The best place to get Chinese food is at Joyce Chen's (with one branch at 302 Mass Ave and another at 500 Memorial Drive), but its prices are too high to be included in this listing. More reasonable are the Hong Kong (1236 Mass Ave) and Young and Yee (27 Church St.). The Hong Kong is the more expensive of the two, partially because it recently did a complete overhaul of what, for want of a better word, is called interior decorating.

Truly excellent Japanese food can be found at Osaka (617 Concord Ave.), but the prices can get high if you're not careful. The sushi, or raw fish, is certainly the best in the Boston area, and probably better than any west of California. If your tastebuds are more accustomed to Western flavors, try Osaka's very fine teppanyaki or sukiyaki. Matsuya (1768a Mass Ave) is not quite as good, but also serves Korean dishes. The Tempura Hut (444 Portland St.) has adequate sukiyaki and caters much more to a Western clientele than do Osaka or Matsuya.

If you're not too concerned about your pocketbook, many more of the Square's restaurants are ready to please (or displace, as the case may be). Chez Jean (1 Shephard St.) has very fine French food, considerably better than Chez Dreyfus (44 Church St.) But Dreyfus attracts many distinguished Harvard faculty members and administrators, including President Bok, who eats chopped sirloin with mushroom sauce there on most working days.

For decent steaks, Barney's (22 Boylston St.) and Buddy's Sirloin Pit (across from the Brattle Theater) are both good. The Wursthaus (4 Boylston St.) has family fare with a slight German accent (mostly affected), and is a little over-priced. The headwaiter and the waitresses tend to be rude to students. Cesa Mexico (75 Winthrop St.) serves really good fancy Mexican food, but the prices are high. Iruna (56 Boylston St.) is the same story with Spanish fare.

And there are hundreds of others which have been left out due to space limitations. Some of the more notable ones will be reviewed in these pages in later issues. A cup of coffee can be a pleasant way to end a day or break up an evening's work, and the Square offers some comfortable, quiet places to sip and talk. The Pamplona (on Bow St. next to the Underdog) and the Window Shop (56 Brattle St.) are outdoor cafes--the Pamplona's chocolate mousse is very good. Grendel's Den (on Boylston St. across from the Hungry Persian) is a pleasant basement coffee house with canned music and arab food.

If you'd rather get drunk, the Square lets you do it either in quiet or in noisy surroundings. A nice place to get quietly bombed is the Blue Parrot (123 Mt. Auburn St.). The sangria is so good and refreshing you can drink it like water and the music is softly calming (although canned). A little louder is the Casablanca (40 Brattle St.), and a little hokier the Toga Lounge (1274 Mass Ave), but both can get you smashed without spending a fortune. Cronin's (114 Mt. Auburn St.), a traditional Harvard beer-drinking establishment, should be avoided because of the owner's intransigence is a dispute with a newly-formed waitresses' union which has protested the restaurant's working conditions.

Two spots are fine for getting drunk noisily--Jack's (1952 Mass Ave) and the Club Zircon (298 Beacon St.) Both have live rock most nights. Jack's is almost always jammed with students, and is run by a Harvard alum. The Zircon occasionally has a cover charge.

One thing the Square won't have this summer is an all-night restaurant. During the school year, Hazen's stays open 24 hours a day, but they've cut back their hours for the summer and close at 2 a.m. If you're really hungry and it's past 2, Dunkin Donuts (616 Mass Ave at Central Square) never closes. And if you're up for a little bit of adventure and have a car or a lucky thumb, Mondo's (in Haymarket Square in Boston) is worth the trip and serves good cheap food.

Movie Theatres

Movies in Cambridge are much cheaper than they are in Boston, where $4 is not a rare price to pay for Hollywood's latest. The Cambridge films tend to be a little less current than those shown across the river, but they're consistently better.

The best theatre is the Orson Welles (1001 Mass Ave) which contains a film school and a restaurant aside from its two theatres. Pick up a schedule because the Welles holds week-long festivals at least one of which will be worth planning ahead for.

Cambridge's three other theatres--the Brattle, the Harvard Square, and the Central--are all under the same ownership. All of them show good films. The Central has two theatres in one building--one of them has been featuring only one double-show for 73 weeks now. The two films are Phillipe De Broca's "King of Hearts" and "Give Her the Moon." "King of Hearts" is the one that draws the crowds, and still sells out on weekends. It's light and funny and worth the $2 admissions price.

Clothing Stores

If you are prospecting for clothing stores, the Square area is a veritable gold mine. And the prices are just what you would expect in a gold rush town--sky high.

If you just walk around the Square you will find small stores everywhere. The year-round Cambridge resident is continually "discovering" new places to shop--and new places to stay away from. A walk to Central War Surplus (433 Mass Ave) is well worthwhile to pick up jeans, t-shirts and supplies such as knapsacks and mess kits. The store has a large stock and reasonable prices. But the Square also has many stores offering jeans and shirts for sale. There are two Slak Shaks (485 Mass Ave and 59 Church St.), for example, with the standard fare for shops specializing in pants. The Coop (1400 Mass Ave), the store that stocks almost any item you can think of, also has a fair selection both downstairs in the women's department and upstairs in the men's.