Robert David Sullivan

Lively debate on Boston nightlife typically takes place on Sunday afternoon

The debate over Boston's dull nightlife, and the possibility of improving it, has flared up again in recent weeks. The spark was the launch of the Future Boston Alliance, a group that advocates for a "loosened-up" city; it was unsurprisingly brushed off by the 19-year-old Menino adminstration. (Note to blog followers primarily interested in my Top 100 Sitcom Episodes countdown: This is not off-topic, as the depiction of community-building is one thing that interests me about sitcoms.)

This morning, on the Sunday of a long weekend when just about everyone with the means has fled Boston, the Globe's Dante Ramos weighed with an indictment of the "Boston bar buzz-kill":

Nightlife — the bars, clubs, and restaurants where people hang out after hours — is a major part of the image a city presents to the world, or at least to a crucial sliver of entrepreneurial, highly mobile workers who are prone to comparison-shopping among cities. Yet Boston’s anti-fun image isn’t just bad publicity; it’s written into the law. Happy-hour drink promotions are banned statewide under a Dukakis-era state measure meant to curb drunk driving. Another state law requires bars to obtain a specific license before they allow patrons to dance. Boston’s entertainment license application asks venues to quantify their dartboards and wide-screen TVs. The rules are enforced. At a February concert at the House of Blues, Boston police broke up a mosh pit they deemed insufficiently supervised.

The Noshing Economy continues to grow

Matthew Yglesias crunches the latest employment numbers and returns to a theme that he and I are fascinated with:

General Merchandise Stores stores got killed with 35,400 job losses while Food Services and Drinking Places added a stellar 40,800 jobs. That's the future of the retail environment if you ask me. Fewer stores, more eating and boozing. Health care (as ever) adds lots of jobs.

I've noted this trend in downtown Boston, both in terms of the growth in eateries and in the disappearance of department stores.

New York restaurants up 42% in past decade; Boston up 14%

A few weeks ago I wrote a piece for the Boston Globe on the explosion of eateries in the Hub (in contrast to the shuttering of retail stores like Borders). Yesterday's New York Post suggests that the trend is even stronger in the five boroughs.

The number of restaurants citywide skyrocketed by 42 percent -- from 5,610 to a gut-busting 7,966 -- between 1999 and 2009, a Post analysis of Census data released last month reveals.

For the record, the number of "full-service restaurants" (the category used by the Post) in Boston's Suffolk County increased 14 percent over the same period, from 661 to 754.

We've got to catch up. It just won't do to have New Yorkers look down on us as people who actually use our kitchens.

Give us burritos, not books

I have a new piece in today's Globe about the bars, restaurants, and food trucks that seem to be the only businesses opening in downtown Boston. I see some good things in the trend; bibliophiles and anti-obesity warriors may disagree. Here is a sample, but please check out the whole essay at Boston.com:

The city has always been about the spaces where people can run into each other. So cocktail bars and food trucks will fill the gap left by Filene’s Basement and Tower Records. Instead of checking out the new record releases every week, we can now peruse the city’s increasingly inventive cocktail menus or see what’s new on the board at J.P. Licks.

This probably isn’t great for our waists or our productivity. Downtown office buildings will have to offer nap rooms for workers who can’t resist three-taco lunches. But psychologically, a new emphasis on eating rather than buying things may be a healthy trend. In a Cornell University study published last year, people reported more long-term satisfaction from experiences (such as vacations) than from cars, TVs, and other consumer goods.

Photo of Boloco burrito shop on School Street from Boloco website.

In praise of "You'll eat it and like it!" restaurants

Shortly after I wrote a post about how much I loved the "no ketchup!" burger place Louis' Lunch and the "no brand names!" beer bar McSorley's, the New York Times' Diane Cardwell wrote a piece declaring no-choice restaurants to be a trend:

At a pea-size Lower East Side bistro known for its fries, the admonition is spelled out on a chalkboard: No ketchup. At a popular gastropub in the West Village, customers cannot have the burger with any cheese other than Roquefort...

New York has spawned a breed of hard-line restaurants and cafes that are saying no. No to pouring takeout espressos, or grinding more than a pound of coffee at a time. No to taming the intensity of a magma-spicy dish. And most of all, no to the 21st-century conviction that everything can be accessorized to the customer’s taste.

This is a movement that I completely support. I do not go to a restaurant (or even a take-out place) so that the staff can question me on how to best use the ingredients they have on hand. If they care about their work, they already know how to prepare a meal. Good restauranteurs are like artists, musicians, scientists, and architects, and I'm not going to mess with the formulas they've spent countless hours (10,000 of them, according to Malcolm Gladwell!) getting just right.

Freedom from choice: Louis' Lunch in New Haven and McSorley's in New York

Do people get along better when they don't have too many decisions to make? I wondered about this during a trip to New York this weekend; some of my most enjoyable moments were in places with limited options.

There was McSorley's, a bar that serves no spirits, no wine, and only two kinds of beer ("light" and "dark"). I may write more about McSorley's later, but I suspect that the limited menu had something to do with the bonhomie of the crowd on Saturday night. No agonizing over wine choices! No fear of picking a passé cocktail! Five bucks gets you two mugs of beer. No other options.

Like most true urbanites, I have a low tolerance for places where people are packed so tightly that one can hardly move, but the mood at McSorley's was so convivial that I never minded being hemmed in. And it was a perfect example of an urban phenomenon: One of the best things about a big city is that it has room for places that each do one thing well. (If you don't like it, go find the nearest Olive Garden.) I think most cities could use more of these.

Another example: On the way down from Boston, my friend and I stopped in New Haven to check out Louis' Lunch, a 116-year-old diner that claims to have invented the hamburger and now cooks nothing else. We were there at the height of the lunch rush on Friday, and it took more than a half hour to get my burger "with the works," which came between two pieces of white toast and was dressed with cheese, onion, and tomato. (Ketchup and mustard, never mind "special sauce," are forbidden here.) It was so rare that it tasted more like a very good roast beef sandwich than any hamburger I'm used to, and the thin white bread cut down on the empty calories that buns usually provide. (Photo from Roadfood.com, which has a review of Louis' Lunch and a gallery of images.)

As at McSorley's, it was too crowded to move at Louis', but we eventually snagged two of the barstools. The photo below, from Louis' website, shows about half of the whole place, and the three things on the left that look like big bottles are actually the grills in which vertical racks of burgers (six each) are cooked. But it was amazingly quiet, with little of the shouts for attention and rising chatter one would expect in Boston or New York. I don't know if this was a New Haven thing or if the historical setting prompted church-like reverence, the calm friendliness of the two guys behind the counter set the tone (no Durgin-Park vibe here!), or everyone was simply mesmerized by the process of toasting hundreds of slices of bread (on a Ferris wheel-like contraption) and grilling dozens of burgers without a pause.

I'd love to have something like this in Boston, but I'm not sure it would work. We're probably not patient enough for it; hungry people constantly demanding how many burgers are ahead of theirs on the handwritten order sheets would crash the system. And even in New Haven, a sizable minority of customers ignored Louis' preference for rare meat and gave their own cooking instructions, which I consider unforgivably rude. (It's like demanding a specific tempo from a jazz quartet.) I'm sure it would be worse in Boston, with people whining about the ratio of onion to tomato and thinking that if they just ask enough times, the place will break down and put out a basket of ketchup packets. And, yes, maybe it would kill them to do that.

Like McSorley's, Louis' Lunch is an example of how nice it is to enjoy a tradition instead of trying to impose one's own preferences on everything. And I can't think of a better way to spend a vacation in a big city.

 

Four Loko merely an homage to 1940s swing music

The authorities are getting nervous about the latest craze among people who like to get drunk but don't like the taste of alcohol (in other words, free riders). From NPR:

In Washington state, nine college freshmen landed in the hospital recently with near-lethal blood alcohol levels after drinking a caffeinated malt beverage called Four Loko, according to law enforcement officials.

Police reports describe chaos at the October incident, where officers found female freshmen unable to talk or sit up, lying on mattresses in a basement near Central Washington University, about two hours east of Seattle.

Police shuttled loads of intoxicated freshmen back to campus and took the worst cases to the hospital. One student almost died, according to the police reports. At first, investigators thought the students had been drugged, but it turns out they were drinking Four Loko.

Of course, apprentice drinkers have long tried to make alcohol more palatable, and less of a "downer,"  by mixing it with sugary caffeine drinks. That's why Coke and Pepsi (and Red Bull if expense is no object) are essential mixers at any off-campus apartment party.

I prefer rum and Moxie myself. (And I just learned of the New Englander cocktail, which contains Moxie and gin.) Moxie is a caffeinated drink that's far less sweet than Coke and even slightly bitter. I used to tell people it was like sasparilla, but now I realize that's even more obscure than Moxie among people under 40. Anyway, when Moxie is mixed with alcohol, both ingredients reduce each other's bite. The result doesn't seem as quick as Four Loko in inducing blackouts, however.

I don't know if the Andrew Sisters were renowned for their ability to acheive quick blackouts, but I wonder how many rum and Cokes it took for them to get up the nerve to attempt Caribbean accents. I swear that when I listened to the song, I thought the refrain was about "working for the alky dollar."

Open windows banned in Maryland restaurants

Via Matt Ygelsias comes word that restaurants in the upscale suburb of Bethesda, Maryland, are being ordered to seal their windows shut in order to prevent the migration of "vermin" from city sidewalks to back kitchens. TBD Neighborhoods reports:

A health inspector came by the American Tap Room in Bethesda this summer to complete its final inspection before the restaurant opened, and noticed its many wide windows opening onto Woodmont Avenue. He noted this was against state law, and since the county has to enforce state law, the restaurant had to put up screens in its windows, much to the chagrin of management (one manager said of the rule, "oh, we hate it.").

The crazy thing about this law is that open windows in restaurants are a pretty reliable indicator of safe, vibrant neighborhoods. Business owners don't leave themselves wide open when they're worried about street crime, panhandlers, and the like. And patrons prefer to sit near open windows only when they like to interact with the world outside rather than retreat from it.

I have been pestered by flies from time to time in open-window restaurants, but I'm pretty sure I've seen roaches only in closed environments. And the few times I've seen mice or rats have been in dark, stuffy dining areas where the vermin don't know there's a difference between day and night.

Let the sunshine in!

 

Say what you mean: sandwiches, pickles, and fish 'n' chips

Please allow me to bitch about restaurants not following rules of language or logic. Three examples from this weekend, with guilty parties to remain anonymous because they're fairly new establishments and may still be learning. At least you'll know some questions you may need to ask.

 

• A sandwich can include just about anything, but it has to fit between two pieces of bread. If a chef piles too much food on the bottom piece of bread and realizes that no one would be able to lift the concoction off the plate without spilling its contents, the solution is not to put the top piece of bread elsewhere on the plate, perhaps hiding beneath lettuce and tomato. What the restaurant has produced in this case is an open-face sandwich, and it should be listed that way on the menu. (And the top piece of bread can then be fed to raccoons, as far as I care.) I ordered a "pulled-pork sandwich" and had to assemble the thing myself, by pushing enough meat off to the side so that the "lid" would fit. By the way, it wasn't pulled pork anyway, but big hunks of meat brushed with barbecue sauce. (See image for proper example, from Handy Andy in Mississippi.)

• An appetizer called a "pot of pickles" connotes a selection of garlicky cucumbers, the kind you might even get for free at a good deli. It was helpful for the waitress to warn me that the pickles were not cucumbers at all, but other vegetables insread. Fortunately, my companion and I happen to like brined cauliflowers, carrots, and broccoli. Unfortunately, what we got was a little silver pot of shredded pickled vegetables. There's a name for that, and it's cole slaw. "Pickles" are things you can eat with your hands. And when they're sold as an appetizer, you expect them to take the form of something that people can easily pick at while they're waiting for their main courses -- not something that causes a mess when scooped out of a deep vessel, leaving stringy bits of cabbage all over the table.

• When fish and chips is listed as a main course  -- as opposed to, say, the brain-teaser section of the menu -- is should arrive on a plate, not stuffed into a fun, krazy french-fry holder like the one pictured (from Crate & Barrel). This contraption is barely permissible as a way to serve fries that a bunch of people will pick at. It's not suitable as a way to get some fun by watching customers trying to move and arrange the contents to approximate the appearance of a sit-down meal, as opposed to a snack to take on a roller-coaster. If any main course arrives at the table this way, the customer should be permitted to deduct a plating fee from the bill.   

Kangaroo: The non-farting white meat

That is, kangaroos don't fart as much as cows do, which means they don't contribute much to global warming. The New Scientist reports from Australia (HT: The Food Section), which really is hopping with the pesky marsupials:

Kangaroos are arguably the most ethically and environmentally sound source of meat on the planet. The animals whose flesh ends up on supermarket shelves live wild before dying a humane death. They have a different digestive system to ruminants like cattle and sheep, so emit negligible methane, making roo meat the number one choice for combating global warming. What's more, one kangaroo consumes about a third as much plant material as a sheep, and just 13 per cent of the water. This is a significant benefit in a country that suffers periodic droughts, which climate change may worsen.

If kangaroo farms take off in Australia, could they make it in our own Midwest?

For those who don't want to wait, you can order something called "Crazy French" fondue (marinated kangaroo, ostrich filet, and rabbit loin) at Cambridge's Wine Cellar for $45. I can't remember ever seeing 'roo at Johnny's Foodmaster, though.

 

Gastrocalypse hits Malden Center

No, no, no! There are already six places that serve pizza within a few blocks of my apartment, plus another Italian place. When can I get a decent burrito around here?

Dare I hope that the sign refers to Vinny Rodriguez? Vinny Patel? Maybe, in keeping with the movie, Vinny will serve catfish and grits? 

The bottom sign reads "right from Mulberry Street, NYC." New York could send up a deli instead, perhaps? I'd kill for some latkes.

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Food critics go for the slimmed-down look

I've just started reading Born Round, a memoir by former New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni about his weight problems -- which he conquered before he started eating for a living. And today I came across an Amateur Gourmet post on the recent transformation of food writers from portly men wedged into easy chairs (but with an "aura of power and authority") to slim metrosexuals working out at the gym.

Bruni happens to be gay, which means he had the choice of embracing the full-on bear look or going on the down low about his fondness for rich food. But other food writers and even chefs are now following his example, partly by hiring trainers to keep them looking lean as they try to get appearances on the Today show and reality TV.

I've thought about trying some more food writing, but I guess I need to go on a weight-loss regimen first. Like my father, I have skinny limbs and a small waist, but that means that any weight gain goes straight to the gut. (He had a beer belly; I've got a burrito bulge.) I've gone to the gym in short bursts over the years but never developed a routine, and the fact that my apartment building has an exercise room has only given me an excuse not to join a health club. I never thought that wanting to look like a food critic could be what finally gets me to lose weight.