Wonderland is the most disappointing place. Visitors are all "Oooh, WONDERLAND!" and I have to tell them "No. It is depressing and there is nothing there. It is not wonderful at all." I look forward to the day when SansBoy moves away from Lynn so I can stop going there.

And then look for Xiao Long Bao everywhere else. They are the fucking BOMB.

It probably says something very very strange about me that even though I can't see the actual video (work blocks youtube), I know the exact video y'all are talking about. I may spend too much time in that part of the internet.

Oh goodness. Anything by B. Nektar Meadery is amazing. I especially love their Zombie Killer cyser, which is mead mixed with cherries and cider, but then again, I also like cider, so take that with a grain of salt. Most meads will be pretty sweet, so you have to be into that. Moonlight Meadery is really solid, too,…

And don't forget the Porter Exchange! So much tasty Japanese food there. I'm still bitter about Addis Red Sea getting kicked out in exchange for yet ANOTHER FUCKING GASTROPUB, though. Fasika is great, but a pain in the ass to get to.

Oh, I am SORRY. Though really, trying to get through Cambridge in general is an awful, awful mess because every single path through sucks. If it's not Harvard, it's Central. There's a very very good reason why I don't generally drive in Boston unless I absolutely have to. That, and the roads are out to get you. They…

H Mart is clean because it's a chain and has eleventybillion stores all over the country. The mom-and-pop Korean market near me is just as gross as any other small "Ethnic" market. Get off of that high horse.

A-fucking-men. "Everything with four legs except a table, everything that flies except a plane, and everything in the water except a boat."

Harvard tourists are the worst pricks. I used to work in Harvard and had to cross the Yard to get to my office. I cannot tell you how many times I wished for an electrified people-catcher to push in front of me to get all the fucking tourists out of the way.

Porter is great. It's convenient to way more interesting places! (seriously, I kind of love living there, but it doesn't have a lot to recommend it on its own merits.)

Duuude, yes, Wang's. Buy bags of their frozen dumplings. They are hella good. Mary Chung's is a classic, but it's not that good. I'm still on the hunt for proper Sichuan food, but I hear there's good stuff in Medford and Malden.

Well, if you ever feel like trying some more, there's some pretty excellent hopped ciders out there. But honestly, if you're into really heavy flavors and textures, cider might just not be your thing.

Oh god. Why did you have to remind me that Din Tai Fung exists. Now I'm sad that there's no fancy place to get XLB in Boston. People really like Gourmet Dumpling House, but they're way too crowded. I sometimes hate living on the East Coast. No Family Mart, no Din Tai Fung...:(

Where is this? Sichuan Garden is first on my list of Actual Chinese places to go to, but sometimes you just crave the glorious shittiness of AmeriChinese.

And this is why I maintain that American Chinese food is a genre completely on its own, because trying to call something that includes day-glo sweet and sour sauce "Szechwan" or "Cantonese" is a travesty and abomination to the noble cuisines of those regions.

Also, I dare you - no, I triple dog dare you - to go eat at…

Depending on where you are, there's getting to be a lot more gluten-free beers. Not even just "beers made from non-gluteny grains", but beers that actually taste like beer because they were made like normal beer but then went through some kind of de-glutening process. It's all pretty nifty.

Dogfish Head is the absolute shit, even if virtually everything they make all kind of tastes similar.

*GASP* This is where my first instinct is to go all "But you just haven't had the right cider!!!!", but that's a dumbass thing to do. I would definitely say that it's worth trying the good stuff that isn't just Woodchuck or Magner's or whatever, but sometimes you just don't like a thing and that's fine.

BUT. If you…

And that's why humanity invented cider. Okay, that's not the actual reason why, but cider is amazing and also completely gluten-free.

If they decided to open up a swag store with monogrammable coffee thermoses, I would be ALL OVER that shit. I think "I save bread!" is more appropriate for a pint glass, though.