In the last year or two the southern part of Dorchester has been blessed with a large influx of new restaurants. Here are some capsule comments on ten of them (yes, ten! — and there are more) in alphabetical order:… Read More ›
Dorchester/Boston
The Industry
“The Industry”? Is that a restaurant? Yes, indeed; it’s Dorchester’s newest restaurant. Barbara and I decided to try it out last night. All in all — two thumbs up. Fortunately they have valet parking (in the gas station across the… Read More ›
Chinatown or Mission Hill?
Every year, the rising high-school sophomores at the Crimson Summer Academy take a field trip to a Boston neighborhood as part of their Quantitative Reasoning class. “What,” you may ask, “does a field trip to a neighborhood have to do… Read More ›
Cinquecento
You were probably thinking of 16th-Century Italy when you heard the word Cinquecento, right? That was my first thought too. Italy, yes, but in this context it’s an Italian restaurant in the South End of Boston, appropriately labeled an “authentic… Read More ›
Hollywood in Dorchester
What is an old Detroit police car doing on Ashmont Street in Dorchester? The answer, of course, is that they’re making a movie … and 2016 Dorchester is apparently a perfect stand-in for 1967 Detroit: The movie, which is directed… Read More ›
Playing with Fire
You probably think of Tess Gerritsen as the competent author of interesting genre novels featuring Rizzoli and Isles. Usually, after all, that’s exactly what she is. But Playing with Fire is something very different: part serious mainstream literature, part historical fiction, part… Read More ›
Another joyful visit to Ashmont Grill
Still too hot to cook last night, so we had to return to our old standby for dinner, the Ashmont Grill. (Normally we go there twice a month. This was probably our third time, but who’s counting?) We decided on… Read More ›
Dorset Hall
Much too hot to cook dinner last night, so we decided to try Dorset Hall, a fairly new addition to our neighborhood. Overall verdict: meh. First the good news: My salad was crisp, fresh, and huge. Barbara’s steak tips were… Read More ›
88 Wharf (once again)
It was time for dinner yesterday, and what were we going to do? Clearly it was too hot to cook — at least with a kitchen and dining room that aren’t air-conditioned — so it must be time to try… Read More ›
SMAPFY
“What,” you ask, “is SMAPFY?” I’m sure that is what you’re asking, isn’t it? SMAPFY stands for “Supreme Musical Artists of the Past Fifty Years”; it’s a voting simulation that we have been conducting at the Crimson Summer Academy for the past ten… Read More ›
Gaslight
Barbara and I just got back from an excellent dinner at Gaslight. Barbara started with a huge shredded beet salad, which she enjoyed but she had to take home more than half of it. I started with the traditional French… Read More ›
World Gone By
Almost exactly three years ago — on January 12, 2013 — I reviewed The Given Day and Live by Night, the first two novels in Dennis Lehane’s historical trilogy. At the time it wasn’t clear whether this would really be a… Read More ›
New Years Eve at Ashmont Grill
Last night, Barbara and I had a wonderful New Years Eve dinner at our favorite local restaurant, the Ashmont Grill, assisted by our favorite server, Michaela Collins. The food was especially scrumptious; the service was superbly attentive (without hovering), as always;… Read More ›
The food never arrived!
Oh noes! I waited and waited…they even sent me a receipt by email…but the food never arrived! Then I realized that I hadn’t ordered delivery for lunch…and such an odd menu…maybe they confused Dorchester, MA, with its namesake, Dorchester, England…. Read More ›
224, etc.
Twenty-five years ago you could count the number of good restaurants in Dorchester on the fingers of one hand (even if you had broken two fingers). Today it would take both hands and a foot…more likely two feet. The first… Read More ›
Dirty Old Boston, On the Dot Books, chain stores, and the Dot2Dot Cafe
Dorchester does have a bookstore! A very small one, but a bookstore nonetheless — and it’s neither a Barnes & Noble nor a Borders. No, wait…Borders is no more…is Barnes & Noble the only remaining brick-and-mortar chain bookstore? They’re also online,… Read More ›
MoS FT
Today we took 200 high-school freshmen on a full-day combined geometry-and-physics field trip to the Museum of Science. It was fun, educational, and…exhausting. Sometimes it was like herding cats. Fortunately we had a dozen adults, so no one individual was responsible… Read More ›
Einstein’s Dreams
What a mystifying play! Yesterday I went to see Einstein’s Dreams at the Central Square Theater, and I wish I brought Dr. Korsunsky along so that he could have explained the physics to me. A year of honors physics in high school was… Read More ›
Copenhagen
So…it’s hard to avoid telling a bad joke about uncertainty…you know, “Heisenberg and Bohr walk into a bar…” But I’m going to try hard to stay away from such jokes, Not that the play isn’t amusing. In fact it has… Read More ›
Ace Atkins as Robert Parker
Reading Robert B. Parker’s Spenser novels is a guilty pleasure. The Boston and Cambridge locales are spot on, the dialog is snappy, and most of the plots are entertaining. Or perhaps I should say it was a guilty pleasure, as Parker died… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 