I'm out of my life tonight
For the last day of 2014, I went out to Cambridge to meet a visiting ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
yhlee and Joe. There was an entertaining moment of missed connection as we all failed to realize that Kendall Square contains two Marriotts, both on Broadway and separated from one another by about a block, but we managed to find each other outside of Meadhall and proceeded with our plans for lunch at the Ames Street Deli.
It's a new restaurant; it belongs to the founders of Journeyman and Backbar and shares a kitchen with their other new restaurant Study, which we wandered into by mistake. (There were not clearly-marked signs! The bathrooms for both restaurants are in Study! Nice to find out the other place is there, though.) From the street, it looks coffeehouse-ish, with tall glass walls and a visible internal theme of blackboards. Their sidewalk chalkboard on one side invites the passer-by to "Come for the coffee . . . stay for the beards"; on the other, it advertises a meta-cocktail made of "artisanal booze, obscure liqueur, homemade bitters, bizarre garnish," which I appreciate almost more than I can say. There is a full bar inside. Also columns padded with dry moss and hammered copper plates hanging above the pastries like a sound effect in waiting.
I ordered the rabbit sandwich, because I have a moral imperative to eat that sort of thing. It is rabbit mortadella and it comes on savory carrot bread with finely shredded carrots and mustard. It is extremely delicious; I was glad to see that one of the other sandwiches of the day contained beef heart, because otherwise I could see myself never trying anything else. (I am beginning to think that rabbit, like goat, is one of those meats that can do no wrong unless you are actively working to screw it up.) The sandwiches are small, so the waitstaff recommend ordering a salad on the side to make up a full meal. To give you an idea of what the Ames Street Deli considers "salad," Yoon and I both accompanied our rabbit with croque madame. It's exactly what you're thinking, only cubed and served in a small side bowl. Was also pretty tasty. Joe ordered the char sandwich, which came topped with rust-green seaweed on nori-dusted bread, and a salad with endive and pomegranate seeds.
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swan_tower, Tse Wei came by and said hello and brought us dessert! Like, kouign amann and canelés and a kind of shortbread layered with passionfruit and chocolate. I am hoping I said suitably grateful rather than stupefied things. They were lovely desserts and a completely unexpected visit.
(We destroyed a lot of flatware, because the current set is compostable and this is ecologically compassionate, but doesn't hold up to a lot of psi.1 At first we thought Joe was just snapping the forks with his astrophysicist super-strength, but as we kept trying to share the desserts, none of them survived intact. Heads, tines, handles; it was a massacre. I believe Yoon took pictures. [edit] Photographic evidence!)
Afterward we wanted somewhere warm to hang out, which is where a knowledge of nearby coffeeshops would have come in handy. Lacking a caffeine compass, we ended up at the MIT Press Bookstore, where I confined myself to leaving with the paperback of George Dyson's Turing's Cathedral (2012) and snarling slightly about the cover sticker linking it to The Imitation Game (2014). Sadly, the book titled Trust Me, I'm Lying was a memoir about social media manipulation (much less interesting to me than other kinds of fakery). Eventually Yoon and Joe went in the direction of First Night; I went back to Somerville to pick upderspatchel and head to Lexington for dinner and fondue with my family. It was a really, really nice way to see out the year, at least the daytime part of it. Yoon brought me a CD of The Descent of Inanna. I finally found out what Joe does for a living, which is very cool science. Yoon's gloves are one of the best wearable in-jokes I have seen.
And I came home and opened the box from Aqueduct Press which had appeared on my porch as I left the house this afternoon. It contains five author's copies of Ghost Signs and thirty copies for sale at Arisia and elsewhere. They are beautiful books. They have weight. Publication online is not a false thing, but it is important to me to have words I can hold in my hands. I can carry these. So can other people.
Happy New Year.
1. Pounds per square inch. I looked at that sentence again and it's a lot more exciting when read like science fiction.
yhlee and Joe. There was an entertaining moment of missed connection as we all failed to realize that Kendall Square contains two Marriotts, both on Broadway and separated from one another by about a block, but we managed to find each other outside of Meadhall and proceeded with our plans for lunch at the Ames Street Deli. It's a new restaurant; it belongs to the founders of Journeyman and Backbar and shares a kitchen with their other new restaurant Study, which we wandered into by mistake. (There were not clearly-marked signs! The bathrooms for both restaurants are in Study! Nice to find out the other place is there, though.) From the street, it looks coffeehouse-ish, with tall glass walls and a visible internal theme of blackboards. Their sidewalk chalkboard on one side invites the passer-by to "Come for the coffee . . . stay for the beards"; on the other, it advertises a meta-cocktail made of "artisanal booze, obscure liqueur, homemade bitters, bizarre garnish," which I appreciate almost more than I can say. There is a full bar inside. Also columns padded with dry moss and hammered copper plates hanging above the pastries like a sound effect in waiting.
I ordered the rabbit sandwich, because I have a moral imperative to eat that sort of thing. It is rabbit mortadella and it comes on savory carrot bread with finely shredded carrots and mustard. It is extremely delicious; I was glad to see that one of the other sandwiches of the day contained beef heart, because otherwise I could see myself never trying anything else. (I am beginning to think that rabbit, like goat, is one of those meats that can do no wrong unless you are actively working to screw it up.) The sandwiches are small, so the waitstaff recommend ordering a salad on the side to make up a full meal. To give you an idea of what the Ames Street Deli considers "salad," Yoon and I both accompanied our rabbit with croque madame. It's exactly what you're thinking, only cubed and served in a small side bowl. Was also pretty tasty. Joe ordered the char sandwich, which came topped with rust-green seaweed on nori-dusted bread, and a salad with endive and pomegranate seeds.
swan_tower, Tse Wei came by and said hello and brought us dessert! Like, kouign amann and canelés and a kind of shortbread layered with passionfruit and chocolate. I am hoping I said suitably grateful rather than stupefied things. They were lovely desserts and a completely unexpected visit.(We destroyed a lot of flatware, because the current set is compostable and this is ecologically compassionate, but doesn't hold up to a lot of psi.1 At first we thought Joe was just snapping the forks with his astrophysicist super-strength, but as we kept trying to share the desserts, none of them survived intact. Heads, tines, handles; it was a massacre. I believe Yoon took pictures. [edit] Photographic evidence!)
Afterward we wanted somewhere warm to hang out, which is where a knowledge of nearby coffeeshops would have come in handy. Lacking a caffeine compass, we ended up at the MIT Press Bookstore, where I confined myself to leaving with the paperback of George Dyson's Turing's Cathedral (2012) and snarling slightly about the cover sticker linking it to The Imitation Game (2014). Sadly, the book titled Trust Me, I'm Lying was a memoir about social media manipulation (much less interesting to me than other kinds of fakery). Eventually Yoon and Joe went in the direction of First Night; I went back to Somerville to pick up
derspatchel and head to Lexington for dinner and fondue with my family. It was a really, really nice way to see out the year, at least the daytime part of it. Yoon brought me a CD of The Descent of Inanna. I finally found out what Joe does for a living, which is very cool science. Yoon's gloves are one of the best wearable in-jokes I have seen.And I came home and opened the box from Aqueduct Press which had appeared on my porch as I left the house this afternoon. It contains five author's copies of Ghost Signs and thirty copies for sale at Arisia and elsewhere. They are beautiful books. They have weight. Publication online is not a false thing, but it is important to me to have words I can hold in my hands. I can carry these. So can other people.
Happy New Year.
1. Pounds per square inch. I looked at that sentence again and it's a lot more exciting when read like science fiction.
no subject
I haven't had rabbit, but I agree with you about goat.
no subject
Just more carrots!
(And, yes. That was a macabrely whimsical sandwich that works.)
I haven't had rabbit, but I agree with you about goat.
I did not eat a lot of rabbit until this last year, when all of a sudden it was available at multiple restaurants in multiple forms. It has been delicious every single time.