Posts Tagged “davis square”

Following up on the five things I won’t miss about Davis, here are five that will keep me coming back:

Dave’s Fresh Pasta: there are lots of fine lunching establishments around here, even though not one serves the idealized cheese sandwich, but Dave’s is special.  Besides the awesome selection of grilled sandwiches (my faves include the cubano and the muffaleta), Dave’s has an excellent wine section, a wonderful cheese case, an impressive deli, and oddly enough I’ve never even tried the fresh pasta.

The lunch special at Dragon Garden: yes, I know this place looks suspect at best, but they dish up a ma po tofu lunch special that’s $5 with soup and a can of soda.  There’s something comforting about this sort of thing, and it helps lower you center of gravity in the winter.  I also enjoy their general gau chicken and tofu.

Coffee: Davis has at least three major coffee streams: Dunkin, Starbucks and independent Diesel.  I enjoy the latter two in equal measure, but I have to give special kudos to Diesel’s pool table and Starbucks’ fireplace.

Local shops: There’s some chain food in Davis, but not much if any chain retail.  I especially like Magpie, D Squared, and Bowl & Board as representatives of the vibrant local business scene.  Sharp-eyed fashion blogger A even crossed the river from bizzaro-Davis fashion capital JP to visit Suneri boutique here.

Rounding out my top five is the double treat of the Kick Ass Dairy Bar and When Pigs Fly Bakery a bit outside the square proper on Highland.  I don’t care for those allegedly kick-ass cupcakes (and cupcakes are so last year anyway) but the fresh and local fare at the dairy bar and bakery are peerless.  A bakery that sells loaves whole or cut on the spot is a must-have for any neighborhood that wants to be called such.

Rome might be the Eternal City, but I will always return to Davis Square, the Paris of Somerville.

Change is the only constant, and soon I’ll be spending a lot less time in Davis Square.  It’s truly the Paris of Somerville and I’ll miss it – except for these things:

Chuggers: Maybe one day I’ll have a minute for their cause (by which they mean a dollar, or several) but until then I will continue to avoid these earnest yet shadowy CHarity mUGGERS who are a plague upon Davis Square.  At least the clean-cut gents promoting the LDS wear nametags, and we know who they represent.  I gave at the office, thanks.

Crappy pizza: Sure, this is a problem in many places, but the drought of quality pizza in Davis is just despressing.  There’s lots of great places to have lunch around here but sometimes you just want a slice.  Is thin crust without orange oil too much to ask?  Do we have to order in from Medford?

Precision parking enforcement: I don’t have much sympathy for people who park illegally or for those who try to drive in dense urban areas, but the Somerville parking enforcement around Davis is deadly accurate to the minute of meter expiration, and frankly, it bums me out.

Diesel booth squatters: I don’t remember ever wanting to study as long and hard as these people do, no matter how caffeinated I was.  What’s the deal with spreading your stuff out to soak up an entire four-top all day long?  Don’t you ever have to go to the bathroom?  Aren’t you worried about bedsores?

The horrifying stench off Grove Street near Elm: I don’t know what it is or where it comes from, but it’s bad.  Real bad.  I think it’s actually the smell of death.  And as summer advances, it’s not getting better.  If that’s coming from one of those restaurants, somebody needs to look into it, stat.  Maybe the guys playing soccer in bloody aprons in the parking lot know something about it, but I’m not going to get close enough to ask them.

Since the Davis Square cheese sandwich quest became a semi-regular feature back in May, I’ve been aware of Deli-icious but for whatever reason never checked out their cheese sandwich.  Until this week.

Yelpsters seem generally bullish on the place, and Chowhound offers an interesting bit of navistalgia around the former occupant of the space and the price of sandwiches.

I ordered the grilled cheese with bacon and tomato on sourdough.  About as traditional and comforting as you can get on a winters day.  They asked if I wanted American cheese, I asked for cheddar.

So almost perfect and yet a miss.

The bread was good sourdough, buttered and griddled just right.  The bacon was crispy and not overbearing.  The tomato was good, maybe a bit too thickly sliced.  But the cheese… the cheese was that bland deli loaf cheese that breaks my heart.  How hard would it be for them to stock a sharp vermont cheddar?

I recommend this grilled cheese sandwich for anybody looking for a nostalgic comfort experience, but not for anybody who really loves cheese.  The quest goes on.

Apparently I’m one of the last to notice that CD Spins in Davis Square is closed.  It looks like it’s been that way about two weeks, and even though I’m in the neighborhood almost every day, I just today noticed this scary sign in the window.

It reminds me a bit of the sudden closure of Corners Framing in Cambridgeport.  It’s not just that they went out of business, it’s that they were forcibly put out of business.  That implies a disorderly, unplanned exit from the world of commerce.  Indeed, you can still see some inventory in there.

I don’t know if the whole chain is gone or just this store or what precisely went down, but it certainly looks like another nail in the coffin of the physical media music business.  In fact, I’m having some trouble recalling the last time I bought music on CD for myself, and even more trouble figuring out the last time I was actually in a music store for that purpose.  Tower Records is gone from Harvard Square, HMV too. Mojo and Cheapo are gone from Central.  I guess folks buy CDs online or just download music directly.

Like many, I ripped all my CDs to MP3 some time ago.  Perhaps unlike many I still have the CDs, (but not the jewel cases) not so much for backup (although that’s a good idea, isn’t it?) but because I believe it would be wrong to sell them or give them away when I’m still using the music.  If more people shared my reservation, would the used CD business have dried up sooner, or later?

The cheese sandwich quest continues.  Following up on a tip from Brian, I ordered up the Ploughman’s Lunch at The Burren here in Davis.  It came with excellent chips (fries) but the cheese was less than it might have been.  Apologies for the sub-par cameraphone shot, I was caught out without my Ricoh.

The menu describes it thusly: “Ploughman’s Lunch – $5.95 - open faced sandwich on french bread with choice of swiss or cheddar with  lettuce, tomato & onion, accompanied with branston pickle“

I opted for cheddar, which was of decent quality but a little stingy in quantity, just one square slice per half sandwich.  The sandwich wasn’t actually open-faced, but I suppose I could have ditched half the bread.  I’m not sure how authentic this is, but it was an inexpensive and filling sandwich.  A perfect cheese sandwich, perhaps not.  Next stop, Deli-icous?