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I miss working in Kendall Square
Jun. 4th, 2008 01:50 pmIt's nice to be able to get off a stop early and everything, but Central Square is seriously a pain. Why? Lunch break is impossible. In Kendall there were like 8 choices for food, and all of them were well tried and tested and good--and affordable!
Here it's a different story. All of the little sandwich shops and such are either too expensive, gross, or both. There's a Shaws across the street but getting basically unprepared slop everyday gets really old. The MIT Student Union isn't that long of a walk, but even the choices there get tiresome after about a week.
So today I was getting ready to walk to the union anyway, but the annoying rain in my face and the cold convinced me that I didn't feel like dealing with being outside that long. Short of other options, I happened to notice a hole in the wall middle eastern place that had VERY affordable prices, so I went in.
I ordered a really simple salad, like REALLY simple, but it still took the woman 10-15 minutes to make it. While she was doing so, I was noticing that the place was a little sketchy. It was dusty and full of old relics, and there was some scratchy middle eastern tunes whining in the background. There was like one other couple there, but aside that it was empty, and I could see behind the woman working to a fully visible kitchen that looked, for lack of a better word, filthy.
But I paid $4 for the salad anyway, figuring that sometimes it's the little sketchy places that are actually the best. But when I opened the weird little styrofoam to-go box and saw that the salad looked even sketchier than the store, I decided to do some research. I stopped off at Shaws and got a Twix bar, and then came back to the annex and checked them out.
According to Yelp, the place I went, The Olive Tree, is a two star deal, earning a lot of one star reviews, too. With that stellar recommendation plus what I'd observed, I had to ditch the salad. So now I'm sitting here eating my Twix bar, willing it not to be my ONLY lunch but under the circumstances I don't have many other choices unless I want to spring for a $7 veggie burger. Which I am not at all compelled to do considering I already bought the $4 salad.
Bugger. I really need to start preparing my own lunches again.
Here it's a different story. All of the little sandwich shops and such are either too expensive, gross, or both. There's a Shaws across the street but getting basically unprepared slop everyday gets really old. The MIT Student Union isn't that long of a walk, but even the choices there get tiresome after about a week.
So today I was getting ready to walk to the union anyway, but the annoying rain in my face and the cold convinced me that I didn't feel like dealing with being outside that long. Short of other options, I happened to notice a hole in the wall middle eastern place that had VERY affordable prices, so I went in.
I ordered a really simple salad, like REALLY simple, but it still took the woman 10-15 minutes to make it. While she was doing so, I was noticing that the place was a little sketchy. It was dusty and full of old relics, and there was some scratchy middle eastern tunes whining in the background. There was like one other couple there, but aside that it was empty, and I could see behind the woman working to a fully visible kitchen that looked, for lack of a better word, filthy.
But I paid $4 for the salad anyway, figuring that sometimes it's the little sketchy places that are actually the best. But when I opened the weird little styrofoam to-go box and saw that the salad looked even sketchier than the store, I decided to do some research. I stopped off at Shaws and got a Twix bar, and then came back to the annex and checked them out.
According to Yelp, the place I went, The Olive Tree, is a two star deal, earning a lot of one star reviews, too. With that stellar recommendation plus what I'd observed, I had to ditch the salad. So now I'm sitting here eating my Twix bar, willing it not to be my ONLY lunch but under the circumstances I don't have many other choices unless I want to spring for a $7 veggie burger. Which I am not at all compelled to do considering I already bought the $4 salad.
Bugger. I really need to start preparing my own lunches again.
