CAMBRIDGE, MASS.
The Cantab: A pub that also attracted poets.
Before Cambridge, Massachusetts became a tech boom town, the Cantab sat on a section of Massachusetts Avenue that was really dingy. The bar only took cash. It was always sticky and you didn’t want to go to the bathroom.
But if you wandered in there on the right night, you might find a poetry slam or a bluegrass night or Little Joe Cook and the thrillers. Ben Affleck’s father worked there and served Budweiser’s off duty postal workers.
In July, when the owner of the Cantab, Richard Fitzgerald, announced that he would be putting it up for sale after 50 years, a howl of need broke out from that old, scruffy, bohemian Cambridge. Mr Fitzgerald, known as Fitzy, is hoping to find a new buyer to reopen the place this summer – let’s hope its old, sticky style. – Ellen Barry
NEW ORLEANS
The cake café and the bakery: Long mornings over crab omelets and cupcakes.
On Saturday and Sunday the line ran out the door in the morning. People waited for French toast, cookies and gravy, and crab omelets the size of phone books; You could add a cupcake for a dollar.
The staff knew most of the customers by sight, except during carnival season when the tourists flocked. At this point, connoisseurs had already ordered a king cake, competing with the best in town. It closed in June. – Campbell Robertson
PITTSBURGH
The Original Hot Dog Shop: It was never really about the hot dogs
The french fries warnings were as legendary as the fries themselves.
The big one is huge!
Order it with friends.
Seriously, you can’t eat it alone.
The Original Hot Dog Shop was called “Hot Dog” right there, but it was the fries – perfectly sliced, fried twice in peanut oil, extra crispy, served in a huge pile in a trash can with cups of beef sauce or cheese product – that people are talking about have spoken.
The University of Pittsburgh student newspaper reported that when the O, as the hot dog shop was called, closed in April, the owners served another huge order of fries and donated £ 35,000 of potatoes to charity. – Scott Dodd
THE ANGEL
The Ma’am Sir Restaurant: A Filipino place with an exuberant atmosphere.
When Charles Olalia decided to open a Filipino restaurant in the trendy Silver Lake district of Los Angeles, he wanted to “present the food and the mood of my country to a wide audience: beautiful, exuberant, loving,” he said.
Ma’am Sir opened in 2018 to receive rave reviews for its creative interpretations of signature Filipino dishes like sizzling pork sisig and oxtail kare kare.
“Ma’am Sir was different,” said Cheryl Balolong, 41, who frequented traditional Filipino cafeterias in shopping malls. “It was a place where we were proud to bring friends who weren’t from our culture.”
Then the pandemic struck. By August, Mr. Olalia had closed the place. “Day after day, when I was packing food in a box and seeing an empty dining room, I moved further and further away from what the restaurant really was and why I was building it,” he said. – Miriam Jordan
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