Harvard Square
My Post-Harvard Life, Part 1
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.
Should Cafes Ask Customers to Leave?
My favorite cafe asked me to leave last week. For the second time.
I’ll tell you why I feel sad: when I first found Crema Cafe two years ago, I fell in love. I spent so much time there, my sweaters absorbed its scent, an inexorable melange of lattes, carbs, and indie-pop Pandora playlists. The owners described it as a place between home and work; I took that quite literally. I proudly told my friends I was considering moving in.
Over the past two years, I’ve spent so many happy hours in that cafe. I love bringing my laptop to do work on the upstairs level. I’ve forcibly dragged friends there and bought them my favorites, just so they could be converted. I’ve blogged about them, plugged them on Serious Eats, posted photos to various food sites. When I signed up for Mint.com, I budgeted a very liberal portion for “coffee.”
If you ask me for restaurant recommendations, you’ll likely hear raves about their turkey-avocado-jicama-slaw sandwich or their baked-fresh-from-scratch pastries.
So I disappointed when I was asked to leave during a busy Saturday afternoon to make room for other customers. I’d been there for a little over 2 hours with my laptop, and had planned on taking a seat closer to a wall outlet when one of the owners stepped in. (I had polished off a medium coffee and a chicken sandwich.) He had promised that table to another customer; since I had headphones on, I hadn’t seen the line forming behind me.
He was apologetic. As I was leaving, he apologized again. And this was the second time – a month before, a different owner had asked me to leave, but relented when I bought another sandwich. I’ve generally tried to share my table or buy another pastry during marathon study sessions, but I know I’ve overstayed my welcome in the past.
And I understand why they’re taking a more aggressive tack. Mostly. They charge reasonable prices for freshly made food. They have high labor costs and rent; they depend on table turnover and volume to pay the bills. I ended up chatting that owner for about an hour about the trials of the business world and how to solve the problem of being too popular.
I’m happy Crema has done well. It clearly has no problem attracting loyal customers and long lines. But I’m disappointed that the same place that I cheered for and championed feels that its success is dependent on asking me to leave. Are the two really at odds?
Perhaps this Seth Godin (a well-known marketer) post about “best customers” summarizes some of how I’m feeling:
If you define “best customer” as the customer who pays you the most, then I guess it’s not surprising that the reflex instinct is to charge them more. After all, they’re happy to pay.
But what if you define “best customer” as the person who brings you new customers through frequent referrals, and who sticks with you through thick and thin? That customer, I think, is worth far more than what she might pay you in any one transaction. In fact, if you think of that customer as your best marketer instead, it might change everything.
If you’re a cafe lover, do you think cafe owners should ask customers who have finished eating to leave?
Cafe owners, how do you deal with slow table turnover?
Zinneken’s in Harvard Square Brings You Belgian Waffles
This exclusive tip just in: Zinneken’s, a Belgian waffle shop, will be opening in about four months in Harvard Square.
Zinneke in Brussels dialect means someone of mixed origins, which not only represents the founders, but also their ambitions to introduce authentic Belgian food to Bostonians. They promise that Zinneken’s baked-to-order offerings will to put your standard Americanized “Belgian waffle” to shame. Zinneken’s signature showpiece is the Liège waffle, aka sugar waffle, which is sweeter, smaller in size, and denser than their conventional brethren.
But it gets better!
All photos courtesy of Nhon Ma.
These sugar waffles ($4-6) are named for their caramelized sugar coating and will be served with everything from Nutella to Chantilly cream. I particularly like the proposed “Oreos Freakin’ Party” (no joke) special which involves a grind-tastic blend of Oreos, strawberries, and whipped cream. See the menu from their brochure below.
Harvard Square’s Waffle Pioneers
Who would chase the perfect waffle recipe across continents? One founder, Nhon Ma, is a Harvard grad who jumped from the corporate world to pursue his true passion: food. But it wasn’t a random coincidence, by any means. In fact, his mother was the only Asian chef to ever get a coveted Michelin star in Europe. After spending his childhood taste testing her creations, Nhon cut his teeth by working for her.
He met his business partner Bertrand Lempkowicz in high school, who’s leaving behind his Brussels communication company to join the venture. They’re still in the process of signing the lease, but envision the shop will be “a cosy European atmosphere” that serves up authentically light and fluffy waffles to passing crowds.
Photos from their Facebook page and Twitter show a test run of snackers munching on waffles with a variety of toppings.
Beyond waffles, Nhon promises that Belgian chocolate, French macarons, flourless fudge, Belgian chocolate brownies, and sweet crepes are also in the works.
Their retail space will be at 1 Mifflin Place, #400. Looking on Google Maps, it looks like it’ll be near FedEx and Harvest. Actually, this is their administrative space – the actual location is under wraps. Nhon reveals that it’ll be closer to Harvard Square, not far from Tommy Doyle’s andUpstairs on the Square.
Can’t wait! Look forward to an interview with Nhon Ma coming soon.
Their tentative proposed menu – with delicious photos! – after the jump.
Russell House Tavern in Harvard Square is here to stay.
Harvard was built in 1636. As another transient moving through these classrooms and dorms – every spring, boxing my pathetic belongings and thinking towards a shrinking timeline – it’s easy to forget that the Square is transient as well.
After all, it seems that Spare Change man has been hawking his newspapers in front of Au Bon Pain forever, and ever, calling, “Young lady! Young lady! Won’t you have a heart?” And the Asian tourists spill eternal over the Yard, clutching their cameras like stunned mice and groping John Harvard’s storied foot. I remember freshman year, dodging and weaving through the tourists to breakfast, I’d feel superior to them. I lived here; I was real. But now, I think that I’m just as much a tourist as they are.
As an admitted high school senior, a freshman introduced me to the area. I remember one venue: Z Square, where the newly opened Russell House Tavern now stands. “This is where you take someone when you’re getting serious,” he explained, and it seemed like an institution to me. The unholy trinity of the Kong, ‘Noch’s, and Felipe’s seemed cast in stone. It was only years later that I found out Felipe’s had only been around for a few years, as had Z Square.
I’ve long stopped talking to that freshman after a mysterious tiff my first semester, and I never visited Z Square while it was open. So when I heard a new restaurant was opening, I was curious.
I’ve now visited Russell House Tavern three times in the past few weeks, more than any other restaurant. This has been purely by mistake. But I can see why I keep getting drawn back. They’re not perfect, but they are very good, and more ambitious than I would have expected, or need be.
Russell House is owned by the Grafton Group, which also runs Grafton Street, Redline, and Temple Bar, where chef Michael Scelfo still works.* Their promo blurb of “seasonally changing, classic American fare” did not excite me. But I eventually got dragged along anyway after a viewing of Top Chef Masters at Rialto, where I somehow sat at a table with Christine of Citysearch and Leighann F. of Yelp. (They’re friends!)
The space is heavy on dark wood, a kind of polished masculinity that’s not too old boy’s club. The dining room proper is downstairs – a sea of high tables and stools, a few padded banquets, a long U of a bar.
Crispy Soft Poached Chip-In Farm Egg 7 Pecorino Aioli, Toasted Brioche, House Pancetta
Danielle of Eastern Standard with the pizzas of the night
I wasn’t particularly hungry, but tried the fried poached farm egg, which was an oozy, bacon-laden, plate licking appetizer. It is a bit pricey considering a full pizza is only a few bucks more, but worth it in inspiration. It led me to attempt my own fried poached eggs, to little success. I also sampled a lamb tartare – a bit too raw/gamey for my tastes – and a cured and smoked lamb belly pizza, with fontina cheese and mushroom, although the intensity and saltiness of the lamb overpowered the rest. The chef clearly has a fondness for the bleating little creatures, and wasn’t afraid to show it.
lamb tartare
I came back again, on a whim, on a busy Friday night to catch up with a friend. I had the crispy poached egg again, and savored every last crumb of the brioche and smudge of the aioli. Unfortunately, service was pretty slow – it seemed that they were short staffed – and my egg was already cooling down. I tweeted my dissatisfaction, and the chef tweeted back: “so sorry!! please let me make it up to u next timer ur in…”
Semolina-yogurt cake with basil
Finally, about a week ago, I dropped by again after one of the worst meals in the past year at Shabu Ya. (Avoid at all costs.) My friends had ordered up chicken liver crostinis – richly satisfying bites, rounded out with a dab of prune-honey jam. The short rib wellington was fine, as was the caesar salad. The centerpiece ended up being a lamb shank, cooked to a melting, falling-off-the-bone tenderness, presented in a black lentil stew. I didn’t get to talk to Chef Scelfo, but the manager sent out a few desserts – a semolina cake (tasting akin to a more complex corn muffin), sorbet (a trio including a nice icy grapefruit), and carrot cake – served in a round pot, with gooey layers. The waiter, coincidentally, happened to read my blog.
Not everything is perfect, but I give the chef points for taking risks with the menu. And even when there were hiccups in service – a forgotten order, say – the staff immediately corrected it and removed the dish off the bill. The prices are about right, with pizzas $10-13, and entrees $10-28. This is not a restaurant that will change dining, but it’s one I could see becoming an institution. Then again, in Harvard Square, that doesn’t take so long.
*Correction appended: Chef Michael Scelfo still works at Temple Bar, in addition to Russell House Tavern.
Russell House Tavern to open in Harvard Square
Chef Michael Scelfo
Update: Check out my Russell House review.
Word on the Internet is that Harvard Square will soon have another restaurant to add to its roster – Russell House Tavern, headed by Chef Michael Scelfo from Temple Bar. Its opening is set for late March or early April.
Their Twitter account is currently silent, although following and being followed by well over a 1,000 tweeps. What kind of food will it serve? According to a Craiglist ad calling for service staff, the eatery will have “seasonally-changing, classic American fare with contemporary influences, carefully-designed cocktails and a resolute selection of American wines and local craft beers.” Expect a focus on local, seasonal ingredients.
Scelfo’s Twitter chronicles a bit of the excitement: “confirmed on 1st equipment delivery for this thurs -my highlights: double hearth oven, large cabinet (cold/hot) smoker, immersion circulator,” he wrote yesterday.
It looks like he’s got some good people helping out with his new baby as well: “solid 1st impression from new crew at RH, everyone on board showed up to clean & organize. 3 weeks of cleaning ahead, always rule number 1″ says a tweet from February 25th.
A recent blog post really gives away nothing about the restaurants menu, except that it won’t veer too wildly far from Temple Bar’s spirit – “I followed was to be mindful and respectful of Temple Bar’s style,” he writes, trying to balance competing interests.
Well, I’m looking forward to seeing what he’s got in store!