Breakfast for dinner, lobster for less, and more events this week in Boston
By: Jim Martinho - Monday, Mar 2, 2015 - 12:45pm
(Photo credit: Bryan Bruchman/Creative Commons)
Ugh, March. You’re just a rebound after our unhealthy and abusive relationship with February finally imploded. Just maintain minimal standards of personal hygiene and offer to pick up the check once in a while/don’t drop six feet of snow on us and we’ll be ecstatic. Start the month off right with foodie events for every budget, a new adaptation of a classic love story, and lots more.
* When is breakfast for dinner not awesome? Sure, not when you’re eating stale Pop Tarts that you didn’t toast or even microwave because you’d rather blame other people for your problems instead of putting even minimal effort into improving your miserable life. But when it’s served up at Allston ‘80s diner The Breakfast Club’s Breakfast for Dinner series on the first Monday of the month in March, April, and May. Tonight’s St. Paddy’s-themed menu offers a Lucky Charms Parfait, Bailey’s French Toast, and classic Corned Beef & Cabbage hash, plus mimosas, Irish coffee milkshakes, and Narragansett Autocrat Coffee Milk Stout. 3.2. 6p. $35
* Celebrating 20 years of bringing restaurants together to benefit the AIDS Action Committee, Taste of the South End features unlimited samplings from more than 40 of the neighborhood’s hottest culinary destinations, plus wine and beer tastings, live cooking demonstrations, a silent auction, and more. It’s also your chance to hobnob with other philanthropy-focused folks with $100 to spare, throwing back oysters and shrimp and other fancy foods and saying stuff like “Why, just a few days ago I was eating Pop Tarts for dinner. Take a look at me now, world!” 3.3. 7p. $100
* The Lizard Lounge is so excited for the monthlong Kimon Kirk and the Meds Tuesday-night residency that they scheduled it for March, which has five Tuesdays — that’s 25% more Tuesdays than February. Veteran bassist, songwriter, and producer Kirk heads up an all-star band of local players who have backed everyone from Lisa Marie Presley to Aimee Mann, who co-wrote and performed on the Meds’ new single, “Baby Who Knows.” Each night in the residency will feature a special guest, including deft pop-rocker Ramona Silver this week and a secret Latin Grammy-winning special guest next Tuesday. 3.3. 8p. $8
* A millennial couple plops down on the couch, exhausted from a long day of working and paying student loans online. “Any ideas on dinner?” she asks. “I’m thinking…lobster,” he replies. “Ha, good one. We can’t afford that, not after dropping two hunny on Taste of the South–” But he’s not listening. “That’s right, lobster. With clam chowder to start. And dessert. For ten bucks.” “Ten bucks? That’s crazy talk.” “Is it though? Or is it Lobster Festival 2015 at South Street Diner, celebrating its 18th anniversary with a great meal at an unbeatable price?!” “Hooray!!!” “Hooray!!!” “I’ll pull the car around!” “I sold it to pay the rent. I’m so sorry.” 3.4. 11a. $10
* If you finally gave up your drip coffee maker and started using a French press, then I’m sorry but you’re as late to the party as a New York Times trend piece. There’s a whole new way to dedicate even more time, effort, and equipment to making coffee in exchange for an at-best marginal improvement in the taste, and it’s called pourover. Every Wednesday in March, Cambridge’s dwelltime cafe and bakery offers a Pourover 101 class for beginners, covering the basics of extraction theory, kettle handling, and convincing yourself that it was all worth it and you can never go back to regular coffee like some kind of lame suburbanite. 3.4. 5:30p. $40
* We’re big fans of the FIGMENT interactive art exhibitions that hit the Greenway every July and the Common every New Year’s Eve — such big fans that we indulge their all-caps style and even recommend FIGMENT events happening way out in Waltham. Which is the case for Thursday’s FIGMENT unMasked: A Museum Masquerade at the Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation, promising a night of adventure, dancing, barbecue, light sculptures, interactive demos, robots, aerial silks performances, and yes they did just drop “robots” in there like it was no big deal. That’s how they get you. 3.5. 6:30p. $45
* ArtsEmerson’s sexy adaptation of Tristan & Yseult marries the electricity of live music with jaw-dropping theatricality from the players of the UK’s Kneehigh theatre company, who invite you to join their “Club of the Unloved” for a night of forbidden desires and broken hearts. “Club of the unloved?” you say to a friend. “Sounds like you should apply.” Then he’ll probably say, “Actually I know someone on the board there — it’s you, you’re the president.” But you’ll come back with, “Oh really? Because you’re president emeritus and you oversaw decades of expansion and innovation that made the club what it is today.” Game. Over. The show opens Thursday and runs through March 15. 3.5. 7:30p. $25+