Old school New England 92 - Scanorama

PERFECT HARVARD
5. The epic snack
L.A. Burdick’s Chocolate Shop &
Café is Harvard Square’s best stop for
a hot chocolate (it also serves coffee).
With its soft lighting and tables too
small for homework and laptops, this is
one of the last bastions of coffeehouse
conversation. The staff make their own
pralines from different varieties of
cocoa beans and are happy to explain
the differences. Don’t feel touristy for
choosing the Harvard Square – walnuts
snuggled in chocolate, then frosted
with more chocolate – from the pastry
cabinet. Down the street, the onescreen
Brattle Theatre shows foreign,
classic and independent films. Since
the Fifties, The Brattle begins every
Harvard semester with a Humphrey
Bogart series. Casablanca is reserved for
Valentine’s Day.
L.A. Burdick Chocolate Shop & Café
52D Brattle Street. Tel: +1 617 491 4340.
www.burdickchocolate.com
The Brattle Theatre
40 Brattle Street. Tel: +1 617 876 6838.
www.brattlefilm.org
6. The truck stop
Cambridge is full of start-ups and
spillover business from the universities.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
graduates founded Clover Food Lab,
a health-conscious, vegetarian fastfood
chain with trucks in Boston and
Cambridge, and a permanent home
in a brightly lit warehouse at Harvard
Square. This is the place to grab a quick
and cheap sandwich, delicious rosemary
fries (you would swear they were
healthy), a coffee or a hot brew of ginger
and honey to cure the almost inevitable
East Coast winter cold. The staff send
each other orders on their iPhones, and
obsess about flavors, nutrition and the
caffeine content of each dish and drink.
If your curried spaghetti squash soup is
a bit bland, help yourself to extra basil. It
grows on the table.
Clover HSQ
7 Holyoke Street. www.cloverfoodlab.com
7. The rooftop brunch
The saying “the better the view, the
worse the food” is not true of Daedalus.
From the spacious rooftop deck
overlooking Mount Auburn Street,
you can tuck into a hearty brunch of
eggs Benedict and huevos rancheros
washed down with a mimosa. At night,
it’s all about the draft beer, with the
Irish owners only too happy to pour
you a stout or ale from the old country.
The crowd tends to be heavy on chain
store preppy, Ugg-shod students and
young consultants. But you’re just as
likely to find an MIT kid who runs three
companies from his bed-cum-office in
nearby Somerville.
451/2 Mount Auburn Street.
Tel: +1 617 349 0071.
www.daedalusharvardsquare.com
8. ‘The game’
Harvard Crimson is the collective name
for Harvard University athletics teams.
Harvard has more teams in Division 1
of the National Collegiate Athletic
Association than any other university.
Football is a big deal, especially when
the Yale Bulldogs are the bad guys.
For 127 years, it’s been blue against
crimson in The Game, the Ivy League
showdown played in November at
either the Harvard Stadium or the Yale
Bowl. In early spring, attention turns
to ice hockey. The first two Mondays
in February see crowds gather at the
Garden in Boston for the Beanpot,
a two-day hockey tournament
between Harvard, Boston University,
Harvard Book Store
Rizzo’s Joseph Calautti
Harvard Stadium
95 North Harvard Street, Allson, Boston.
www.gocrimson.com
TD Garden
100 Legends Way, Boston. www.td -
garden.com/www.beanpothockey.com
Northeastern, and Boston College.
9. The look
Preppy, the style of the northeast elite,
is as rare as the snow leopard around
Harvard’s campus. Even the super-rich
now dress as anonymously and casually
as the modest, hopeful American middle
class did before it put on a watertight
parka and set up camp in Zuccotti Park
with Occupy Wall Street: jeans, sneakers
or sensible Timberlands or Sorel boots �
96 DECEMBER 2011/JANUARY 2012 SCANORAMA