by Crystal Coser ’12
December 2009 Issue

Ah, L’Espalier. The name alone sends a tingle down from my palate and fills me with a sense of deep-seated longing, but the “$$$$” listing tends to keep this food lust at bay. Fortunately, my mom was recently in town, and like all savvy college students, I knew how to maneuver myself into a fabulous meal.

Charged with anticipation, my mother and I strode to 774 Boylston and arrived at large metal doors. Past the entrance, we found ourselves greeted by a host in a miniature elevator foyer. We were directed to take the elevator up to the dining room. This was not just any old elevator – it was a glass elevator à la Willy Wonka. Talk about perfect prelude to my dining fantasies.

Immediately upon arrival, I was filled with a sense of sophisticated homey comfort that comes only with an exquisite interior designer. We arrived in a marble lobby adjacent to an area that very much resembled a family room, a magnum of Dom Perignon on ice and all. Well, more like family room of my dreams.

After having been seated at a wonderful window-side table overlooking Boylston, my mother and I eagerly awaited the bread service. It may seem frivolous to recount what can be a negligible preface to a meal, but at L’Espalier, every facet of the dining experience, including the bread, is exquisite. A tray of bread was brought to our table with warm Kalamata olive and sourdough, and was served with soft peaks of butter. I need to pause here for a second to talk about this butter. This wasn’t just any old mass-market variety- this was butter that would make Ina Garten and Paula Deen fall to their knees. We used the bread merely as a vehicle on which we could pile this soft, unimaginably creamy, rich, and salty primrose pleasure.

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Hold onto your big bowed-headbands and fro-yo loving pants upper-Cambridge-siders, there’s a new chain coming to town. Noice would like to alert you that the infamous frozen yogurt chain Pinkberry of Los Angeles and New York City fame is on its way to Boston. Looks like Berryline will have to step up the competition—not to mention Red Mango is now in the mix too. This is like the East Coast/West Coast rap battle but way more delicious.

What do you think of this froyo battle? Who’s gonna win?

Photo credit: here.

For all you foodies and other starved students out there, I lovingly bestow upon you my midterm pick-me-upper, my “fml General Gao’s chicken again” curative, my black book of food fetishes – a collection of my food porn pics.

These are pictures of dishes that were just so good that I needed a visual testimony to their toe-curling deliciousness, and can only be fully appreciated one at a time.

So my first treat comes from Susan Feniger’s Street in Los Angeles. These savory little packages of pleasure are Spinach Varenykys, Ukranian pan-fried dumplings filled with spinach and a light layer of salted cheese. Fried onions and lemon marmalade offset the luxuriously creamy filling.

Now if this isn’t masochism for the palate, I couldn’t tell you what is.

I’m always ecstatic (really, I get that excited) when I see the board menu bar in our dining halls. That one special little section of the dining hall where I am finally given the opportunity to cook, actually more like assemble, my dinner. Luckily for me, my favorite of the board menus is the most recurrent – the panzanella bar.

Panzanella is a Tuscan bread salad that traditionally contains tomatoes, basil, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and, yes, stale bread. The dining halls put their own spin on it by also providing us with arugula, olives, and pickled onions. When the panzanella has been prepared appropriately, the slightly dense, crusty bread is mollified by the absorption of some of the oil, vinegar, and juices from the vegetables; however, it still gives the salad some texture by retaining a bit of its chewiness.

I find it to be a lovely, well-balanced salad, but am always slightly put off by the bags of pre-cubed, mass-market bread, and also miss an integral part of my meat-loving, quotidian diet: protein. Read how I improve upon the panzanella after the jump.

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Bye bye Bombay. :(

BerryLine. Grendel’s Den. Bartley’s. Bombay Club. Domna. Few things better define the Harvard dining experience, and now, not only has Domna left her post at the gateway to the Great Hall (aka Annenberg), but it has just been announced that Bombay Club will soon be leaving our increasingly permeable Harvard bubble as well.

Since 1991, Bombay Club has occupied its central location on JFK right above Staples, serving authentic Indian food to Indian food fans and noobs alike. The Kapoor family came to Massachusetts from New Dehli, India, in 1978. Vinod Kapoor started out as a Fayva Shoe salesman until his brother-in-law loaned him $30,000 to open what became Kebab-N-Kurry in Boston’s Back Bay. Today, Bombay Club has become a bustling hotspot, and has been Zagat-rated, and won a number of “Best of Boston” awards.

This Cambridge landmark has hosted students and celebrities alike, enjoying visits from “Led Zeppelin’s lead singer Robert Plant, former Vice President Al Gore, legendary Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar, a host of Bollywood personalities,” as well as “weekly visits from Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates.”

As a faint silver lining to this dark cloud of fantastic-Indian-food-lessness, the Kapoor family will be relocating Bombay Club to Boston’s South End, opening in November. The new Bombay Club will feature many of the same long time favorites, along with “an array of new items that will be introduced every other week after its opening.” They will also host a full bar every night, open until 1 am – how this wouldn’t have been perfect for Harvard Square is a mystery to me.

Nonetheless, this will have to serve as the excuse I’ve been looking for to make the shuttle-less Sunday morning trek from the Quad to enjoy their Sunday Brunch Buffet of delicious dosas, masalas, naan, and curries. And if the grieving process has not run its course by November, I suppose it’ll be the reluctant push I need to hop on the T and check this place out for myself.

In-your-face vegan food. Mmhmm.

Snowballs from hell?

Half-assed chili?

Broke-ass cinnamon rolls?

Butt ugly sticky buns?!

Don’t be alarmed. It’s PETA’s Vegan College Cookbook!

Noice was at the COOP Tuesday evening to taste, prod, and scratch our heads at a veritable smorgasbord of PETA-blessed vegan food aimed at the average college bro, nerd, Harvard student, etc.

To entice us to buy, a selection of dishes from the cookbook — microwave-baked “Beer Bread,” vegan shepard’s pie and a selection of salads — were all on offer.

Our verdict? The beer bread was edible, but not my first choice of call when it comes to baked goods. Salads were salads, and the shepard’s pie was stone cold.

Noice gets the very strong feeling that a board room of PETA execs sat down and, in an attempt to solve the problem of how to recruit cool young things like us to join the animal rights movement, pulled together a cookbook that attempted to demonstrate how viable it is to become vegan.

Sadly, all they came up with was this:

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Brain Break. Every Harvard student is familiar with this almost-nightly event, which claims to provide us with a brief and tasty breather from our sometimes overwhelming workload. For some, it is social time to connect with friends to talk about the day or to just relax. For others, it is a chance to get a bite to eat before the long night of reading and writing ahead of them.

But, what is designed as a respite for the weary, a regular oasis in the desert of academia, actually turns out to be very little. What, in fact, does Brain Break offer to those seeking reprieve from the mountains of work bearing down on them and sustenance to keep going on the climb?

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