A Few Nice Dinners

A few nice dinners I have been out to in the past few weeks. Two Fridays ago was Hammersley's Bistro in the South End with Bird and Jen. Despite living in Boston for over a decade, I've never been there. We split the wilted radicchio with orange, apple, almond and date salad (pomegranate-yogurt dressing); I had the eastern halibut and Wellfleet clams with giant white beans, bacon braised greens and black trumpet mushrooms. Jen had one of the Hammersley's standards: roast chicken with garlic, lemon and parsley, shown below:


Apologies for the quality of the cell phone photo--for all you can tell, it might as well be a burn victim autopsy. With a parsley garnish.

Anyway, it was a really nice evening out. I love exploring restaurants--I drive a 15 year old car, have a rent that's far below the recommended 25-30% of income limit, rarely take a vacation with real expenses (vs. crashing at friends' places and camping), and I live far below my means in other ways. But nice dinners out are one place where I'm totally willing to splurge, once in a while.

Last night (Friday) was Asmara (Ethiopian in Central Square) with Bird, JMD, and Speedbump, who was in town for a conference. More for my own memory, we had three awesome dishes: Gored Gored (Raw beef!! And butter! Awesome! Cubes of tenderloin tips served raw or very rare in Awaze and butter dip; awaze is a spicy sauce made with different kinds of herbs), Yemisik 'Wot'-Bersen (lentils in a hot or mild sauce--really yummy), and Gomen 'Wot' Tesbhiamli (collard greens or kale with potatoes in a mild sauce; it was actually spinach that night). Incidentally, in my google searching, a highly rated Ethiopian place in the Bay Area (South Bay, San Jose) was Zeni Ethiopian Restaurant--next trip, perhaps.

Anyway, speaking on random crap on the web, in my search for images of Gored gored, I ended up at a website called Dr. Danger: Unlike many other 'extreme sports' sites which report on activities from the sidelines, at DoctorDanger.com we actively participate in sports and then do our best to give you a true reflection of what the sport is really like and provide useful information such as how to get started, links to schools, tips on how to survive and so on.

They had a section on running with the bulls in Pamplona, showing what life threatening injuries are likely. Damn... seems a bit nutty to me--"Why yes, I want to run on the street with out-of-control hydraulic-press-power-levels attached to sharp pointy things!" Based on the injury locations, it seems like doing the competition with a prison stab vest and a helmet might be a good idea, if they don't slow you down too much.

Anyway, I really love being in town--I can just skip out Friday evening, and meet up in half an hour in the city. I just figure I'm lucky, here.