Days 29-31: Boston

Kevin and I spent last weekend in Boston. We had planned to go the following weekend but ticket prices surrounding September 11th were much cheaper. My sister, Sparky, and her husband, Phil, live in Somerville, so we ended up trying out an airbnb apartment in Cambridge, near Harvard Square. The price was great for the location, but I have to admit that it was awkward. They had a lot of clutter and it definitely had its own personality and aesthetic -- very different from my own as well as Kevin's -- so it was pretty obvious that we were staying in strangers' home. I think I'll stick to jetpads next time since their places aren't really lived in and we had a good experience using them in Vancouver.

Happy to be on the wharf.

My sister and Phil have lived in the Boston area for years and know all the good spots and we were happy to be taken around to places they've curated.

On Friday night we went to a small Italian tapas place in the South End called Coppa. Their pasta was some of the best I've ever had outside of Italy. We enjoyed the squid ink pasta with octopus, squid and olives and the special, which was orecchiette with a ragu of tripe and pork belly -- so effing good! The aracini, which are fried risotto balls stuffed with cheese, were the other highlight of the night.

Afterwards we did a walk-through of the Beehive, a live music venue not far away from Coppa, but left after a lap since their live musical act was on break. The interior of the place is very boudoir-cool but it was super crowded so I was happy to leave.

We called it a night after that and resisted the urge to snoop around the apartment. Although, when Sparky did sweep-through, she took a peek at their wedding album.
The next afternoon, Phil and Sparky brought us to Sofra, a great Middle Eastern bakery and cafe in Cambridge. I love that they've designed the service area like a typical European-style cafe with pastries, spreads and coffees in the front, and racks of pastries and the kitchen behind the counter. All the food is Middle Eastern so I thought it was a great way to disguise a unique concept as everyday.

A closer look at the pastry spread. 

They had some breakfast items on the menu, but Sparky and Phil advised us to just go for the flatbreads since they're what Sofra does best. We got two lamb, one sausage and one zucchini flatbread, and a plate of mezzes with breads. While we were waiting for our food, they kept calling "Number 24!! Two Turkish breakfasts!" but no one came to claim them. Sparky and I watched as no one picked up these delicious looking plates.

The abandoned Turkish breakfast. Just look at that phyllo-wrapped egg!

By the time we got our food, the breakfasts still hadn't been claimed. We 10% jokingly said to the stern, no-nonsense woman behind the counter, "We'll take these if no one else does..." She didn't say anything to us, just looked at us with a stone-cold silent face. Yikes. You can see what we had below. Yup, my first Photoshop photo collage. Took me 10 whole minutes.

Clockwise from top left: sausage flatbread, mezze platter, zucchini flatbread, and lamb flatbread.

When we went to sit outside we were talking about how we wanted to take the Turkish breakfasts and a guy dining solo at the table next to us chimed in, "Oh my god! That's still going on?!" Sigh. Next time I shall try the Turkish breakfast. I bought the restaurant's cookbook, Spice, and tried some recipes from it this week. More on that later.

After lunch we took an unofficial tour of Boston. We parked near the Wharf and wandered around the North End and spotted the Haymarket Farmers Market on our way out. I guess they sell fruits and vegetables on the brink of going bad at super low prices and you can get some good deals for same-night cooking. We continued to walk to Faneuil Hall, Boston's Government Center and meeting place since 1742, and saw the outside of Quincy Market, which directly faces Faneuil Hall. Then, we walked on the old expressway, which is now Wharf District Park, to Sparky's old workplace, the Boston Harbor Hotel where we spotted Lionel Ritchie and someone dressed as Santa Claus. Afterwards, we walked across Seaport Blvd to share a lobster roll at the Barking Crab.

Good thing we split this three ways. 

This was okay. Sparky was saying that Bostonians don't really like lobster rolls that much and that this was probably one of the best ones we could have gotten. We ordered a regular one but we think they gave us the "naked" one, which doesn't have any mayo on it. Kevin and I were excited to try one since we enjoy the lobster rolls at Fish Bar and GT Fish and Oyster but I guess most lobster rolls are an afterthought in Boston.

We continued to walk to the Fort Point neighborhood to enjoy an afternoon cocktail at Drink. Drink has crafted cocktails, house-made bitters, hand-carved ice -- basically a level of seriousness comparable to the Violet Hour for all you Chicago readers. Unlike the Violet Hour, however, Drink does not have a cocktail menu. The idea is that you just walk in, tell the bartenders what you feel like drinking at that moment, and then they make you a cocktail based on what you say. It's a cool space with a science-lab/apothecary feel to it and it's also very popular.

The interior of drink. A garden-level establishment.

I requested a veggie-spicy drink like a bloody Mary or a Caesar (Canada's version) but they didn't have any tomato juice so I was curious to see what they'd serve me. That was the day I discovered the white Mary.

It may look white, but it tastes almost exactly like a bloody Mary! 

There's vodka, scotch, lemon, salt, Tabasco and maybe some other stuff in there, but it was uncanny! I'm totally going to try to make this at home. Sparky had a super spicy ginger drink, Phil had Drink's version of a Manhattan called the Toronto, and Kevin had a St. Germain drink with egg white that tasted like it had mulled wine spices in it.

By the time we finished up our round of drinks, it was 5pm and crazy crowded in there! I guess Drink is too popular for its own good but it didn't help that there was an engagement party in one section of the bar. As we walked up the stairs back to street level, we passed a line of 10 people waiting to get in. Remember, this is 5pm on a Saturday.

We decided to cab back to the car at the wharf and then drive to Beacon Hill. The streets are really narrow there and most of them are covered in brick. I bought some new walking shoes at a shop there since I stupidly brought flats with almost no support. They were terrible for walking and my feet hurt a lot by the time we were at the Barking Crab. Our last stop on our grand walking tour was a look-around of the Liberty Hotel, a former jail that only just closed in the 90s and renovated to become a hotel.

The bar on the ground floor.

The Liberty was pretty awesome. They kept a lot of the prison architectural features, like the cell doors, and just built the hotel around it. The bar on the ground floor as well as the restaurant on the second floor feature the original cell doors. On the second floor, Kevin spotted his dream cart:

A cart used to bring food around to prisoners. 

It would make a sick bar in someone's home.

After such a long day of walking, we decided to just chill before dinnertime. We had a 9pm reservation at O Ya, which is my favorite restaurant in Boston and the best sushi restaurant I've ever been to. Their menu is huge and you're given four options for ordering: the grand tasting, the omakase (chef's tasting), ordering a la carte or creating a tasting menu of your own. The only different between the last two is that you should order all your food for the build-your-own-tasting menu since the kitchen will want to sequence and course it out properly. We decided to craft our own tasting menu and we thought this was the best option. The chef's tasting, the cheaper of the two prix fixe menus, was priced at $160 per person and only included food but no dessert. We designed our own menu, ordered a bottle of champagne, a half bottle of sake, and two desserts and came in at $170 per person. O Ya specializes in unique preparations of nigiri and sashimi so we sampled 13 of those items and then ordered soup, salad, dumplings and a tofu dish. If I were to design my own menu again, I may skip the non-sushi items since the nigiri and sashimi are mind-blowingly delicious.

If you happen to make it to O Ya, I recommend the following dishes:

• Hamachi nigiri with spicy banana pepper mousse
• Foie gras nigiri with balsamic chocolate kabayaki, raisin cocoa pulp and a sip of aged sake (not to be skipped!)
• Morel mushroom nigiri
• Homemade potato chip nigiri with caviar and truffle oil
• Kumamoto oyster sashimi with watermelon pearls and cucumber mignonette
• Hamachi sashimi with viet mignonette, Thai basil and fried shallot
• And basically anything with uni. 

I'm going to spend Christmas in Boston so hopefully I'll get to eat there again this year. It's so freaking good. Seriously. 

The last day we spent in Boston, we had a Southern brunch at Highland Kitchen, complete with live bluegrass music. The musicians were performing in a booth. So cool! We had brunch with my friends from college, Apratim and Liz, who now live in Cambridge because they're getting PhDs at MIT and Harvard, respectively. Liz is pursuing a PhD in Zoology, Herpetology to be exact, which is part of zoology that focuses on amphibians. Liz showed us her lab, the Harvard Museum of Natural History, and the basement of the museum!

Glass flowers

The highlight of the museum was definitely the glass flowers exhibit. A father/son team made models of plant species for the university between the years of 1887 and 1936. They are unbelievably lifelike and the collection is impressively large. I would definitely like to return to take a closer look at these flowers. 

The rest of the museum is awesome and I saw a lot of taxidermy animals and animals bones, which I always love seeing, and an beautiful collection of minerals. 

A pangolin, or to me, a giant walking pine cone.

The pangolin roams the earth today from Chad and Sudan to northern South Africa. This is Temminck's pangolin.

A type of carrion.

I took a photo of this bird because its plaque said that 90% of its diet is comprised of bone marrow. 

After browsing the museum, Liz took us to the basement. We started at alligator alley. 

Mouths agape. Kevin "looks on."

One of the largest toads ever found.

Liz explained to us that the museum has a large number of holotype specimens, meaning that they were the first examples used to describe an organism. Compare this to a paratype, which is a specimen of an organism that's used to describe the diversity of its kind. 

Liz, teaching us!

Apratim in the "over-sized collection."

At the end of the hall of shelves, there were cabinets labeled "Over-sized collection." Liz opened the door and we saw Galapagos Tortoises. Apratim explains how they have a "sex bump" that makes it easier for them to mate. Liz told us that they recently found out that these tortoises are hunters and will crush birds that crawl underneath them.  

We also went into an office in the basement where we each got to hold Lola, one of the bearded dragons. She's very friendly. 

Phil holds Lola

We saw a lot of awesome things and it was a great way to end the trip. I'm not too crazy about the city of Boston itself, but when you have friends and family to hang with while you're there, what does it matter? I can't wait to go back!