latte? Ummm. Ok.

The key here, kids, is that the crust must really hold the entire operation. Vegan cheese, no matter how artfully made, will never even begin to approximate the salty, gooey, stringy pleasures of the real thing. (I’d say this slice could use some more salt to compensate for the relative tastelessness of fake cheese.) Peace o’Pie, in this respect, wins. Their crust is on the thicker side, a good amount of pleasant chew and crunch in the crust, and has a rich, organically-made flavor all its own. I’d say it could be a little thinner and have a bit of extra sauce, to add some moistness to what’s a drier pie with the fake cheese and all, but very good overall.

Their cupcake was also a surprising win, made moist with pumpkin puree and Earth Balance vegan butter spread. The crumbs were all melding into each other in the most fabulous way, with a wisely small measure of frosting since the cake batter was so rich. Who knew that vegan baking could be better than the kind that exploits cows? My friend happily inhaled two.

Also pretty funky: instead of parmesean cheese, you get a shaker with walnut crumbs and nutritional yeast. It tastes terrible on its own, but lends a bit of extra flavor that helps spice up the (relatively inoffensive but unremarkable) cheese.

So fresh it’s wriggling: Sushi at Fish Market in Allston

Lingbo Li — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 18:26:05 +0000

I found Fish Market on Yelp as a budget-priced option for sushi in Allston, and it didn’t disappoint. Prices are very reasonable – $3.75-6 for standard maki and $7.50-15 for “special” maki. The interior is cutesily modern: lime green chairs and light wood, with a merely 5 tables or so plus a sushi bar. Since I was surrounded by Asian staff, I suddenly wanted to burst out in my restaurant Chinese… but here, they all speak English.

The real standout of the night was the baked spicy scallop maki ($8). Oh. My. God. See bottom right – the topping is still-warm scallop, crabstick, and scallop with spicy mayo, complementing the super fresh, creamy avocado roll underneath. If you like your sushi occasionally uber-creamy and decadent, this is the roll for you.

I had dinner with a friend, now a consultant for Oliver Wyman, and his roommate, a professional poker player. Really. The poker player was planning a jaunt out to Vegas at some point and mused about a game in London that required a $20,000 buy in. He also did an admirable job of explaining how to count cards in blackjack: basically, as the game wears on, the deck is rated on a 1-12 scale as light (mostly low cards) or heavy (mostly high cards). Then bets can be made accordingly, although it’s still not a certain win. “It’s not worth it,” he concluded, with the wins from poker far better. He also knew a 16 year old also played the poker circuit, making and losing hundreds of thousands.

It seems like quite the lifestyle: “I’d drop $200 on dinner everyday,” he admitted, also throwing cash at bottle service in clubs. (Club girls were trashy, suprise!) He called the yellowtail out on being sliced too thickly:

“What’s the most you’ve ever earned in a single night?” I asked him.

“About $70,000,” he said.

I suddenly wanted to learn how to play poker.

“Like a barnyard in your mouth”: JoJo Taipei in Allston

Lingbo Li — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 18:50:32 +0000

It’s funny how your original goal (to introduce Dan to Chinese shaved ice) can morph into something utterly unrecognizable. In an epic rock-paper-scissors battle, it was decided that the spot would be JoJo Taipei in Allston. And when I saw pig intestines on the menu, how could I resist?

Actually, pig intestine showed up in 2 of the appetizers and 3-4 of the entrees. There was pig intestine in “fire casserole” (unclear), pig intestine in you noodles, pig intestine fried, pig instead steamed. It was a heaven of porcine entrails.

But that left many more options, since it would be hard to make a meal entirely of intestine. The waitress dropped off our complimentary roasted peanuts and pickled cabbages (delicious) and I did the ordering in Chinese. She seemed determined to speak Chinese, actually – usually waitresses pick up that my language skills are a little rusty, and switch over to English, but Dan only got a few quick admonitions to use his spoon and I did the ordering.

“We’re not very hungry,” I explained, requesting some suggestions.

“Ok, I’ll bring over stinky tofu and ‘xiao long bao’ (soup dumplings) then,” she replied immediately, already writing down our order. I was relieved to not have to make any decisions.

My camera crapped out after one picture, so dear blog reader, you will be treated to a far fancier camera this post.

Stinky Tofu

Stinky tofu arrived first. As soon as she set it down, the eponymous stink immediately hit you – like a breeze had blown over a manure pile. The dish itself was pretty disappointing – dry, with a the texture of a delicate sponge, and flavoring came only from a thin chili sauce that refused to cling to the fried surface of the tofu. Dan took one bite and made a face. “Like a barnyard in your mouth,” he said. I found that subsequent pieces didn’t have the same effect. You get used to the smell very fast.

Pig Intestine

Here is the pig intestine, with a nice peanutty dipping sauce and stuffed with chives. It reminded me a lot of the meat found on pig’s feet, with the same chewy, gelatinous quality.

Xiao Long Bao - soup dumpling

Our waitress brought his over, along with soup soons. I was confused on eating technique and just popped the whole thing in my mouth and struggled not to let a boiling mouthful of soup and pork overcome my physical capacities. Definitely something you have to eat hot. The skin of these buns are unleavened, so they have a thinner, translucent quality.

Bao Bing - Shaved ice with toppings

Finally, dessert time. It said to choose 3 toppings, but the waitress just smiled and said she’d put everything on a large shaved ice for us. It arrived on an enormous platter, every bit as bizarrely and richly satisfying as I remember – kidney beans, mung beans, red beans, tapioca pearls, condensed milk, some kind of sweet syrup, soft, mealy peanuts, all haphazardly lobbed onto a fluffy, finely grated bed of ice.

A worthy finale to an adventurous meal.

Tapioca pearls, peanuts, other kinds of goodness