Posts by Rémy Robert

Nutella cupcake!!!!!!!!!

Those of us who were old lucky enough to know The Edge, that beloved Wayland Square coffee shop, mourned all the more heavily when, totally out of nowhere, it closed last year. Its amazing coffee, full wall of windows, and tucked-away-ness all made it a fantastic hidden study spot—and don’t even get me started on its granola. So when I heard that a new coffee shop, Teas and Javas, had opened in the same space, I was equal parts amped and skeptical. Could it ever fill the empty place The Edge had left in our hearts?

First impressions didn’t have me convinced. Compared to The Edge’s cozy, college-y feel, T&J’s is more sleek and grown-up. It’s decorated in mostly blacks and silvers, with big glass dome lights and simple black chairs that make it feel very modern, clean, and hard. In a different way, though, it’s also very conducive to work: There are plugs everywhere, and a tall 10-seat table is especially accommodating to everyone who shows up to study. And they’re open ’til 11—hurrah. Another holdover from before is the huge wall of windows that looks out onto Wayland Avenue, which can be opened when the weather’s nice to make everything feel all breezy. While that won’t be happening for another few months, the windows will let in plenty of natural light in cold, dark winter.

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The Dorrance

Family Weekend is great for a lot of reasons—we get to have chauffeurs while we run errands, play tour guide, rant to someone new about the eyesore that is the SciLi (and, oh yeah, hug our darlingest parents). But perhaps what’s most exciting is the fact that we get a whole weekend of subsidized non-Ratty meals and adventures off the Hill. That can also be scary: When you’re eating Ratty brunch and spicy withs, it can be hard to know where to begin when it’s time to play host. (Shameless self-promotion: The Family Weekend issue of Post-, our sister publication under BDH, has a full spread of restaurant coverage.) Here, though, we’ll focus on some of the fancy-schmancy restaurants that this reviewer likes to frequent for dinner with her own magnanimous parents. Treat yo’self… Or, let your parents treat you. We love ya, Mom and Dad!

The Dorrance: Full disclosure: I’m sad that my parents aren’t coming to Family Weekend, not because I miss them (pish-posh) but because I wish I could drag them here. Bon Appétit is also a fan: It named The Dorrance one of the 50 best new restaurants in America. Chef Ben Sukle previously worked under Chef Jennings at La Laiterie and then did a casual stage at the #1 restaurant in the world. Now he’s set up shop in the first floor of the downtown Union Trust Building, whose 20-foot (rough estimate… it might be 50) floor-to-ceiling windows, ornate ceiling detail, and mezzanine (THEY HAVE A MEZZANINE, just like the SciLi!!!!!!) set the tone for the food. The food! It’s avant-garde and sometimes downright strange (see also, roasted tri-tip with chanterelle mushrooms and strawberries), but it works. So while the restaurant is prohibitively expensive and swanky for us denizens of the Hill, I have a hunch it’d be perfect for an outing with our doting parents.

New Rivers: This self-proclaimed American bistro takes its ingredients seriously: farmers regularly drop by the kitchen with their wares, and Chef Beau Vestal moonlights as a forager to scout out mushrooms. As a result, the food is constantly changing—like, from week to week, perhaps even day to day—to reflect whatever winds up in the kitchen. Still, there’s a reliable sensibility in the menu that means the food can be counted on to strike a balance between comforting/un-frilly and inspired/novel/very-very-special. Lately the menu is featuring a lot of marvelously autumnal hen of the woods mushrooms, so much squash (pumpkin! acorn! delicata! butternut!), and the last of summer’s tomatoes and corn. Go when you’re hungry; you’ll want to order everything. And they also serve lunch!

More restaurants after the jump… [Read more →]

Whola lotta chicken.

Mention AS220 to any given Brown student and you’re likely to meet one of two responses: vague confusion or fanatical enthusiasm. Such is the nature of a non-profit community arts center that wears as many hats as this one does; with dozens of studios, performance exhibition spaces, a youth program, and more all calling it home, it isn’t all that easy to grasp. Its mission, though, is simple: to provide “a local forum and home for the arts… to all artists who need a place to exhibit, perform, or create their original artwork.”

It only makes sense that an organization in support of creativity and community would have a restaurant. AS220 Foo(d) is a fantastic introduction to this huge and manifold center: it’s casual but special, humble but creative, hipster but in the good way. You place your order at the counter, take an oversized playing card back to your table, and fetch your food when it’s ready. The kitchen is in plain view, diner-style, but instead of pancakes and hash browns, they’re whipping up pulled pork pasta and pan-fried chickpeas. [Read more →]

People always say they’re going to dinner on Federal Hill. They forget that Federal Hill is a neighborhood, not a specific destination that can be plugged into a GPS or reviewed on Yelp. I can’t help but imagine starry-eyed Brown freshmen rolling onto Atwells Avenue for the first time with their befuddled parents and having no clue how to proceed amongst the mobsters, valet parkers, and couples on date night.

Here’s an idea to help us all make good of that next empty resolution to explore Federal Hill: Zooma. It satisfies the Italian requirement—because while Federal Hill is a synecdoche for Italian food, the neighborhood is rife with bakeries and Chinese restaurants—and is swanky enough to have in your back pocket as an option for Family Weekend or wooing potential romantic partners.

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While the general student body seems to have agreed that “hegemonic” is a Brown-ism, we feel that recognition of this single phrase does a major disservice to the variety and scope of our fine institution’s pretentious academic lexicon. As respective History and Philosophy concentrators, we felt that our comprehensive knowledge of linguistic vomit was tragically underrepresented.

From the dozens of humanities-related clichés heretofore marginalized, we present to you Semantics Bingo. Print out the boards, get two friends, go to your “MCM: The Theory of Sign” class, and see who yells “BINGO” first to your fellow students stupefied by Foucault-supported affectation. Let us know in the comments section how long it takes you to win (and which class you were in when it happened).

Fact: Cosmopolitan used to be a family magazine.

That’s right: the magazine that is covered up in most grocery store aisles used to feature articles for kids. That is, until Helen Gurley Brown took over in 1965. This lady knew what she was doing. Her bestselling 1962 book, Sex and the Single Girl, was arguably the first public statement that women could “have it all,” a how-to manual not “on how to get married but on how to stay single—in superlative style.” (Another fun fact: Sex and the Single Girl would later inspire the HBO show “Sex and the City,” whose narrator was the alum of a certain sex-positive school…) She popularized the radical notion that women could be more than pin-ups and housewives, that they could be part of the working world, have fun without husbands, and simply that they were—get ready for it—able to enjoy sex. Needless to say, the idea sold itself.

Brown passed away this Monday at the age of 90, and even though she stepped down as editor back in 1997, she was still a regular presence at the Cosmo offices. Here, some advice from the original Cosmo girl to remember her by (jury’s still out on that tip from #7). Okay, so her message is a far cry from that of FemSex or a GNSS seminar—what is “it all,” anyway?—but still, we at Brown share more than a name with the phe who made it cool to talk about orgasms. HGB, we tip our hats to you.

Image via.

At least we’ve still got Christopher Walken.

It’s not often that dining forays off College Hill actually deepen my appreciation for the stuff available to us through good ol’ BuDS, but a recent jaunt did the near impossible. I wanted so badly for Blount Clam Shack, the quintessentially New England outpost of fried seafood and 1950s kitsch, to be great. Unfortunately, these expectations proved lofty. Blount’s not awful; it’s just not worth it.

You may recognize the name: Blount is, after all, the supplier of those soups they serve at Jo’s and The Gate. Each year the locally owned franchise goes through some 800,000 pounds of clams, harvested fresh from New England waters, which make for an abundance of hush puppy-esque clam cakes, old-school fried clam rolls and whole belly clam platters. In addition to creamy New England clam chowder and its red Manhattan counterpart, Blount makes a Rhode Island specialty called the clam bake, which tastes like a beachfront cookout poured into a giant stewpot: potatoes, corn, chorizo and clams in a clear, salty broth. Don’t be mistaken; there’s other seafood, too — haddock here and there, scallops and a guest appearance from the lobster roll. They’ve even got a burger section, which is incredibly bewildering since 1) you’re at a clam shack and 2) you’re across the street from Rick’s Roadhouse.

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I can't believe it's not dairy!

This week at Amuse-Bouche, we’re shaking things up a little. A recent jaunt up Hope Street returned not one but two great finds in the grab-lunch-and-chill-out category. Three Sisters and its neighbor Wildflour are like Tia and Tamara or Mary Kate and Ashley (only a lot less annoying than either set of twins): They share the best things in common, probably have overlapping crowds, and seem the same on the surface, but deep down they’re like yin and yang. Three Sisters, a way-casual café, is known for its home-churned ice cream; Wildflour is vegan. Three Sisters is aggressively no-frills; Wildflour is bougie. Both sell themselves with that beautiful combination of freshly made foodstuffs, coffee and smoothies, free WiFi, and plenty of space for camping out. Only one problem: HOW TO CHOOSE?! Here’s the lowdown on both to help you decide. [Read more →]

Childish Gambino is better than you. This is not meant to alienate you as a reader — it’s just the cold, hard truth.

At age 22, Donald Glover was a comedy writer for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and a year later he was writing for 30 Rock. By 25, Glover had released two mixtapes as Childish Gambino, a name created with a Wu-Tang Clan name generator. Childish’s third album, “Culdesac,” included, among others, the undeniably swaggamatic “Freaks and Geaks” (see video above), which was eventually featured on a commercial for Adidas shoes and the computer screens of millions of drunk college kids trying to impress their friends. When Glover started a Twitter campaign to snag the part of Peter Parker in the new The Amazing Spiderman movie (#donald4spiderman), the tag got over 100 tweets per minute. Former president and chairman of Marvel Comics Stan Lee tweeted back his support. (Note: In the end the part did go to the guy with better hair.)

And when Gambino’s new album “Camp” got a pitiful 1.6 on Pitchfork? The internet exploded. Spring Weekend 2010 rapper Wale summed up the collective sentiment pretty nicely: “Pitchfork…we don’t believe u…u need more people …yall can’t talk bout this culture, cuz yall not part of it.” Word. Pitchfork is dumb. We all know they only gives perfect 10s to bands with cats in them.

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