Posts Tagged “central square”

New at four burgers
the fifth burger is Bison
order now online.

Idaho fries are
always preferred over sweet,
which can get soggy.

You can choose a cheese
from the menu but really
there’s just one, cheddar.

This morning, like many Sunday mornings, I headed down Mass Ave to what’s always a difficult brunch choice, Mariposa Bakery on the right, and Cafe Luna on the left.   Today I went left.

Cafe Luna has spiffed up a bit of late, and I definitely approve.  When I arrived near 11am, it was close to empty but by noon there was a line out front.  They have a full brunch menu, but I tend to stick with the smaller savory items, such as the breakfast sandwich (bacon egg and cheese with spinach grilled on a ciabatta, $4.95) or the healthy wrap (egg whites, spinach, cheese and roasted red pepper in a whole wheat wrap, $4.95) and of course coffee.

Cafe Luna is also the source of some fine gelato and free wifi, and they have a scrabble set too.  I will forgive them for once stocking “puffo” flavor.

Sunday brunch is augmented by live jazz most weeks.  The usual combo seems to be Hiro Honshuku’s Trio La Luna, with Honshuku on flute and EWI, Casper Gyldensøe on guitar, and Alex Raymond Busby Smith on bass.  Last time I was there a quartet was playing but I didn’t get their name.  If you can ID them, I’d be hapy to link, they were quite good.

If you arrive early, don’t get too comfortable in the window, that’s where the band will start setting up.

Maybe Central Square isn’t going to the dogs after all.  This weekend I caught a performance of a stage adaptation of one of my favorite books ever, Alan Lightman’s Einstein’s Dreams.  The show is closed now, and you can read better reviews of it in the Phoenix for example.  I enjoyed it a great deal, but more than that, I’m happy that it was put on in a new theater space in my neighborhood in collaboration with another neighbor, MIT.

If you don’t know, the Central Square Theater opened this summer or fall at 450 Mass Ave, on or near what I think was once the site of Pho Republique.  The production of Einstein’s Dreams is the work of something called the Catalyst Collaborative, a joint venture of MIT and Underground Railway Theater (URT) for “creating and presenting plays that deepen public understanding about science, while simultaneously providing an artistic and emotional experience not available in other forms of dialogue about science.“  How cool is that?  In addition, I spotted MIT Prof. Robert Jaffe’s name on the advisory board – you might remember him from another excellent MIT arts collaboration, the MIT-Photographic Resource Center gallery at the Center for Theoretical Physics.  And yes, the show did feature blackboards.  The next Catalyst Collaborative joint is going to be Bertolt Brecht’s Life of Galileo – with puppets! – in conjunction with the Cambridge Science Festival in the spring.

One should’t have to choose, but I’d probably take a theater over a police station as a neighbor.  But I’d certainly rather have police patrolling the neighborhood than actors.

On Friday, the Cambridge police department moved out of its 75 year old Central Square headquarters, heading for a new facility in East Cambridge.  In an unrelated incident on the same day, about two blocks away, somebody not very gently removed the lock on the door of limeduck world headquarters and availed himself of assorted valuables. Don’t worry, the art collection, vintage scrabble set, and Bordeaux are all intact.

I don’t for a minute assign the Cambridge PD any negligence around this burglary, and both the officer and the detective were prompt, compassionate and professional despite the disruption going on in their office, doing what little can be done after the fact of a break-in. My neighbors, on the other hand, who probably buzzed the burglar in without asking questions, are totally off my holiday card list.

I have to wonder if this doesn’t signal a downturn in the fortunes of Central Square, long among the least desirable of Cambridge’s major named squares, often fighting a reputation for grittiness.  Whenever somebody expressed any reservation about visiting me in Central, I would always say, “I’m two blocks from the police station.” Will tough economic times plus a reduction in the visible presence of the law turn Cronin Park into a shooting gallery?  It seems unlikely, but I’m going to be a little more vigilant, and I suppose you should be, too. You can see Cambridge crime reports on the CPD web site, although they don’t seem to be updated that quickly.  Here’s one for the Riverside area.

And if a shady character offers you a deal on a used brass rat, call the cops.

After catching up with Gibraltarian M at 1369 in Central, I took an errand ramble around the neighborhood and popped into Mariposa Bakery on impulse.  On the counter, unlabeled, was a basket of scones that turned out to be cheddar-scallion, one of my favorites.  The friendly but somewhat overcaffeinated counterman cheerully rang me up.  Smaller than the usual cafe bakery scone, but not so small as to make me feel cheated (see recent oatmeal scone developments at Diesel), Mariposa’s scones were light and moist.  The cheddar flavor was subdued but attended by some tasty cheese crusts at the margins.