Pegmeister, What a pleasant surprise to hear from you. It has been a long time. Not posting much myself anymore. Too busy trying to make a living (what’s that?). Still hungry as ever though. Really miss eating out, but my wife and I are eating pretty well at home. We tried Tom Colman’s new restaurant, “Liv Creative Cuisine”, just before this mess started. Really good, as expected. An excellent chef! Remember him as the first chef at “The Fat Cat”?
Be Well (and Enjoy),
CocoDan
My goodness CocoDan it really has been a long time. I was hoping to try Fat Cat’s new location but haven’t made it there. When this is all over we plan to get out more to support our restaurants. Be well!!
I don’t want to worry no more about what food safety measures restaurants are taking? I bought a cookbook to cook my favorite restaurant dishes that I found on wordpress to buy check it out and let me know what you think. https://mastermooo.wordpress.com/blog-2/
We went down a long list of options before settling on takeout from Avenue Kitchen and Bar last night (Ball Square, Somerville). I was pleased with our dinner- their takeout menu has most of their regular options. We passed on the deep dish pizza, which they are known for, as we’d had pizza recently, and ordered an assortment of other items. For apps, we really like the maple chili duck drumettes.
DC and I both had crispy fried chicken sandwiches- excellent assortment of spiralized pickled veg on top. Highland Fried was one of our higher-up initial options, but they weren’t answering the phone so this satisfied. We got one side of fries and one of sweet potato fries, which were the winners although both traveled pretty well. We also shared a “bowl” which I believe I’ve ordered in house as a “salad.” It was an enormous pile of roasted veg and romaine.
Our spring onions split an order of mac and cheese. We’re in a pandemic here, people. I love that it came with a big tangle of broccoli rabe on top; they weren’t as thrilled. It also had quite a bit of ham which they both described as looking like what they’ve seen classmates eating out of a plastic lunch package (must toot my own horn- these are kids who do not know the term “lunchables,” but we figured out what they were referring to). It was kind of a low-quality boiled ham cube situation, so I’ll give them that. Noodles and sauce and crunchy topping were good though.
I have no idea how much anything cost as prices weren’t listed on the takeout menu and we just read a credit card over the phone, and apparently a total was not provided. Their menu prices have seemed fair in the past. We were all full and happy, and the owner thanked us for our business and said it’s been tough.
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funnily enough, this was our takeout of choice on Saturday night as well. We did get the Detroit style pizza, which we’ve had multiple times and really enjoy. (I’m a big fan of well done pizza, and the burnt edges that you get with Detroit style really do it for me). The sauce even passes muster for the (half Italian) s.o., which is really saying something as she is often unimpressed with the red sauce from places like Bob’s or New Deal.
In general, I like this place. I missed sitting at the bar and drinking a beer while I waited for my pizza to be made, but hopefully some day that’ll happen again.
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Sarma is offering 3 options for Easter dinner and we have ordered #2 and 3 for pick up on Saturday.
A little different from our usual Spring celebration menu but we are looking forward to it.
There should be a few leftovers to take us into the beginning of the week.
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And they all sound fabulous!
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That’s our local go-to for lobster rolls. They take a lot of care in their prepped food. Fried clams, as @passing_thru states are quite good, too. My mom got fish and chips before and we looked in stunned silence at the portion size.
I think fishmongers could use all the biz they can get these days. We’ll hit them up this week.
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I haven’t done anything fun in such a long time, I think I’m about due. So trying to wrack my feeble brain to try to provide a run-down of what chez digga has been up to lately.
-a couple of excellent take-out pizza meals from Joe Pizza in West Medford, which I reported back on recently. Pick-up is not for the faint-of-heart, though. No curbside, one still hands over credit card or cash on pick-up. I bet if you asked, they would take credit card info over the phone. Whole family was working hard behind the counter
-sushi from Sono Sushi in Arlington last week, which B was craving. They suspended pick-up and were only doing delivery with all payment done on-line/over the phone… $2 delivery charge and we added a tip for the driver in addition to tip for the kitchen. I wanted to suggest to them, hey how about just setting up a table outside where folks could pick up their orders but I felt weird about doing that. It was good, but ingredients didn’t feel as fresh as they usually do (not talking about the fish, which was fine, but the other extraneous stuff…B loves his fancy maki rolls)
-we had to bust out of jail on a nice sunny day so we headed to Rockport MA (Halibut Point…coastal state parks are still open as long as it’s not a beach). We got take-out lobster rolls and a hot dog for spring onion from Charlie’s near Good Harbor Beach. They had a steady stream of visitors, all respecting the rules and the restaurant itself had practices in place that made us feel completely comfortable. With a couple of 4-packs of Bent Water and True North beer (in truth, we only drank 3 between the 2 of us…spring onion declined), we headed to Halibut Point. I suggested, hey, let’s eat outside the Lobster Pool (they’re still closed for the season) before hitting Halibut Point. Not to toot my own horn, it turned out to be the perfect picnic spot. Brown-bagging it was easy, too. 
And Halibut Point, while well-populated, never felt unsafe. Everyone maintained respectful distances
Our next goals are lobster rolls from Fresh Pond Seafood, hand-pulled noodles from Home Taste ARL, and take-out Chinese from Szechuan’s Dumpling. Spring onion, in particular, is jonesing for some lo mein.
Miss you all. And I loved Kara Baskin’s recent Globe article. I’ve been hoping she or Devra would address this.
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We’ve been missing sushi more than anything. Based on nothing but have been hesitant about getting uncooked food prepared by someone else.
Pizza is definitely on deck soon.
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My husband and I were incredibly touched to find this tucked in our prepaid takeaway order from a very small local cafe in our town.
The picture says it all.
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Oh, thanks for linking that, digga. I read it this afternoon and really loved it as well. Perspective is invaluable right now., and these connections both here in HO and in our larger local communities are gifts to savor.
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I love this place. It’s a hidden gem. Not sure about take out, but their fried seafood is quite good and quite a value.
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Has anyone done Yume Wo Katare take out? I saw on Eater that they were doing a ticketed ramen take out each night. This might be our chance to finally avoid the line and also not have to get involved in the whole theater of it, which does not appeal to us.
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I haven’t done the take out yet, but I do like the ramen there.
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We don’t celebrate Easter at chez digga, but who needs a special occasion - these set menus sound incredible.
Chalawan Easter set menu
Later this morning, we’re picking up Goldilox bagels for the first time. I hope they’re good - we got a dozen (1/2 everything 1/2 plain for spring onion + veggie cream cheese). I’ll report back.
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Dang, these are good bagels. Even the plain ones (which spring onion lurved). Veggie cream cheese was creeeamy. 
Easy procedure. I submitted my online order on Tuesday, pre-paid and added a healthy tip. I chose walk-up option. Easy street parking on Winthrop St. I walked up to the front door at the appointed time (you choose the time, they give you a 15-min window). Waited outside, a nice person asks the name on the order and hands over a paper bag of bageliciousness.
I’m slicing most of them NOW and freezing them.
I tied this in with a stop at the Medford Whole Foods/Sav-Mor liquors which I’ll recount on the other thread about stocking up. Had a weird experience.
ETA: Pastry scraper thingy comes in handy here, where nothing gets wasted, not even the smallest poppy seed.
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Man, I hope Chalawan makes it. It’s on my list to try and it’s one of the ones I’m very excited about.
Does Goldilox have a storefront too? I love a really good chewy bagel.
EDIT: Guess I answered my own question by digging through their website. 
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I think the bagels here are pretty good, though I prefer Bagelsaurus. I thought both of these places were closed, so I ended up ordering a box from Ess-A-Bagel on Goldbelly when I saw a sweet buy-one get-one baker’s dozen deal with free shipping for 59$ and stocked my freezer with those. The Goldilox pickup setup sounds good, though. I’ll check that out if this whole thing is still going when I clear my freezer!
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