There was no “they,” and there was no retirement.
ha, that’s what I had heard from a couple of people. So it just perm. closed then with nobody taking over?
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Nobody taking over. There was a prospective buyer a while back, but he backed out.
Saw that Fiore in the north end is closing. Can’t say I’d been there in quite some time. Apparently a new restaurant named Umbria will be going into the space. It is quite a huge space with nice outdoor dining in the summer.
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That’s sad news. Before we moved here in 2015, I was here one week per month for work, staying in Lexington and ordering a lot of delivery for dinner. They quickly became one of my go-to restaurants.
DaVinci’s is open. We drove by en route to have some Korean dishes at Ponzu. We’ll probably try Aegean next.
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Good to know. How was Ponzu? I haven’t been in a few years now (since Billy left).
The new owners are quite nice, and they’ve brightened the place up. They also offer dry hot pot now, but we haven’t tried it yet.
Our meal was quite satisfying. Most of us wanted a warm soup, so my wife had soondubujigae with seafood (had been a little thin on a few occasions but quite flavorful last night, without that metallic tang I seemed to detect at Kaju in the past), my daughter had the doenjangigae, and I got the kimchijigae, which I was happy to see included rice cakes in addition to the tofu. My son is a salmon fanatic so enjoyed a sake-don and two additional orders of salmon sashimi, so the 8-year-old’s meal cost twice what anyone else’s did. Comfort food. Unfortunately, banchan was a casualty of COVID.
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Thanks! I will discuss working it back into our rotation with the BF.
I’m generally not about places that mix and match different Asian cuisines, but make an exception for Ponzu, which has had consistently good sushi over the years and solid (even if only-game-in-town) Korean. We went there for our last pre-lockdown dinner back in 2000. Sad about banchan, which I didn’t realize was gone.
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Mary Chung’s in Central Square Cambridge to close Dec. 31.
So sad!
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@Madrid I came here to post that exact thing! So sad! I ate there a lot when I worked at Polaroid and always enjoyed it.
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I worked on Sidney Street for years and that was a go-to for lunch. I’m beside myself but at the same time, I hope they get a $#it load of money in the real estate transaction.
But still 
I wonder if they’ll pass along the recipes? (Albeit, they won’t be the same.)
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Since they are still doing only take out, we’d love to pick up at least once before Jan. 1. But I can find only menus online at third-party sites and have no idea if they are up-to-date. Does anyone have a reliable online menu link?
They don’t own it so while I, too, would hope they will profit from the real estate transaction, it seems unlikely.
From the Globe article:
“The family leases the space from MIT. Chung is unsure who will take over the restaurant, although he notes that plenty of hotels are being built in the area. In September, plans were announced to potentially turn the nearby Middle East nightclub …”
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Wow, that is a local institution indeed. I used to also work in the Kendall and Central Sq areas, so this was an occasional lunch spot. Over the years, their menu was more hit or miss for me (skewing towards a more Chinese-American audience), but they had a few lunch gems that will be sorely missed. Their dan dan noodles for sure was regularly in my lunch takeout rotation. Sad to see it go.
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Has anyone been to Mary Chung since the terrible news? I keep reading that it’s been “crazy busy.” We are seeing “Life of Pi” tomorrow afternoon at the ART and I thought, “Spring Onion will love MC.” I wonder if it will impossible. He has all week off next week so maybe we’ll have better luck during the week? Or not.
I gotta see my favorite server, Alice. Is she still there?!
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We are really hoping to get to Mary Chung soon, but as noted above, it seems to be only take out, no dine in, and I haven’t been able to find a reliably updated menu on line.
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Yeah I get that. I’m just wondering what happened to the servers.
I’ve found good info and reminiscing on this public Facebook group, including news that Mary fell recently, resulting in 2 black eyes. 
They’ve taken the phone of the hook and there’s currently a 60-90 minute wait for food.
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Thanks for the update, sorry for Mary’s fall! Do they let you sit inside to wait for the food? Looks like not, there is a long line on the sidewalk in a Facebook photo.
And someone 2 hours ago posted that they arrived at noon, and their order will be ready at 7:30!
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