No one’s in town. Everyone went back to New Jersey: students, faculty staff, friends, pets. Its an odd and great time to live in Cambridge. Park your car wherever you want and there’s room for everyone at any restaurant. Once I talked with a hotel manager about room rates. A room might be $450 during MIT graduation and $89 for Christmas.

This month’s Boston Magazine includes a review by Corby Kummer of Catalyst, which is located down the street from Toscanini’s facing Charles Correa’s measured masterpiece, The McGovern Brain Center at MIT. Everyone goes to Frank Gehry’s Stata Center. They should visit this building with its great void, as well as the new Media Lab by Fumihiko Maki. Corby’s review enthuses over the desserts at Catalyst so professional curiosity sent us there at 10PM on a quiet Friday night. Anthony Mazzotta worked at the French Laundry and Per Se before becoming chef de cuisine at Catalyst. We ate at the bar where we recognized Terry who’d previously worked at Rendezvous in Central Square. He served us the greatest Scotch in the world, Yamazaki from Japan and helped us order. Corby described butterscotch and passionfruit pudding as “unexpectedly good” but it was just terrific. The dish comes with fried pound cake batons. What a great idea. This is how to end the year. Since it is important to eat a balanced meal late at night, late in the year, i also ordered a wonderful Egg Nog ice cream and a Citrus Sorbet. The Egg Nog was as citrus as the sorbet and I suspected a varying combination of Yuzu, lemon and orange had been used in both. The Egg Nog lacked the usual spices and is similar to the Italian Egg Nog we have made for years. Catalyst also has a giant glowing wreath which should reappear very year.

Gambling casinos, sports stadiums and convention centers are what politicians like to build. Usually they are said to be good for nearby restaurants and hotels although its pretty clear that gambling casinos with their own restaurants just steal customers from other places. Sports facilities and convention centers don’t work either.

This story appeared in the Wall Street Journal on Sa De 31, 2011

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204720204577126603702369654.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

Have We Got a Convention Center to Sell You!
From Boston to Austin, politicians spend money on fancy white elephants.

By STEVEN MALANGA
For two decades, America’s convention center business has been declining, resulting in a nationwide surplus of empty meeting facilities, struggling convention halls and vacant hotel rooms. How have governments responded to this glut? By building more convention centers, of course, financed by debt backed by new taxes and fees on already struggling taxpayers.
Back in 2007, before the recession began, a report from Destination Marketing Association International described America’s convention industry as a “buyer’s market” suffering excess capacity. It’s only gotten worse, attracting just 86 million attendees in 2010, compared to 126 million in 2000. Meanwhile, the amount of convention space angling for business has increased to 70 million square feet, up from 53 million in 2000 and 40 million two decades ago.
That’s largely because governments refuse to stop making convention centers bigger and hotels even more dazzling, arguing that whatever business remains will flow to the places with the fanciest amenities. To finance these risky projects—which the private sector won’t build by itself—cities float debt backed by new taxes and fees on already struggling taxpayers. As Charles Chieppo, a former board member of Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, lamented last year, “Logic rarely has a place in the convention business.”
Take Illinois, an industry leader,where officials have invested heavily to keep Chicago’s McCormick Place, long one of the three most-used centers in the nation, on top. They spent $1 billion in the early 1990s to build a 840,000-square foot expansion financed by fees on auto rentals, a hotel tax and a surcharge on restaurant meals in downtown Chicago. In 2007 they opened a new building, McCormick West, at a cost of an additional $900 million. The result? According to the Chicago Tribune, the center operates at 55% capacity.
Then there’s Boston, perhaps the quintessential example of a city that interprets failure in the convention business as a license to spend more on it. Massachusetts officials shelled out $230 million to renovate Hynes Convention Center in the late 1980s. When the makeover produced virtually no economic bounce, officials decided that the city needed a new, $800 million center financed by a hotel occupancy excise tax, a rental-car surcharge, and the sale of taxi medallions. Opened in 2004, that new Boston Convention and Exhibition Center was projected (by consultants hired by the state) to have Boston renting some 670,000 additional hotel rooms annually within five years. Instead, Beantown saw just 310,000 additional hotel room rentals in 2009.

Now Massachusetts officials want to spend $2 billion to double the size of the Boston Convention Center and add a hotel. Of course, they predict that the expanded facilities would bring an additional $222 million into the local economy each year, including 140,000 hotel room rentals. Even with these bullish projections, officials claim that the hotel would need $200 million in public subsidies.
“The whole thing is a racket,” Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby recently observed. “Once again the politicos will expand their empire. Once again crony capitalism will enrich a handful of wired business operators. And once again Joe and Jane Taxpayer will pay through the nose. How many times must we see this movie before we finally shut it off?”
Many times, if officials in Baltimore have their way. Several years ago they built a $300 million city-owned hotel, (the Hilton Baltimore Convention Center Hotel) to boost the fortunes of the city’s struggling convention center. Having opened in 2008, the hotel lost $11 million last year. Now the city is considering a public-private expansion plan that would add a downtown arena, an additional convention hotel, and 400,000 feet of new convention space at the cost of $400 million in public money.
The list goes on—everywhere from Columbus, Ohio, to Dallas, Austin, Phoenix and places in between. One problem is that optimistic projections about new facilities fail to account for how other cities are expanding, too. Why did Minneapolis struggle to hit projected targets after it enlarged its convention center in 2002? “Other cities expanded right along with us,” Minneapolis’s convention center director, Jeff Johnson, said this year.
The surest sign that taxpayers should be leery of such public investments is that officials have changed their sales pitch. Convention and meeting centers shouldn’t be judged, they now say, by how many hotel rooms, restaurants, and local attractions they help fill. That’s “narrow-minded thinking,” said James Rooney of the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority this year. Instead, as Boston Mayor Thomas Menino has said, expanding a convention center can “demonstrate to the world that we have unlimited confidence in our city and what it can do, not only as a convention destination but as the center of the most important trends in hospitality, science, health and education.”
This new metric—a city’s amorphous brand value—is little more than a convenient way to ignore the failure of publicly sponsored facilities to live up to exaggerated projections. But as far as city officials are concerned, that failure is nothing that hundreds of millions more in taxpayer dollars can’t fix.
Mr. Malanga is a senior editor at City Journal. A longer version of this article appears in City Journal’s Winter 2012 issue.

We are closed on New Year’s Day. Monday Ja 2 is a legal holiday. We reopen on Tuesday Ja 3 at 10AM.

These are the flavors for this short day.

French Vanilla
Belgian Chocolate
Egg Nog
Hydrox Cookie
Chocolate Chip
Orange Chocolate
Coffee Ice Cream Sandwich
Ginger Snap Molasses
Strawberry
Cocoa Pudding
Burnt Caramel
Coconut
Gianduia
B3
Grape Nut
Rum Raisin
Maple Walnut
Malted Vanilla
Mocha
Butter Almond
Bourbon Cookie
Cran Apple
Buckeye
Earl Grey
Goat Cheese Brownie
Kenyan Khulfee
Cinnamon Nutmeg
Salty Caramel
Lemon Espresso

Berry Sorbet
Champagne Sorbet
Mango Sorbet

We also have hot fudge and spicy butterscotch sauce.

Eater.com asks the questions others are afraid to ask, What is the best neighborhood for restaurants?

http://boston.eater.com/archives/2011/12/28/as-is-the-tradition-at.php

The Globe’s Devra First endorses all of Cambridge. Others choose Allston or Kendall Square. Penny and Ed Cherubino of BostonZest choose Central Square. Good for them.
For us, Central Square, Cambridge. With Craigie on Main, Salts, Rendezvous Central Square, Central Kitchen, Central Bottle + Provisions, Flour Bakery, Floating Rock… It’s within walking distance of our Back Bay home, has both bus and subway connections, and is a great destination for food lovers.

Our Tommy is delivering pints to MixMenu.com. Then they will deliver the pints to you. We’re all starting with these four flavors.

French Vanilla, by definition is rich with egg yolks, accounting for its mouthfeel.

Belgian Chocolate is made with Callebaut chocolate from Belgium. Belgium has great chocolate and great laws concerning the quality of chocolate. We make many chocolate ice creams. This is our most popular, and also our lightest. Cocoa Pudding is our darkest and is made with expensive Cacao Barry cocoa from France.

Hydrox cookies have a terrible name. The word sounds like Clorox. Too bad. I love loved these cookies as a child and still love them. They were invented before Oreos, but Oreos became much more popular. Growing up in NYC, Hydrox were popular because they were always kosher. They’re also always vegan so we continue to use them.

Burnt Caramel is one of our signature flavors. It is the happy result of a mistake. Late one night we were trying to make Caramel ice cream, which like risotto requires constant attention. We got distracted and then the caramel was burnt. But our neighbor, Bruce Frankel, chef owner of 798 Main stopped by to borrow heavy cream. He reassured us that “Burnt Caramel” was a popular flavor, particularly in parts of Spain. We kept doing it and finally Adam Simha pulled out all the graphite rods and perfected it.

Maine coffee shop makes Zagat top 10 list
December 25, 2011

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A well-known publisher of restaurant reviews is giving high marks to a Portland-based coffee company.

Zagat.com has named Coffee By Design one of the nation’s 10 coolest independent coffee shops in a blog on its web site.

Other shops to make the list include ones in Brooklyn, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle and Austin, Texas.

Coffee by Design was founded in 1994 and has grown to four coffee shops in the city of Portland.

We’re playing Bill Frisell’s Good Dog Happy Man album, through our super stereo system created by Brown Innovations. A nice way to begin this in-between week.

Tonight we’re open until 11PM. We turn off the espresso machine at 1030PM so we can give it a good scrubbing.

Right now ice cream we have the following flavors.

French Vanilla
Belgian Chocolate
Cocoa Pudding
Salty Saffron
Burnt Caramel
Cookie Dough
Maple Walnut
Orange Chocolate
Khulfee
Coffee
Mango
Chocolate Chip
Hydrox Cookie
B3
Rum Raisin
Buckeye
Bourbon
Peppermint Stick
Espresso Chocolate Chip
Cranberry Apple
Butter Cookie
Italian Egg Nog
Grape Nut Raisin
Nocciola
White Russian
Strawberry
Ginger Snap Molasses
Mocha
Goat Cheese Brownie
Malted Vanilla

Strawberry Sorbet
Mango Sorbet

We also have Spicy Butterscotch Sauce and Hot Fudge.

The New York Times

December 22, 2011
36 Hours: Cambridge, Mass.
By FREDA MOON

WHEN the leaves have fallen and the winter chill has set in, many small cities slip into a prolonged hibernation. But Cambridge barely misses a beat. During the holidays, tree branches are strung with tiny white lights, and local theater productions celebrate the season. A city of bookstores and coffeehouses, art-house cinemas and eclectic neighborhood bars, the People’s Republic of Cambridge has traded its Puritan past for a dynamic, cosmopolitan present. Spread out along the tree-lined shore of the Charles River, the city is a dense collection of grand Federal and Greek Revival mansions and modest century-old bungalows, modern office towers and brick dormitories. Nicknamed Boston’s Left Bank for its bohemian image, Cambridge is easy to caricature, but hard to dislike.

Friday

2:30 p.m.
1. A BEAUTIFUL MIND

Famous for turning out brilliant graduates, world-altering innovations and jaw-dropping pranks, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a secular temple to the sciences. The M.I.T. Museum (265 Massachusetts Avenue; 617-253-5927; web.mit.edu/museum; admission, $8.50), which was expanded in 2007 to include the new 5,000-square-foot Mark Epstein Innovation Gallery, celebrates the institute’s creative output and offbeat culture in exhibits on everything from an emotive robot and motion-sensitive holograms to model ships and Polaroid cameras.

4 p.m.
2. BUNDLE UP

Grab your coat and gloves and take a spin around the amoeba-shaped rink at Kendall Square Community Skating (300 Athenaeum Street; kendallsquare.org/play; admission, $5, $1 child; skate rental, $8 a pair). The Frog Pond, across the Charles River in Boston Common, is better known, but Cambridge’s comparably humble slab of ice — surrounded by high-rise buildings and trees draped in white lights — has its own charm. For a stunning sunset glimpse of the Cambridge-Boston skyline from above the water, stay bundled and take a walk across the Harvard Bridge, at the southeast end of Massachusetts Avenue.

7 p.m.
3. JACKET AND TIE

Warm up with an old-fashioned cocktail at Cuchi Cuchi (795 Main Street; 617-864-2929; cuchicuchi.cc), a mood-lighted, belle-époque-themed bar that serves vintage drinks like the Pendennis Club Cocktail (gin, apricot brandy, lime juice and Peychauds bitters, $10), borrowed from the 1928 menu of a Louisville, Ky., men’s club. For dinner, splurge on a multicourse prix-fixe meal at Craigie on Main (853 Main Street; 617-497-5511; craigieonmain.com), where well-heeled Cantabrigians are treated to the locavore vision of the chef, Tony Maws, who won a James Beard award earlier this year. The restaurant has a jacket-and-tie (not required) clientele and the prices to match: the six-course “Craigie Experience” tasting menu will put you out $95, while the eight-course “Ultimate” experience is $115.

9:30 p.m.
4. OF GODS AND ICE CREAM

Loosen your belt for a stop at Toscanini’s (899 Main Street; 617-491-5877; tosci.com), where you’ll find impossibly rich house-made ice cream in flavors like salted saffron or double chocolate stout (from $3.50). Afterward, settle into one of the thronelike chairs at River Gods (125 River Street; 617-576-1881; rivergodsonline.com), a neighborhood pub where D.J.’s spin an esoteric mix of music, from ’60s French pop to Bollywood funk, surrounded by gilded angels and stuffed nun dolls in a scene that’s not unlike a house party at a Bizarro World rectory.

Saturday

9 a.m.
5. THE BRIGHT SIDE

Arrive early to snag one of the seven tables at Sofra Bakery and Cafe (1 Belmont Street; 617-661-3161; sofrabakery.com). Despite an out-of-the way location on the border with Belmont, this tiny Eastern Mediterranean bakery-restaurant overflows on weekends, when locals line up for exotic dishes, like a poached egg in a delicate nest of fried phyllo dough ($9) or flatbread stuffed with red lentil kofte (spiced meatballs) with zhoug (hot chili sauce) and a celery root slaw ($7). On crisp, clear winter days, the sun shines through the bakery’s windows and patrons sip Turkish coffee from miniature cups. Sweets like Aleppo peanut bark ($16) and preserves like green tomato chutney ($10) make delicious gifts.

11:30 a.m.
6. OLD SCHOOL

The Classic Hahvahd Tour (1376 Massachusetts Avenue; harvardtour.com; $10 per person, $20 per family) is a theatrical 70-minute crash course in Harvard history. Undergraduate guides deliver the tour script with comic timing and answer questions with patience and candor. Currently, the tour excludes Harvard’s famous Yard, which has been converted into a campground by student members of the Occupy movement. For lunch, head to Alive and Kicking (269 Putnam Avenue; 617-876-0451) for a classic New England lobster sandwich — two pieces of toasted sesame-crusted white bread overflowing with generous chunks of fresh lobster ($13) — eaten in a no-frills urban fish shack: a converted carport with picnic tables, heating lamps and wood cut-outs of fish and seagulls.

2 p.m.
7. THE REVOLUTION LIVES

Walk along Massachusetts Avenue to the narrow, black-painted staircase of Revolution Books (1158 Massachusetts Avenue, second floor; 617-492-5443; revolutionbookscamb.org), a hole-in-the-wall shop run by the Revolutionary Communist Party, where you’ll find everything from mainstream nonfiction to political manifestoes. Afterward, pull up a stool at the People’s Republik (876-878 Massachusetts Avenue; 617-491-6969; peoplesrepublik.com), a Communist-themed bar with Soviet and Maoist propaganda posters on the walls.

6 p.m.
8. DOWN SOUTH

Cambridge may not be the first place you think of to indulge in boiled peanuts, shrimp and grits or barbecued beef tongue, but Hungry Mother (233 Cardinal Medeiros Avenue; 617-499-0090; hungrymothercambridge.com) has some of the Northeast’s best Southern food. The chef, Barry Maiden, is a Virginia native, and his restaurant honors his home state at every turn — from the name, which is taken from a Virginia state park, to the Cardinal motif on the menus and the now-familiar grandma-chic aesthetic. Opened in 2008, Hungry Mother was financed, in part, by small donations (donors’ names grace a wall beside the bar), and there’s something in its easy welcome that feels unpretentious and sincere.

8 p.m.
9. GET FOLKSY

Since the 1950s, Club Passim (47 Palmer Street; 617-492-5300; clubpassim.org), a dark basement space on an alley off Harvard Square, has drawn musical greats. This legendary spot got its start as a jazz club called Club 47, which later became a folk venue, hosting everyone from Joan Baez, who got her start here at 17, to Bob Dylan, whom Baez would later introduce to her hometown crowd. It’s now a nonprofit; there’s live music every night (ticket prices vary) and, after many dry years, a beer and wine license.

10 p.m.
10. DISCO FABULOUS

Dance with the Donkey Show, a shimmering, intoxicating disco-opera adaptation of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at Oberon (2 Arrow Street; 617-496-8004; cluboberon.com), the new “nightclub theater” that’s the carefree second stage to the American Repertory Theater. The performance is an interactive event where actor-dancers are distinguishable from the audience only by their ’70s get-ups. For a tasty, nongreasy midnight snack or a $3 local Notch beer, duck into Clover Food Lab (7 Holyoke Street, cloverfoodlab.com). Founded by an M.I.T. grad, Clover is a food truck phenomenon turned storefront fast-food joint. The menu — meatless dishes like chickpea patty sandwiches, spicy carrot soup and rosemary French fries — is healthy and cheap enough to sustain the student body.

Sunday

11 a.m.
11. THE UN-DIM SUM

For brunch, try the crispy pork belly, mantou bread with pickled vegetables, or pork and kale shumai (dumplings) with carrot purée at East by Northeast (1128 Cambridge Street; 617-876-0286; exnecambridge.com), where small plates are described as Chinese-style tapas. The Chinese-American chef Phillip Tang makes all noodles and dumpling wrappers there. Wash them down with the brunch bloody mary with Chinese peppercorn vodka and Sriracha ($9) or the pear, ginger and prosecco cocktail ($9).

12 p.m.
12. A RESTFUL PLACE

Before leaving town, take a walk among the historic gravestones of Buckminster Fuller, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Winslow Homer and the abolitionist Harriet Jacobs, among many others, at the 175-acre Mount Auburn Cemetery (580 Mount Auburn Street; 617-547-7105; mountauburn.org), founded in 1831. The grounds are home to hundreds of varieties of trees and gorgeously maintained gardens.