Pigging out in Beantown

Wonderful where a subway pass and undefined hunger can take you.  Looking for coffee and a nibble and a place to work, I biked down to South Station.  Found out that Sunday is not a great time to look for a place to work in downtown Boston.  Even Starbuck's is closed.  South Station had coffee and such, but not a single place to sit, and a bad level of crowd noise, everybody going out for their Sunday holidays.

I decided not to bike downtown – I did a long ride yesterday and don't want to overdo it – so I hopped on the T and rolled on down to Harvard Square.  Surely, with all those studious Crimson lads and lasses, there would be plenty of coffee.

Not really.  The Starbuck's was open but jammed.  I walked around and descended into weirdness.   Fire & Ice, which I normally thought of as an evening place, was open – and wild!  At least for someone who will eat almost anything and lots of it.  Lively calypso music and dozens of beers on tap.

Not a breakfast for the oatmeal crowd.  It's a Mongolian-barbecue-type place, where you pay a set fee ($16) and fill your bowl with a combination of meats, vegetables, starches, and spices, and give it to a guy who's manning a huge wok, a metal circle about twenty feet in diameter.  He sprays a square foot or so with oil and stir-fries your mélange.  I did a combination of beef, pork, lamb, and bacon, with lots of onions and scallions, with a scoop of noodles and a ladle of spicy garlic sauce.

It was good.  It was so-o-o good.  It was so good I did it again.  I hadn't even gone to the seafood station, which I know I should have done first.  Not limited by formalism, though, I got a couple of nice fish filets (tilapia and trout) and some shrimp and crab meat, along with green onions and lots of garlic and a heap of transparent Chinese noodles and some chunks of potato.  Laced them all with Mango Garlic Mojo sauce and had the guy stir-fry it all.

Oh me oh my.  I'll have to come back when I'm hungry.

Joe

(Actually, a true trencherman would have gone on to the desert station, and perhaps would have started with the pastries.  It is breakfast, after all.)