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50  AtascaPasteis ... Tasca Lunch Salad $8.95 50 Hampshire Street, Cambridge, MA (Map it) 617.621.6991
49 Theo's Cozy Corner Egg Sandwich, Orange Juice, XL Coffee and Butterscotch Dum Dums Sucker $4.60 Pale-blue paint peels from the lamppost image on the eatery’s corner awning. Inside, a boy with gold hoop earrings and long brown hair spreads his newspaper on the counter; a man in a striped sailor shirt stirs his black coffee brown; and a family of four, still in slickers, huddles over plates of pancakes and white toast. We watch the cook pull eggs from stacked crates and break them by the handful on the griddle; egg whites dance. We order an egg sandwich for $1.95, an orange juice for $.90 cents, and an XL cup of house joe for $1.75. The Dum Dums in the basket by the door are free. Decked in black and white tile and red Tabasco, this cozy corner is something like the morning’s last dream. 162 Salem Street, Boston, MA (Map it) 617.367.2085
48 Audubon Circle Tomato Bisque and Grilled Cheese $7.50 838 Beacon Street, Boston, MA (Map it) 617.421.1910
47 Miami Café Cubano Sandwich $5.50 68 Aguadilla Street, Roxbury, MA (Map it) 617.859.8360
46 Panificio Chocolate Chip Pancakes and Cappuccino $9.75 Towards the seedier end of Charles Street, a step from the MGH T-stop and Beacon Hill Pub, syrup melts on plate-size chocolate-chip pancakes, pretty in powdered sugar. It’s not so very yuppie, though there’s a row of tiny painted china tea cups and a view of Crown Cleaners-Tailoring through brocade drapes. Well, think what you will, but as we plunk a strawberry on a buttery chocolate chip and stir cinnamon into our foamy cappuccino, we think, perhaps, that good food does not have so much to do with class. 144 Charles Street, Boston, MA (Map it) 617.227.4340
45 Zaftigs Delicatessen Banana Stuffed French Toast $7.95 335 Harvard Street, Brookline, MA (Map it) 617.975.0075
44 Barking Crab Po'Boy $10.00 Crab traps sit wounded in Christmas lights, patrons shout, and pitchers of Pabst are downed to the rampant beat of a cover band. The Oyster Po’Boy comes battered golden brown, with a side of seasoned fries, and a small plastic cup of coleslaw that authenticates the fish-shanty feel. (We, of course, consider ourselves to be experts in fish-shanty authenticity.) 88 Sleeper Street, Boston, MA (Map it) 617.426.CRAB
43 Flour Bakery and Café Curried Tuna, Apple, Golden Raisin, and Carrot Sandwich $6.50 1595 Washington Street, Boston, MA (Map it) 617.267.4300
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42 Umi Black Widow Maki $7.25 90 Peterborough Street, Boston, MA (Map it) 617.536.6688
41 Trident Booksellers and Café Malted Beligian Waffles $7.95 We browse the staff’s picks and find Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown. We grab a copy of Bust to read while waiting next to the gurgle and spit of the espresso bar for our late-night order of malted waffles, served with strawberries or bananas and whip cream. One bite in, our lips and magazine now sticky and stained, we decide we like the mess of book stacks and breakfast, bargain tables and bar: it’s one mess that doesn’t need much cleaning up. 338 Newbury Street, Boston, MA (Map it) 617.267.8688
40 Bova's Bakery Spinach and Cheese Calzone $7.00 134 Salem Street, Boston, MA (Map it) 617.523.5601
39 Sandrine's Bistro Tarte Flambée Fromage Blanc Lunch $9.00 8 Holyoke Street, Cambridge, MA (Map it) 617.497.5300
38 Charlie's Kitchen Lobster Roll $9.95 Jason Hazlett, our resident art-department guru who recently shocked us by shaving his two-year-old fro, goes on record to say that the “Charlie’s Kitchen jukebox is possibly the best jukebox in Boston.” He elaborates that said jukebox rotates an “excellent selection for the up-and-coming hipster.” Cash meets Slayer, Tiffany lamps meet red vinyl, and a lobster roll meets the plate for $9.95 — steep for Charlie’s, but cheap by crustacean standards. Besides, it’s lobster. 10 Eliot Street, Cambridge, MA (Map it) 617.492.9646
37 Kingfish Seafood Jumbo $8.25 188 Faneuil Hall Marketplace, Boston, MA (Map it) 617.523.8862
36 Veggie Planet Vegan Peanut Curry and Rasberry Lime Rickey $9.09 The vegan-peanut-curry meal is the superman of all super vegan, super organic supper-size lunches, doubling as a slow-rise pizza or a coconut-rice dish. The heart-shaped pizza or rice plate serves two super heroes, easy — and the Thai red-peanut-curry sauce is so good we forget we’re eating tofu and broccoli. Again, very super. Veggie Planet does not serve alcoholic drinks, but that hardly matters since the house-made raspberry- or peach-lime rickeys are so sweet and pulpy we forget our raging tendencies (but yes, we have brought flasks, we have spiked the rickeys, and we have gotten away with it. Please don’t tell). As a bonus, two percent of Veggie Planet’s food profit goes to Food for Free, a nonprofit organization feeding the hungry in Cambridge and surrounding areas. 47 Palmer Street, Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA (Map it) 617.661.1513
35 Café Brazil Sabor do Brazil Lunch $8.95 421 Cambridge Street, Allston, MA (Map it) 617.789.5980
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34 Neighborhood Restaurant and Bakery Banana Pancakes with Two Eggs, Sausage, Home Fries, Muffins, Coffee and O.J. $7.99 25 Bow Street, Somerville, MA (Map it) 617.628.2151
33 The Other Side Café Brie Wrap (...and then we threw some money at ale in a 24x500ml yellow, nitro can.) $7.75 Brie wrapped in onion, apple, pear, and honey mustard with a tall glass of velvet Boddington’s under the loft’s blood-red tapestry flowers: we need a cigarette. On the porch, Other Side waiter Taylor Knight tells us the watercolors are by a regular named Scott, the napkin dispenser graffiti is real, and that p-funk is short for Parliaments. “The place has a lot of weird circles,” says Knight. Our intern calls the place “scene.” Really, we don’t care, as long as the $4 Boddingtons is cold. 407 Newbury Street, Boston, MA (Map it) 617.536.8437
32 Camino Real Tipico Palsa $9.50 48 Harvard Avenue, Allston, MA (Map it) 617.254.5088
31 Bukowski Tavern Mac and Cheese $9.00 We stumble past a red-neon “Dead Author’s Club” sign, an empty Phoenix stand, and a three-by-five “Cash Only” doodle. The narrow bar at Bukowski’s is packed at 4:45 on a Wednesday. We take a seat under rows of dangling beer mugs belonging to the six-month-club — 120 beers in six months — and order the house mac and cheese. It comes with a choice of andouille sausage or broccoli, but we substitute bacon to eat it the way we always have. They’re okay with that. Warm four-cheese sauce hides in spiral cavatappi noodle hollows; bits of griddled bacon hide in the white sauce. To quote the bar’s blue-neon sign, “To all my friends … a drink” and home-kitchen-style mac and cheese till 1:30 am — Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. 50 Dalton Street, Boston, MA (Map it) 617.437.9999
30 Tokyo City Lunchbox $5.95 92 Harvard Avenue, Allston, MA (Map it) 617.562.8888
29 Jasmine Taste of Persia Chicken Kabobs $5.99 580 Mount Auburn Street, Watertown, MA (Map it) 617.923.2999
28 Sunset Grill & Tap Taco Lunch Bar $6.99 The beer menu is 12 pages long, the subatomic Buffalo wings are boneless — we’re undecided whether that’s a good thing — and the ribs are brontosaurus, or something. But the $6.99 taco lunch bar is all you can eat, 11:30am–3pm, every day of the week (except weekends, a minor detail). The steaming chicken and black-bean tortillas are not the stale buffet or lubed-pasta-and-potato-salad type of deal. Sunset Grill’s bottomless taco bar is as unsullied as its quiet midday crowd, hungry for culinary girth and personal taco creativity. 130 Brighton Avenue, Allston, MA (Map it) 617.254.1331
27 Café D White Gazpacho $7.50 711 Centre Street, Jamaica Plain, MA (Map it) 617.522.9500
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