Thursday, February 19, 2009

The Best Restaurant in Boston

Is the Brandeis kosher cafeteria. I found this out a few months ago when, to celebrate something or another, I took the nuclear family to Reuben's for dinner. The total bill ranged around 50-60 bucks and we still went home hungry. The kids, both under 5, have chaotic appetites: they don't know what they want to eat when we need to order the food, they change their minds midway in the meal, and they don't eat much even after it's served.

The Brandeis kosher kitchen is an all-you-can-eat buffet that costs, for dinner, $13 a person. And, out of generosity, they don't even charge my kids! On dairy nights the kids get to eat a lot of small dishes, whatever they want, allowing them to change their minds in the middle, and there's no cost for their mutated minds. The food is good, cheap, and plentiful.

We now have a minhag of going every Tuesday night (which works for my class schedule as well; it counts as my ride home).

The biggest problem: I can longer actually eat 'all I can eat.' When I was 18-22, 'all you can eat' was a challenge, now my appetite has shrunk, my waist is a danger zone, and I feel guilty if I don't get my 13 bucks worth of food. However, since a simple sandwich at any of the local Boston restaurants costs as much as the buffet at Brandeis, my guilt is largely assuaged.

2 comments:

Special Ed said...

I don't live in Boston and I knew never to go to Reuben's....

JC said...

It's the only deli in town (and the only place where I think I could go to get a steak... which is something I don't expect to get at the Brandeis cafeteria. Except: on Purim, I had lunch there (shaking off the effects of the Doodle-Flu) and it was fleishix and the featured menu item was french-dip sandwiches. I had two (which would be about $50 in another place) and they were unbelievably good. I think of those sandwiches whenever I feel blue and it cheers me right up!