Places in the Boston area

Restaurants and the like

• Addis Red Sea (Ethiopian food in the Back Bay)
• Baraka Café is a Tunisian restaurant with wonderful food in Central Square.
• Bella Luna (a great pizza place in Jamaica Plain)
• Buddha's Delight and Buddha's Delight II (vegetarian Vietnamese food)
• Bukhara Indian Bistro (a wonderful Indian restaurant in Jamaica Plain)
• I was introduced to Crispy Crêpes Café (new — external link) by my sweetie Zeph. I had the French Dip crêpe, with very tender beef, onion-garlic juice, and melted brie. It was spectacular! I hope they’re out of it some day, because that's probably the only way I’m going to try anything else on their menu. (They did have a television on, but that’s the only strike against them.)
• Dalí Restaurant (external link) is a tapas bar in Somerville. It's noisy and crowded, but that just contributes to the wonderful festive atmosphere. It's really an excellent place to go to have a wonderful good time. Expect a wait, at least on a weekend evening.
• Diesel Café (awesome café in David Square)
• Doyle's Café (Irish bar and restaurant in Jamaica Plain)
• JP Seafood Café, a great Korean-Japanese restaurant. (This is a link to their menu at dinerate.com)
• Rhythm and Spice (external link) serve excellent Carribean food. The broken JavaScript navigation bar on their web site is weird, though. :-)
• Sound Bites (great brunch food in Ball Square, Somerville)
• Tasca Restaurant (external link) is a Tapas place in Brighton (very near where Heidi and I used to live)

Other stuff

• Sacco's Bowl Haven (external link) offers candlepin bowling and billiards in an, um, unpretentious environment in Davis Square, Somerville.
• The Middlesex Fells Reservation (external link) is a great place to hike or mountain bike or lie on the rocks at the top of a hill and look out over eastern Massachusetts. There's a meadow there called the Sheepfold where people bring their dogs — it's fun to be someplace where the dogs are in charge and humans are visiting observers to their culture. :-)
• Canobie Lake Park, just over the border in New Hampshire, is an amusement park with water rides and some great coasters. (The link is to their site, http://www.canobie.com/.) They're open June, July, and August every day (varying hours), and weekends in May and September.

Sadly defunct

• Country Life (external link) was a vegan buffet in downtown Boston with really yummy food. I loved the wheat-gluten-and-peanut-butter BBQ ribs! Sadly, they closed in 2003 or -4, but not before I bought their cookbook.
• Alas, Curious Liquids has closed. (They were a coffeehouse near the Boston Common and the State House.) I understand a bagel shop down the street adopted some of their menu items, but I haven't been there.