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MC SLIM JB

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Valentine's Day for the Frugal and Savvy Diner

Avoiding the V-Day fine-dining shit-show
On the Cheap thinks you should take your honey out to a fabulous dinner in February. But fine dining on Valentine's Day, with its overpriced prix fixes, cheap Champagne, and harried servers is a rookie choice, like clubbing on New Year's Eve.

By: MC SLIM JB | February 08, 2012

9 hotly anticipated budget-dining openings for 2012

Tacos, midnight ramen, and chicken n' waffles make up Boston's forthcoming new options for noshing on the cheap
The new year promises a wealth of inexpensive and moderate new restaurants in Greater Boston. Here are a few that have us on tenterhooks.

By: MC SLIM JB | December 30, 2011

2011: The year in cheap eats

Twelve months of terrific budget-priced dining
We uncovered amazing value-priced restaurants in every corner of Greater Boston this year.

By: MC SLIM JB | December 21, 2011

Budget-friendly Thanksgiving options for the kitchen-averse

Out for the holidays
There are many good reasons to outsource your Thanksgiving meal to a professional.

By: MC SLIM JB | November 16, 2011

Review: My Thai Vegan Cafe

Vegan Thai cuisine even omnivores can love
It's not easy being vegan.

By: MC SLIM JB | October 12, 2011

Review: El Embajador

Mining the culinary treasures of our Dominican community
Boston has a strength shared by few American cities our size: many small, independent restaurants helmed by immigrant chef/owners cooking traditional cuisines for other ex-pats.

By: MC Slim JB | September 28, 2011

14 new Boston restaurant and bars opening this fall

Recession? What recession?
A staggering economy hasn't slowed the pace of new Boston restaurant and bar openings.

By: MC SLIM JB | September 19, 2011

Review: Robinwood Café & Grille

Executing solidly in the classic New England Greek-American diner tradition
The diner — that hallowed bastion of old-time Americana, the predecessor to modern fast-food joints — is simply not one of our long suits. In this relatively weak field, Robinwood Café & Grille, a Jamaica Plain diner, executes solidly on the standbys.

By: MC SLIM JB | August 17, 2011

Review: Jasmine Taste of Persia

A winning introduction to an underrated cuisine
Boston is fortunate to boast a number of worthy budget-priced Persian restaurants, among which Jasmine Taste of Persia, located in a stretch of Watertown thick with indie restaurants and Armenian bakeries/grocers, has to rate highly.

By: MC SLIM JB | August 04, 2011

Review: Tamarind House

A gentle step down from our fiercest traditional Thai restaurants
Tamarind House perhaps shows too restrained a hand with its cuisine's boldest flavors, but it's a useful step up from the bowdlerized meekness of the suburban Thai run-of-the-mill.

By: MC SLIM JB | July 20, 2011

Review: Lorenz Island Kuisine

Fresh, traditional Jamaican fare in a friendly neighborhood spot
When I find a family-run place that seems to serve as an anchor for neighborhood life — serving three meals a day, doing a brisk takeout business, offering live music, DJs, and poetry readings a few nights a month — I think, "Damn, wish my neighborhood had a place like this."

By: MC SLIM JB | July 06, 2011

Review: Victor's Italian Restaurant

The kind of tiny Italian-American joint only the cognoscenti seem to know
The kind of tiny Italian-American joint only the cognoscenti seem to know

By: MC SLIM JB | June 22, 2011

Review: Thailand Café

Terrific traditional Sichuan cuisine hiding behind bad Thai
I don't read Chinese, but I do read Chowhound, where I learned that Thailand Café — a long-running Central Square purveyor of mediocre Thai cuisine — changed hands a couple of years ago. The English-language name didn't change, but the sign now also says "Authentic Sichuan cuisine" in Chinese.

By: MC SLIM JB | June 09, 2011

Review: Camie's Bakery

A friendly neighborhood Haitian joint you don't want to overlook
If you're keeping an eye out for quality cheap eats, the car and the MBTA are not always your friends. While drivers focus on the road and buses retrace the same main-drag routes, it's only pedestrians who get off the beaten path to notice the kind of joints that quietly thrive on neighborhood trade.

By: MC SLIM JB | May 25, 2011

Review: Staff Meal

A new high-water mark for Boston street food
A few years ago, Boston's street-food universe was tightly limited in scope, ambition, and geography. There was little to see beyond a few trucks and carts peddling so-so hot dogs, burritos, and American-Chinese fare, mostly in Downtown Crossing and around the MIT campus.

By: MC SLIM JB | May 11, 2011

Review: Bon Me Truck

A new food truck delivers the Vietnamese street-food goods
Boston long owned a reputation for being hostile to food trucks: getting licensed to offer meals on wheels meant braving a daunting tangle of municipal red tape.

By: MC SLIM JB | May 02, 2011

Review: La Frontera

Your own mom should cook so beautifully
An old adage says, "Never eat at a place called 'Mom's,' " which of course is not a snipe at actual mothers, but the folly of marketing a restaurant as somehow capable of channeling the love, care, and multi-generational lore that the ideal of mom's cooking represents.

By: MC SLIM JB | April 13, 2011

Review: Roast Beast

If you're going to do one thing, you might as well kill it
Running a restaurant that offers essentially one product is a high-wire act: it can be breathtaking, but you're working without a net, and if you falter . . . Food nerds like me root heartily for such places, having endured too many restaurants with long menus and no memorable dishes.

By: MC SLIM JB | March 31, 2011

The Wholy Grain

Another gourmet bakery/café curries the custom of busy South Enders
Some restaurants are haunted by ghosts; it can be hard to like a new place that took the spot of a bygone one you loved (sorry, Joe V's). The Wholy Grain, a new South End bakery/café, has ghosts of a different kind: it used to be the "social club" where the notorious local mobster Philip "Sonny" Baiona conducted business for decades.

By: MC SLIM JB | March 09, 2011

Review: Tawakal Halal Cuisine

The eclectic, beguiling cuisine of Somalia makes its Boston debut in Eastie
So upon hearing that Boston's first Somali restaurant has opened, food nerds should seek out Tawakal Halal Cuisine, hidden above the Victory Pub in Orient Heights, where their geeky determination will be amply rewarded.

By: MC SLIM JB | February 23, 2011

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