“[S]o far we haven’t seen Ray Flynn suggesting that the city’s hungry eat cake. But, in fact, there has been a revolution this year — and it has to do with the way Bostonians are eating out. “It began, of course, some time ago when, after willingly going year after year to the same restaurants, which year after year served passable but unimaginative food, we finally began to savor restaurants that offered high-quality, imaginative cuisine. The trouble was, many of those pioneering places were hotel restaurants that catered to business travelers who brought their sophisticated palates (and expense accounts) along with their briefcases — and were willing to pay royally to satisfy themselves at the table.
“The past year or two have seen the uprising of the peasants. With the shrinkage or disappearance of splashy expense accounts — and sometimes the companies that provided them — came a concomitant caution about buying dinners that might not get reimbursed. And so we have witnessed the emergence of food with humble roots — no pun intended — as a formidable force in the city’s dining habits. Places like Olives, Hamersley’s, and Biba, all of which serve deliberately unprecious food, are hardly feeling the pinch of recession; they’re still crowded, and if some customers are eating out less, any vacant seats are being filled by peoples whose idea of cutting back is to spend $17 on an entrée instead of $23.”
ROCKY ROAD
20 years ago | December 31, 1985
Michael Gee reviewed the year in politics.
“The Russians would very much like not to have the expense of building their own anti–Star Wars system, but despite Mikhail Gorbachev’s tempting offers (he and Reagan are among the few who believe that Star Wars would work), the president remains wedded to his cheering fantasy of banishing the specter of nuclear war not through political agreement but by technological magic. As a result, he and Gorbachev held a summit meeting in which positively nothing happened. This was hailed as a victory for peace, presumably because the two men did not try to punch each other’s lights out in their private conversations.
“Given the vacuum that exists in the public sector, is it any wonder that private citizens took matters into their own hands? Next to Star Wars, the PRO-Peace march across America doesn’t seem like such a wacky scheme. Even the most odious flights of fancy can be socially useful. Perhaps it’s not such a bad thing that our nation’s militaristic impulses were vented in a pair of ridiculous Sylvester Stallone movies rather than in real life. The Rambo fantasy comforts those who feel that only in war are nations strong, without the rest of us having to go to war on their behalf. Indeed, any politician advocating a renewed American military presence in Southeast Asia (or in Lebanon, for that matter) might well be lynched for his pains.”
HELLO, DOLLY
25 years ago | December 30, 1980
Anita Diamant reviewed Nine to Five.
“One of the complaints most frequently voiced about the movie is that Coleman is so dastardly, extreme, and, hence, unrealistic as the villain that he undercuts the movie’s message. But I saw Johnny Carson respond with almost as much subtlety when Parton appeared on the Tonight Show, and she ignored Johnny just as effectively as she brushes off her horny boss in the film
