Freelance Consultant's Diary

We are not big meat eaters and that is why even though we had seen this restaurant nestled below PF Chang, we never at there, until yesterday.  We were in the holiday spirit and it seemed like a good idea to try something different in the spirit of the holiday season.  We were seated promptly by a cheerful hostess.  The waiter was a little bit snooty.  Maybe it had something to do with his middle age or he was just overworked on a busy Friday before the long Christmas weekend. I ordered a regular chicken sandwich and my wife wanted the same but with something called Tokyo style (instead of your usual lettuce and tomato they add a few other things).  We both also ordered specialty beers (they have a good selection if you like to try new beers).  The food took longer than usual for lunch but what shocked both of us was that the chicken was not hot.  It was not super cold either but just about room temperature.  At a grill we expected the piece of ch...

I was new to Boston in 2002 and when I asked my secretary Bunny to suggest a restaurant to bring my wife to for a meal, she suggested .  We had a great evening and since then we have gone several times over the years for their weekend brunches.  Living in the suburbs, weekend brunch works best for us because the traffic to Boston is light and parking is not a problem. Tonight we were looking for a place to go for dinner and did not think a minute about going to Masa.  As always the service was excellent.  My wife had spinach and artichoke enchilada (listed as an appetizer on the dinner menu but if you are light eater, it has plenty of calories for a meal).  It is made from ancho mole and oaxaca cheese.  A bit hot but hey, worth it. I ate roasted salmon with chipotle and horseradish crust that is placed on top of the fish.  The dish is topped off creme fraiche and salmon caviar.  Finally, warm cucumber and cilantro relish all around the fish. ...

To take advantage of a Black Friday sale on iPad 2 we were going to drive to CT since Massachusetts shops were going to be closed .  Or at least we did not think that it was worth waiting till 1 AM to go shop.  In the meantime, I kept searching online for deals and saw that Best Buy was selling the same iPad not with a $75 Walmart gift certificate but with a straightforward $60 off.  Definitely the right thing to do even with the slightly higher price because for just $15 it is not worth lining up at 10 PM in another state without a guarantee that I will get it and then figuring out how to spend $75 in Walmart.  The big lesson: shop online, avoid the lines, no need to fight for parking spots, and just sit back and smile at all the losers rushing to the shops.

Lorena and I are both addicted to coffee and often wonder what would it take to get European or Japanese or Argentinian style cafes in America, so when WCVB Chronicle featured Render ( 563 Columbus Avenue ), we decided to stop by when we were in the Copley Square area for a laser treatment at the Athena Salon Spa.  It is a cute little place with very attentive and courteous staff (thus, a huge departure from Starbucks where employees really don't care about you and the cafe is almost always dirty and it seems that the company strategy is to employ a business model with an emphasis on take-out rather than encourage a cafe culture).  Lorena tried a cappuccino (it had less foam than she likes) and I had a Colombian pour coffee (not dark enough and not as full bodied as I like).  Overall, a great place to go for a coffee but I need to try other coffees to make sure that I find the coffee I like.

I hate shopping in general and even more so on Black Friday.  I might have shopped maybe once of twice in my life and have not done so since 2005.  I mean who wants to get up early in the cold just to save some money?  Not that I do not like to save money but I think that if you shop smartly there are bargains you can find through other means.  This year, though, Lorena has her eyes on an iPad, but when we started to hear that Walmart and many other stores will open on Thanksgiving Day itself but not in Massachusetts where the law does not allow that, we started to wonder where to go, because Rhode Island is the same as well and we are closer to RI than CT or NH.  Thanks to Google Maps we figured out that the store in Putnam, CT is just 30 miles away for us, and they will have the iPad that she wants at 10 PM.  So that is where we will try to get that and maybe some other products that may be on sale.