An aspiring chef searches for her lost sense of smell

Features

What Would Joan Do?

Jackie or Marilyn, Pete or Roger — they are what they eat. So, who are you?

By CLEA SIMON | December 8, 2009

So you've got a party coming up, a gift due, or a difficult-to-please significant other. How can you tell what to serve or what little treat will please? Myers-Briggs tests are all very well, but really, if you're looking for the perfect party eats, why not go for another kind of typing — the kind that gets you out of the secretarial pool? Our handy Mad Men archetypes can help frame your true inner-party soul, as well as your gift-giving conscience. Just find the character who fits like a good suit should and you're golden.

PEGGY OLSON

This working girl may be on a budget, but she's got big-city aspirations. She starts her shindigs with the WINE-OF-THE-MONTH SPECIALS from the venerable Wine and Cheese Cask (407 Washington Street, Somerville, 617.623.8656, thewineandcheesecask.com), four quite quaffable selections, all under $10 — and frequently much less. Even bound for Manhattan, Peggy would do well to capitalize on her ethnic outer-borough know-how. She picks up treats from the mezze bar — yummies like WHIPPED FETA with sweet and hot peppers or beet tzatiki ($3/one; $9/five) — at Sofra Bakery and Cafe (One Belmont Street, Cambridge, 617.661.3161, sofrabakery.com), and throws in a few sandwich-size STUFFED FLATBREADS ($7). While there, she can add a gift copy of Ana Sortun's cookbook, SPICE ($34.95), to her cart. Heading back to Brooklyn? Make the folks think you've finally learned something useful by bringing HOMEMADE PIEROGIS ($42/six dozen). Chicopee-based Millie's (800.743.7641, milliespierogi.com) offers a half a dozen varieties, from prune to kielbasa, available for mail-order delivery. Handmade, just not by your busy hands!

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Related: Keep up with the Mad Men, Busy options, Don’t let your meat loaf, More

Keep up with the Mad Men
Don Draper and his ad men swig whiskey all day like it's no thing, but some of you daintier folk may think scotch and bourbon are too harsh.
Busy options
For a place that is largely about performative hibachi dining and Asian kitsch, Kon is very into the Buddha.
Don’t let your meat loaf
If the meat loaves were going to be entered in the contest, they had to be on the judges’ table by 6:30.
Kelley’s Deli
Kelley's Deli has a new home: after 14 years in downtown Westerly, the space was getting tight (lines out the door in the summer), the customers' hike to the restrooms in the historic multi-use building was circuitous (to the say the least), and regulars had been begging for years for Sunday hours.
Pasha Turkish & Mediterranean Cuisine
Even without enormous evidence, the Nadeau family has decided that "Turkish food never lets you down." Louise likes to grab lunch downtown at Boston Kebab House; Maurice prefers Allston's Saray; and Stephanie and her school friends enjoy Brookline Family Restaurant.
Fiorella's
Friends are always asking me for my latest cheap-eats "discovery." But amid a million food blogs, 24/7 food television, and amateur-review Web sites like Chowhound and Yelp, I'm rarely the first to sing a good restaurant's praises.
Vinh Sun BBQ and Restaurant
Constrained by a small word count, I often choose restaurants with relatively short menus. I correctly took Vinh-Sun to be a Cantonese "BBQ" specialist, a retailer of roast pork, whole suckling pigs, ducks, and chickens. But it's also a spanking-clean Chinatown restaurant serving a broad Cantonese and Hong Kong menu.
Some strong choices
A pan-Asian restaurant comes in handy if you are having trouble making a decision. But thanks to several openings in the last year, Portlanders looking for a menu with several Asian cuisines will have to make a choice.
Myung Dong 1st Avenue
Myung Dong refers to a high-rent, youth-oriented shopping district in Seoul, thus "1st Avenue" is a kind of evocation of both Fifth Avenue and SoHo. This restaurant has a variety of Japanese and Korean dishes, but the idea is to appeal to a young crowd, more specifically a drinking crowd.
Tests of time
It feels like every week I read about a new restaurant opening in Portland.
Indian Dhaba
The phrase “fusion cuisine” inspires dread in me — I’ve been served too many misconceived culinary mash-ups over the years, usually European sauces awkwardly force-fit onto Asian foundations, or vice-versa.
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