Boston
Thai Restaurant Week (10% off)
While I’m enjoying my hopefully scorching Thai food tonight, you can also plow through your own bowl of drunken noodles for a discount as part of Thai Restaurant Week.
Enjoy 10% at various Thai restaurants around Boston, including Spice in Harvard Square. Click here for the coupon and participating restaurants.
A better deal is to pick up on those Collegiate Coupon books (try the Harvard COOP) for the buy one entree, get one half off at Spice.
Testicles.
So after my food column debut in the Crimson (a day in Chinatown), I have a few other columns in the works. I think one of my favorite kinds of food adventures is the complete gross-out.
Which is why I need to know if you know where to get testicles. Not frozen ones from the supermarket. Because I can’t really cook, and I’d like to give testicular-induced culinary joy its best shot.
So pray tell, gentle readers: what restaurant in Boston serves balls?
Darwin’s sandwiches, strawberry eclairs, fish fragrant aubergines
From Taste of China in Tarrytown, NY
From Darwin's
From Darwin's
Harvard University Dining Services, sometimes you just get it right.
Eating faces
I’ve never quite understood why people can’t take their fish with a face on it. I’ve grown up in a family where my mother talk rapturously of fish eyeball and fish cheek, and when I expressed curiousity over what fish brains would taste like, she picked up the translucent skull and cracked it opened between her teeth. So that’s when I tasted fish brains. I have to say, pretty gross… a lot like a light cod liver oil.
This particular fish is from Zoe’s Chinese restaurant in Somerville, which was a bit of a disappointment. The “Mao style pork” (actually red cooked pork, hong shao rou) was nothing to write home about, nor was the tea-smoked duck or the fried taro appetizer. The fish, however, was great. Which goes to show simple presentations with that delightful combination of ginger and scallion, that culinary hallmark of Chinese cooking, plus fresh ingredients turns out a winner each time.
Zoe’s is supposed to do good Szechuan, so I tried their ma po tofu, hoping it would be appropiately spicy and laden with bits ground meat. No such luck. The search continues.
If you know where to get really good, uber-”ma la”-spicy ma po tofu, let me know…
Mmm, crickets.
It also came in a cheese-dusted flavor.
Whilst browsing gourmet food shop Cardullo’s in Harvard Square, I came across this little novelty gem – salt n’ vinegar crick-ettes. They also came in perennial favorite sour cream and onion as well as something cheesy.
Since I do a bit of food writing now, I’ve been wondering about the improbable varieties of chocolates offered, particularly things like wasabi and bacon flavored bars. (Usually not together.) So I started interrogating the cashier about chocolate. Are there more local chocolate producers? No. Noticing any trends with chocolate flavors? Just bacon. I wish there were a story here. Maybe I’ll write a feature on the improbable, decadent marriage of bacon and chocolate.
Totally edible.
Yes, these are miniburgers, about big as a thumbtip and far more delicious. I would hope.
They’re basically little cookie sandwiches with sesame seeds sprinkled on top, white chocolate mimicking the gooey delights of Kraft singles, milk chocolate aping hamburger patty. Delicious.
Found at Unique Grocery in Union Square.
I’m trying to save money now, but if I had some, I would probably blow it on pretty baubles for my ears, like beaded chandelier earrings or the elegant green stones found at Topaz in Harvard Square.
Now, if only I could find the perfect turquoise necklace, I would be in accessory heaven.