The Welles restaurant is open until 1 a.m. for the late-night diner. In addition, you haven't eaten well until you've been to the Sunday afternoon brunches at the Welles--they're suberb and reasonable.

Lehman Hall

In the Yard

Lehman Hall dining hall is actually more of a hangout than anything else, but it does, incidentally, serve decent, cheap food as well. If its hamburgers aren't the best in Cambridge, Lehman Hall's people-watching is; it's easy to spend a whole afternoon there over a cup of coffee, drinking in the atmosphere of conspiracy and petty intrigue.

It would be hard to characterize briefly the kind of people who sit around in Lehman Hall, since it's an electic bunch, but the slant is definitely to the left: NAM and Graduate Student Union cells, visiting organizers and political Dudley House types mix with tourists, suicidal-looking thesis writers staring into their coffee grounds, and hordes of sectionmen.

As far as food goes, there's a good standard quarter-pound hamburger of the sort for which the meat comes packaged between sheet of wax paper, a sauce-covered concoction called a Dudley burger, and the usual sandwiches. There are also a couple of homemade plate-lunch items every day, stews and the like, that are probably the best things Lehmann serves. The coffee is atrocious and, like the atrocious coffee in the Houses, enormously popular. Everything costs about three-quarters of what it would in cheap eats places in the Square.

As an added bonus, Lehman Hall has by far the most intriguing trash disposal system in Cambridge--a pair of big steel rods that ram their way into trash cans in alternation, looking malevolent.

College Grille

Mass Ave and Wendell St.

People who live in the River Houses for all four of their years in Cambridge can make their way through Harvard with never visiting the College Grille, and that's too bad because the Grille serves the best pizza of any restaurant in the neighborhood. In fact almost all of the Grille's fare, mostly Italian but with a few American dishes, is pretty good and relatively inexpensive.

The College Grille, despite its name, does not cater to the college crowd so much as it does to Cambridge's more permanent residents, and that's part of why it's so nice. If you want to get away from the pomp and stuffiness of Harvard life, the Grille is perfect--especially if you also happen to be hungry or up for a few beers.

The bar at the College Grille, the Samara Room, is one of the most hyperactive places in town, It's always crowded and noisy and you can always get into a good bumper pool game. The juke box is up-to-date, and the drinks are moderately cheap.

The only problem with the College Grille is that the service is slow as hell on the weekends. If you're in a rush, waiting a half hour for pizza can be maddening. But when you have time to relax and take it slow, the Grille, located just north of the Mass Ave Holiday Inn, is a terrific way of soothing the nighttime munchies or getting a pre-exam drink.

Fromage Imports

50 Boylston St.