It’s time for my “annual” “year end” round up of the best and worst of the year. Here are some of my most and least favorite things of the year.
Best book I read: Tie: Demon Copperhead & We All Want Impossible Things
Worst book I read: It Ends With Us (now a controversial movie starring Blake Lively!)
Best restaurant meal: Baleia, a Portuguese restaurant in the South End. I still dream about their Octopus Carpaccio.
Worst restaurant meal: In a Pickle, a diner in Waltham. I assume we went to this restaurant because we were at a hockey game nearby. It’s exactly what you would expect from somewhere that’s been featured on Diners, Drive Ins & Dives; everything has like one or two things too many, like Cinnamon Toast Crunch Chicken & Waffles, Giddy Up Gravy Train Eggstravaganza, or Cookies & Cream Oreo Extreme Pancakes. (Only one of those is made up.) Also, they had the Grinch come by for photos, but no one wanted a photo with him, and it was (Oreo) extremely depressing.
Best restaurant meal (Montreal edition): We were lucky enough to spend a week after Christmas in Montreal. I had originally hoped we’d eat our way through the best restaurants in Montreal, but a combination of a really crazed pre-Christmas time period, my family’s general lack of planning skills, and expected (New Year’s Day) and unexpected closures (I’m looking at you, Chateau Maneki) meant we kind of scrambled to find good restaurants. In an unexpected turn, George’s choice , Chez George (picked solely based on the name), ended up being the best. It was a fancy restaurant in a fancy hotel, so we went for New Year’s Eve.
The best was when George excitedly ordered the cauliflower steak for the table, much to our surprise and delight. But then, much to his surprise and opposite-of-delight, the cauliflower steak was made of cauliflower, not steak. Beef Wellington went over a little better.
Worst Restaurant Meal (Montreal edition): Remember when I said my family members were not planners? What I really meant is they’re next-level anti-planners, strongly believing in “playing it by ear” and the closely related, “slow-boating it,” which is essentially playing it by ear combined with driving. Since we love dim sum, and the best we’ve had is in Chinatown in Toronto, we figured Montreal must also have great dim sum, despite how Yelp and Reddit tried to warn us otherwise. I *tried* to find the least-bad dim sum place in Montreal, but I’m not sure I succeeded. Our experience with Ruby Rouge started off rough when Hazel made an enemy out of the Old Noodle Lady who works the food stand that’s separate from the carts for unknown reasons. Hazy went up there to get us some noodles, and when no one was there for a while, she started scooping some onto a plate like the dim sum expert she is. That’s when Old Noodle Lady showed up and gave her the evil eye and yelled at her in Chinese and English about getting unsanctioned noodles. Then we had a bunch of bizarro versions of our dim sum favorites, like overly fishy turnip cakes, possibly raw pork dumplings, and definitely at least partially raw shumai. It was still marginally better than In a Pickle.
Best tennis showing: I’ve been taking a tennis clinic with the Franklin Park Tennis Association on Fridays and Sundays and I’ve been learning a thing or two. The best players play on the “good court,” which I only occasionally get to grace. But one week, I was Champion of the Court for like 10 consecutive games with my partner Beau, a regular on the good court. When I say they did not see that coming, I mean it was the equivalent of Paul Blart Mall Cop winning Wimbledon.
Worst tennis showing: When I lost to George 9 sets to 7, which he’ll never let me forget.
Best injury: Can you have a “best” injury”? I don’t know, but if you can, this was it. I was trying on a pair of silver pants (of course) at a store called Dynamite in Montreal. They were too small and as I tried to take them off, my foot got stuck in one of the legs and I started to fall out of the dressing room, nearly pulling the curtain down as I went. I had this vision of me falling ass-first out of the room, velvet curtains coming down with me, trying to maintain my ruse that I was a sophisticated French-speaking adult lady who could rock silver pants. “Mon dieu! Ces pantalons sont trop petite, c’est tres amusant!” Fortunately, I held it together and while I bruised my ass/hip on the corner of the wall, my chic Montreal mademoiselle persona remained intact.
Worst injury: Falling on my ass cross country skiing down a steep hill in Maine on our Power Within winter outdoor trip. This is why I don’t normally do things like “winter” and “outdoor”. Also, why must all my injuries involve my butt?
Best local food news: Bluefin opened in Jamaica Plain and now I can get a hot buttered lobster roll within walking distance of my home. As Madonna said, “Let the choir sing!”
Worst local food news: Meanwhile, down the street, Cafe Nero has betrayed me in the deepest way possible and messed with their tomato egg sandwich. It used to be inexplicably, magically good. What was in the eggs? How did they prepare those tomatoes? What kind of bread is it? But now they’ve changed something and all I want to do is be the Lauren to their Heidi and yell, “YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID!” (deep cut, The Hills) Matty and I have a weekly breakfast date at Nero, but I am seriously rethinking it due to this injustice.
Best dumpster: This one, duh.
Worst dumpster: All the other dumpsters.
Best movie: The Fall Guy. Emily Blunt + Ryan Gosling + KISS music + stunts? Sign me up.
Worst movie: I’ll watch almost any romcom on Christmas eve while I’m drunkenly wrapping presents until the wee hours of the morning. A few years ago I stopped watching the classics (The Holiday, Love Actually) and started trying out new stuff, the cheesier the better. For example, the Holidate is a newer favorite. I really thought you couldn’t go wrong. I mean, I even watched A Christmas Prince. But how naive I was. Enter: A Holiday Engagement. “Afraid to tell her family she’s been dumped, Hillary hires an actor to play her fiancé during a four-day Thanksgiving weekend at her parents’ house.” Is the actor some B-version of Ryan Gosling or even, honestly, I would have accepted Mark Paul Gosselaar? No, it was a poor man’s version of Kevin Arnold, the nerd from the Wonder Years. Let that sink in. I couldn’t even get past 20 minutes, and that’s even once Shelly Long showed up as the mother.
May your 2025 be as glorious as the previous iteration of the Cafe Nero Tomato Egg Sandwich!
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