With your tarte au fraises, on a hot afternoon, you might have a citron pressee ($.50) made with lemons squeezed there in front of you. With a Babu au Rhum doused with extra rum and sugar, you might have a cup of tea; with a Napoleon, a cup of American coffee. Croissant and French coffee are as dependable as De Gaulle's amour propre.
For light lunch there are quiche, meat pasty and goose liver pate on French rolls. The mustard on the ham and cheese and salami and cheese sandwiches comes from Dijon. Onion soup and hot cocoa are the patisserie's only concessions to winter. As in any French, cafe the crockery is so think that whatever beverage or food is hot, coffee or quiche, becomes lukewarm straight away.
The Spaghetti Emporium
The Oxford English Dictionary (abridged) defines emporium as "a pompous name for: the Mart 1839." The Spaghetti Emporium, 33 Dunster Street, is a pompous excuse for a restaurant in Harvard Square. It opens for lunch at 11:30 a.m. and remains open until midnight Sunday through Wednesday and until 1 a.m. Thursday through Sunday.
It advertise several times a day over WEEI that its Decor "defies description." The shelves of the "priceless antiques" are lined with Readers Digest Condensed Books. Germaine Greer, Bobby Orr, Spiro T. Agnew, Margaret Mead and others are illuminated in apostolic garb against the far wall. At best, the decor can be described as eclectic, at worst, obscene.
So is the menu. The Mushrooms ($2.25) are "fresh, fat, and...fondled by the..." Tomato Sauce ($1.75) which pleads "squeeze me." The Cheese Sauce ($2.25) is "embraced by a hot naked butter sauce," and the Chicken Cacciatore ($2.95) is made from "the oldest of domestic fowls."
For the price of all these sauces, you also get spaghetti, sourdough bread with plain or garlic butter, salad, coffee, and spumoni ice cream. The salad swims in the dressing of your choice; the House dressing is bland and oily. The butter is whipped and the garlic effective. The spaghetti was delicate, but disappointly overcooked. The coffee was cold, but the spumoni was authentic--the real Italian kind complete with fruit and nuts.
The wine list is well-rounded and reasonably priced. The house burgundy is full-bodied--if a little brutish. The large decanter, about twenty ounces, is $2.80.
Fifty-two feet and polished. That's what the bar is. I can only fantasize how long it is at the Spaghetti Emporiums in Kansas City and Atlanta.
The waiters and waitresses all look like they were picked up on waivers.