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.