COVER STORY
Mass. appeal
The hidden Back Bay
From Tower Records to the river, Mass. Ave. tries to sneak quietly through the tonier, more residential section of Back Bay. But look carefully and you'll find some cosmopolitan, and even bohemian, touches.
Across the street diagonally from Tower Records, on an upper floor safe from casual view, is the body-piercing shop Tribal Ways. Back on the other side of the street, the Blue Cat Cafe seems to be settling in for the long haul in a location that saw a lot of turnover during the mid '90s.
Blue Cat imitates the McDonald's down the street (probably unwittingly) with its posters of jazz musicians, but it takes the theme further by having a DJ spin bebop records at night. (Yes, on an actual turntable.) The food is "New American," which means hamburgers and wasabi tuna on the same menu, at reasonable prices.
Nearby is another new restaurant, Clio, which has radically altered the space that once housed the Eliot Lounge, an agreeably downscale sports bar. Clio, on the corner of Mass. and Comm. avenues, has been getting great reviews for its haute-cuisine treatments of steak and fish, but it's not for the faint of wallet.
If you want good food and a casual atmosphere around here, go for Indian. Two longtime favorites - India Samraat and Kebab-N-Curry - and a newcomer called Himalaya proved to be both welcoming and gastronomically satisfying. None of them will win awards for interior design, but then you don't have to worry about the owners jacking up the prices to pay for fancy lighting treatments.
For dessert, you could drop into Sweet 'n' Nasty, which has been plying pastries of a pornographic nature for 23 years. Ironically, the store proves that there is at least one force with greater sensual power than sex: I was so overwhelmed by the smell of chocolate that I didn't care what shape it came in.
Easily embarrassed types may want to grab a candy bar at City Convenience down the block. There's a small Japanese section here with snacks like dried cuttlefish and muscat-flavored gummy drops - a foreshadowing of things to come on Mass. Ave. near Porter Square.
Previous page | Next page
|
