Whoops, slept on making a new thread again. D’oh. You all know the score for this thread, though. Have at it!
Cambridge Day is reporting that Highland Fried in Inman Square has closed.
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We had one “ok” meal there a couple of years ago, probably post-Museum of Science. It was a ghost town on a Saturday afternoon even then. Still, I’m surprised because the “Highland” brand is such a reliable one (at least to me).
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yeah, I only went once back in 2017. (About when they opened). I just looked back at the review I posted here to refresh my memory, and I found it middling as well. It’s odd, as I generally have high praise for Highland Kitchen.
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apparently, some new bubble tea place (Vivi Bubble Tea) is applying to sell boba etc out of 1776 Massachusetts Ave in Cambridge. Since there is already bubble tea available at Little Bake downstairs in the Porter Exchange (1925 Massachusetts Ave) and there’s another bubble tea place (OneZo) opening soon in the old Joie de Vivre space at 1792 Massachusetts Ave. one is forced to wonder: how many bubble tea places do you really need in the space of a few blocks???
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I’ve been out of Waltham for much of the summer. I just got back and noticed 2 new places.
Across from the movie theater used to be a Greek place. It’s gone and is now “Shanghai cuisine”.
Next door to Bonchon on Moody the bu blue tea place is now open (we have more bubble tea places all of a sudden).
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Does anyone know anything about Ravello, a new-to-me Italian restaurant across the street from where ShangriLa used to be (sob)? I would have said Belmont but their website says Watertown.
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Ravello was the replacement of Country Mile - it has the same owners but a new chef. Country Me had a lot of potential with interesting, more creative dished whereas Ravello is more a decent Italian restaurant which isn’t bad but also nothing special (but most likely gives more business/money (“safe enough food” for Belmont) in that part of the city for the owners.
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honkman, I think I remember you were moving from the Boston area soon…back to Calif., maybe? I could be wrong. If you are moving, how was your experience eating and cooking here? I get that’s a bit off-topic!
Madrid - yes, we moved end of June to the Bay Area and moved in August in our house here in Redwood City. Since our daughter can’t be vaccinated yet we don’t go out for restaurant visits yet (hopefully with the current estimated children vaccination timelines that might change by beginning of the next year (but even if we are all vaccinated we will see how the variant situation will be and if we are willing to go to restaurants- but we often talk aboit how much we miss our 2-3 restaurant visits each week pre-covid. So restaurants”visits “ are currently limited to one take out dinner each week and since we don’t want to have cold food that limits our area - we found some very good Italian, Pakistani, Japanese food, good (but not on the same level as Area 4) pizza and decent Korean. Gelato is also great so far - we even found a place in SF which serves Spaghetti Ice (which is a very unique German ice cream speciality) and very good currywurst (even more typical German smack food)
Cooking is funny here as we get a lot of very good produce (and we tend to eat often very non-meat focused anyway) and there are many good ethnic market with a lot of options to buy Korean, Indian, Japanese, French etc ingredients. The one thing we haven’t found yet is really good bread - there is ACME and other well known bread a different places but to be honest it is not hood enough to spend $7-9 as we also tend to bake our own bread (but don’t have an oven currently as it will be replaced in a few weeks). So overall we are settling in nicely but also miss Boston (and promised our daughter to visit it once a year so she can visit her friends)
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I grew up in Burlingame, so I have a bit of envy 
Sending best wishes!
……Russo’s. 
pretty sure tomorrow is the final day.
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looks like you are correct. Wicked Local has put up photos today from what they call the second to last day.
Looks crowded! It’ll probably be mayhem tomorrow, it was generally bad enough on any average Saturday.
End of an era. I’ll miss that place.
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The S.O. Went to Russo’s today after I posted. He said it was sad. Empty shelves. No flowers. Bakery had very little. Kind of glad I didn’t go. I’ll remember it as busy and vibrant. 
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I am jealous…I moved back to Boston from Palo Alto in 1989…still miss the produce, the ethnic markets, the easy availability of all kinds of wonderful ingredients. We used to go to a wonderful Mexican restaurant in Redwood City that has probably long since closed. I’m sure you get much better Mexican food that is available in Boston. I hope your daughter and everyone can get vaccinated soon! I also hope that oven gets installed soon. Best wishes.
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I’ll let you know when we reach that answer here in Quincy. 
We have a Vivi tea already here, and it was one of the earlier ones. Now between North Quincy to Wollaston alone, there is Vivi, Yocha, Onezo, PTea, Mogee Tea (all within a block of each other), and then if you stroll down about 10 minutes max, you also get Coco (newly opened in the 99 Ranch), Kung Fu tea, Gong Cha, Momo Cafe and Beauty Tea. This does not even include the one off food places in between that will also sell drinks like the two banh mi places, the hot pot place, the bakeries, or the yunnan noodle place that is on the other side of Wollaston station.
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This reminds me of the Great Froyo Reckoning of about a decade ago, when upwards of 75% of commercial real estate was occupied by froyo machines, and the rest was mix-in storage.
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word is that Bar Enza, the Mark Ladner spot in the Charles Hotel (in the old Rialto space), will be open for dinner sometime before the end of the month.
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That is what my sister (born and raised here but fled for the southwest 25 years ago, never to return) would call a Hub classique: all of us will remember it as “the old Rialto space” forever, likely no matter what else goes in there.
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And the cupcake debacle of around the similar era…
Davis Square was hit hard during the fro yo Reckoning of yore.
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