more eating! continuing on my quest to visit every eatery within a one mile radius of where i live, i finally went to saffron. it was quite terrible. i vaguely remember it trying to be fusion-y when it first opened maybe two years ago, but i think now it's mostly just mediocre indian food, even worse than such places as bhindi bazaar, probably about on par w/ india quality in kenmore, which is about half as much. the place itself looks nice and it has an outdoor patio, which is prob. why it seems to get a lot of business, but the lunch buffet we had was pretty sad. (then again, buffets are generally not the greatest, but this was particularly bad. maybe it was mostly b/c the food was cold.) funny story, though: i asked the waitress if they had any "chutney", which i described as being "red and usually with onions", b/c i'd only seen the brown and the green sauce by the buffet tables. she looked confused and then came back a little later with little cups of both the brown and the green sauces -- neither of which were red or had onions, obviously. andy quipped: "'maybe if i smile real big when i give it to him he won't notice.'" catfoo and i went to the tibetan place next to korea garden on pearl st. it was my first time eating tibetan food and i found it to be quite bland, and the cilantro was a little too pervasive for my taste. even though my dish was spicy (a tofu vegetable dish), it was the kind of spicy where they just throw in some really hot peppers, i.e. it didn't really penetrate the dish. we also got some fried potato/mushroom balls (w/ cilantro) which were pretty good, some steamed buns (which catfoo says is very chinese), and our food came w/ a little plate of oiled halved cherry tomatoes with onions and a little plate of cucumbers lightly covered in a sort of creamy sauce. catfoo had noodles (i forget what kind) with vegetables, but the noodles were really rather tasteless. she said the other type of noodles they have are better. all in all it was interesting, although i prob. won't be trying tibetan food for a while. catfoo said she had lunch at the buddhist place on mass ave and that it was the best chinese food she's had in boston, so i'm going to have to try that w/ her one of these days (before she moves to SF! :( ... ) catfoo and i reminesced over the gone but not forgotten curious liquids. she said that there has been discussion of closing down manray and putting up multi-story apartment buildings in its place. geeeeeeeeez. if ani were around she'd prob. respond w/ a line like: "the greedy republicans aren't satisfied enough w/ fabricating wars, now they have to attack us on our own soil!!" i don't think i'd say it quite in that way, but seriously, what is up w/ these people who are taking away everything that makes boston worth living in? i may have to start jobhunting in new york if this keeps up, heh ... speaking of catfoo, she's set up a new version of the blog she was doing ... which is good b/c she's my connection w/ what's going on in the world. you can find it here: catbar