Miracle of Science

Today a few of us interns at the House of God (i.e BIDMC) had the day off, and since we've been long overdue for a brunch outing, decided to pop over to Cambridge and chow down at Miracle of Science. The restaurant is obviously tailored for the nerdy Harvard/MIT crowd: the menu is posted in the form of the periodic table. PERIODIC TABLE!!! How awesome is that??!!




As I've been living here in Boston over the past several months, I've realized that it's a city full of weird rules - one of which is: no alcoholic beverages served before 11:00am. What is brunch without a mimosa?? Poor Kapil was counting down the minutes until he could drown his week's worth of pain in EtOH.

During the week and evenings, Miracle of Science is primarily a burger/bar food type of place, but on weekend mornings, they have some nice brunch options. To my dismay, they weren't serving pastries today (I had my eye on their apple coffee cake), but I did enjoy my 2-egg omelet stuffed with red peppers, mushrooms, chicken sausage, and pepperjack cheese. Since only 2 eggs were used, the chef wasn't able to get much volume or fluffiness to the omelet, but the filling was flavorful and the home fries on the side were delicious:


Laura and Christina also got omelets:


Kapil decided not to be a sheep, asserted himself as an individual, and instead got the sourdough french toast with grilled banana:


I was amazed by the fact that ALL of the grilled banana was edible - even the peel. The outside was nicely caramelized, and the inside was melt-in-your-mouth soft. Yum yum!

Overall the food was good, the atmosphere was chill, company was pleasant, but the best part of the day was: getting far, far, FAR away from the hospital. FREEDOM!!!!!!! At least until tomorrow...


Overall rating: 7.5/10

Le Panier

Photos from my visit to Seattle last November: while shopping in Pike Place Market, my pal Jenn and I decided to break for a snack at a popular French bakery in the neighborhood called Le Panier.

This just so happens to be the place where I first discovered the deliciousness of macarons... over 10 years ago

Wow. Someone's getting old


Delicious espresso


Almond croissant



Almond biscuit

The Flushing Mall Food Court

Last weekend during my visit in NYC, my friends Daniella and Anna decided to take me to the Flushing Mall food court. It's funny to think that we made the long trip from Manhattan all the way to Queens just to eat at a mall food court - especially when growing up I had always been under the impression that food court food ranks just barely above hospital food and just below airplane food in palatability. However, this place has had good reviews, and when Daniella told me that they offer Japanese-style ice cream crepes there, I was sold. While common in San Francisco (and obviously in Japan), I've been hard-pressed to find ice cream crepes on the East coast. Very painful, since I've been craving them since the last time I was in SF's J-town over a year ago.

The first thing I got after arriving was a banana-Oreo crepe with coconut ice cream and topped with caramel and whipped cream:

Daniella ordered soup dumplings, because generally soup dumplings are a good choice. Sadly though, these had skin that was way too thick and were not nearly as attractive -nor nearly as yummy as what you would get at Joe's Shangai:

To add insult to injury, they gave her only a small, flimsy plastic spoon to eat them with - which was not even big enough to hold the soup that kept spilling out of ALL of them. Yes - there was lots of soup spillage, even despite the dumpling's overly-thick skins.

For my entree I chose the pork potstickers - 10 pieces for $5 - a great price considering their size, but the potstickers themselves were disappointing. Like with Daniella's soup dumplings, the skin was too thick, and the filling was bland in flavor:

Daniella also got chili dumplings:

Anna ordered seafood noodle soup which ended up being too spicy for her to tolerate. Check out the scary bug-eyes on the shrimps that still had their heads and shells attached:

While I was pretty darn pleased with my ice cream crepe (it's hard to mess up anything that consists of ice cream, whipped cream, and Oreo cookies), overall I was disappointed by the other food offerings in the Flushing Mall food court. Don't get me wrong - for a food court they had a much wider variety and higher quality of food options than most, but this place is definitely not a good replacement for real restaurant cuisine.

Overall rating: 5/10

New World Mall Food Court

4021 Main Street

Flushing, NY 11354-4432