Rich Mintz  

My work has put me in Harvard Square’s Charles Hotel for two nights this week, which I’m happy about for several reasons. Despite the New Englandiness of the room decor — “quilty, feathery beds” is as emblematic an image as any, and I bet you can guess that isn’t really my thing — the Charles is an exceptionally well-run hotel.

In dozens of small ways, it feels like the management understands what its guests need in order to be comfortable and work efficiently, and this reveals itself over time — you may not completely get it on your first visit, but come back (presumably after visiting some less-impressive hotels in the interim) and you will. Given its location, the Charles is basically a business hotel for people whose business has a cultural or intellectual component, and in the decor and furnishings there’s some whimsy and thoughtfulness (of the let’s-not-get-caught-trying-TOO-hard Boston variety, to be sure, but still). Even the underground parking facility (which is independently run) is a “green garage.”

Besides, in the closet they give you real hangers. You can probably even steal them. I bet they won’t even care!

But what I really love about the Charles is Henrietta’s Table, which I think may be my favorite restaurant in America. That sounds like a wild claim, but I’m sitting here trying to think of another restaurant, anywhere, that I’d be happy to eat in four times a week for the rest of my life and I don’t think there is one.

Henrietta’s calls itself a “fresh and honest” American restaurant, but that doesn’t begin to cover what I like about this place:

Fresh ingredients, locally sourced and thoughtfully prepared. This isn’t the kind of restaurant where the plates are gorgeous (although they often are); it’s the kind of restaurant where you can assume that if there’s a tomato or a beet or a pork chop on your plate, someone chose it for flavor, from a reputable source, and it will deliver. There’s an emphasis on regional and local ingredients, and they report the provenance of ingredients when they can. Tonight I ordered something that in most restaurants would be forgettable or even worth avoiding — a dish of stone-ground grits with fresh vegetables — and it was flavorful and balanced without being gratuitously rich. On my salad plate were probably the tastiest tomatoes I’ve eaten in three years. The last time I was here, I had a steak, and it was the second-best steak I’ve ever had. In my whole life. (The winner: Magnolia Steak in Norfolk, which (alas) is now closed.)

Daily menu, but very little attitude. Most places that have a menu that changes daily feel like they’re trying too hard, but I rarely get that embarrassed “jeez, ratchet it back a little” feeling here — except sometimes when the dessert menu comes, but the desserts are so good that all is forgiven.

Extensive wine-by-the-glass list, many under $10. To do this they need a lot of turnover, which they get (it’s a large hotel, and there is a lot of community patronage, too — another indication that they’re on to something). Tonight I had a Long Island Cabernet Franc that was so good I’d stock it at home.

Absolutely the most reliable, hearty, no-tricks American breakfast I’ve ever had. Perfectly consistent from visit to visit. Eggs cooked exactly to order; gigantic portions of ham and sausage; superb breakfast potatoes (note: roughly 1 lb. butter per lb. potatoes); honest wheaty bread and very good biscuits (second only to America’s best biscuit, Atlanta’s Flying Biscuit). Strong coffee of a quality that’s hard to duplicate at home. Fresh, rich butter; preserves in abundance.

Spacious dining room, with comfortable farmhouse tables and a large outdoor patio in good weather. The place never feels full, even when it is.

The very best kind of service: attentive without ever crowding you, anticipating what you’ll need, backing off when it’s clear you’re enjoying your food and friends.

All in all, Henrietta’s Table is nice enough for informal entertaining (e.g., a business dinner that isn’t too stuffy), but you don’t end up paying as much as you might expect. It’s very possible to get through dinner for under 40 bucks a person, including dessert and a glass of wine. At a restaurant of this caliber, that’s difficult to match. And that’s why I’ll be eating there, what, 6 times between now and Friday?

Matt Yglesias’ post “The Nordic Passion for Coffee” observes that the Nordic countries don’t just drink a lot of coffee — they drink more than their neighbors, more than anyone else in the world, by a statistically significant margin. He excerpts this map, which is striking:

I happened to read this while on an enforced coffee “fast” (during my long weekend in the country with a large group, where our sleep/wake schedule didn’t make it convenient to have coffee at the times and in the dosages I normally do). I really, really felt the lack. Consequently I am having a cup of strong coffee now that I’m home, at 11pm on a school night, despite knowing that it’ll put me to sleep late and mess me up in the morning. But it is delicious, especially with these cookies that my houseguest left me as a hostess, er, host gift. Thanks, houseguest!

WaterFire returns to Providence, Rhode Island this Friday evening with the first lighting of the season, and we’re taking a quick overnight trip to the Creative Capital to enjoy this incomparable nighttime festival event that we first experienced during last year’s National Arts Marketing Project annual meeting.

If you’re new to WaterFire, here’s what happens: after night falls, volunteers in small boats light and tend wood fires in 100 braziers placed in the middle of the three rivers that flow through downtown Providence. Music plays, and thousands of people from Providence and the surrounding area converge on the waterfront to stroll, eat street food, and enjoy the sights, sounds, and scents of a large and memorable public event. At our last visit, we were fortunate enough to be guests in a gondola, which floated past three dozen of the braziers, upriver and then back down again, amid sparks and smoke and autumn drizzle. But even from shore, WaterFire is a thoroughly impressive sensory experience.

I particularly like WaterFire because it’s emphatically not a commercial event; it’s a spontaneous gathering of people from across the community to participate in a cultural happening (with free admission, courtesy of commercial and institutional sponsors, of the City of Providence and the state of Rhode Island, and of the dozens of volunteers who tend the fires, staff the boats, and advise and assist attendees on land).

Friday’s lighting starts at 8:16pm (sunset) and the fires will be burning until midnight. Bring a jacket; the evening will be breezy. If you’re within travel distance of Providence, consider making the trip; and if you enjoy what you see, please make a contribution to WaterFire.

Just back from a long country-house weekend in Dutchess County, about 90 minutes north of the city, with friends and family. Since I like reading these kinds of travelogues, I’ll subject you to mine, or at least an abbreviated version, complete with some photos of the high points, two of which were Pawling village, and the Stormville Flea Market. (I’ll cover our Sunday night movie, The Room, in another post.)

The village. We were staying just outside the village of Pawling, home of Norman Vincent Peale as well as a wartime cryptography school, more recently the home of McKinney & Doyle, the beloved bakery and highfalutin’ restaurant.

The earliest settlers came to Quaker Hill in the 1720s, and the area is still home to families of long standing, along with country-house professional people from the city and the odd plutocrat or two. Pawling village has the sheen of a place that has remained continuously prosperous, despite being a shade too far off the beaten track to attract tourist traffic in volume, and some new businesses have opened since last season. Here are a few photos to give you a sense of the village:

The Stormville Airport Flea Market. I can’t stomach Stormville — the biggest gathering of antique, junktique, junk, and funnel-cake vendors on a dusty plain I’ve ever experienced — more than about twice a year. But a couple times a year, it’s worth it. In my apartment in the city I have nifty midcentury side tables and a midcentury orange swivel desk chair that came from Stormville, and every time I go, I hope for another find.

I didn’t really score this year, although I did pick up this fascinating how-to crafts guide (and I assure you that the inside pages are just as creepy as the cover), sold to me by a very earnest woman:

The real winners were our comic-collector friends, who came along in search of comic books and were not disappointed:

Here are a few more shots I took:

I just want to point out that the Shake Shack in Madison Square Park has still got it. This review by the Wandering Foodie, Hagan Blount, is what dragged me there today after work (along with a 90-degree evening and having nowhere in particular to be) after a long absence, and the food was if anything better than I remember. My Shakeburger was substantial and well-seasoned, my Chicago dog was delicious, the cheese fries had a substance and flavor that I imagine only a great poutine could match… and my only complaint about the frozen custard with hot fudge was “delicious fudge, wish I had more,” which isn’t much of a complaint when you think about it. And I don’t even have indigestion afterwards! If you’re prepared to spend $17 on a (heavy) fast-food meal in the park, I don’t think you can do much better than this anywhere in the United States.

And on a warm evening like this, you get to eat your meal surrounded by a mob of good-looking people — comprising a broad cross-section of New Yorkers of all ages, and a good many of whom meet the qualifications to have their photos posted here — enjoying the pre-summer air.

As a counterweight to all the calories in this post (not to mention the implied lust), here’s some brain food: a bonus Madison Square Park photo of Secretary of State William Seward, the one who purchased Alaska for the United States from Russia in 1867.

I’m on the train back from Philadelphia after a very short business trip (3 hours 10 minutes on the ground). I must say that based on what I’ve experienced in the dozen or so times I’ve visited it over the years, I love love love Philadelphia and am sure I could easily live there. The entire central core of the city seems more vibrant every time I visit, the arts scene is obviously great, there’s a friendliness toward and respect for tourists and flaneurs that you don’t see in Washington or New York — and you don’t seem to have to pay that inconvenience tax that we’ve got in New York, where everything is unnecessarily complicated and schleppy and you get home at the end of the day covered with a thin film of grease. It’s kind of like New York, but after an attitudectomy, and shrunken by 40%.

The parochialism would grate eventually (as it did when I lived in Atlanta, Washington, and for that matter San Francisco), but then in Philadelphia you’re so close to so many other interesting places, including New York, that I don’t think it would matter as much.

Coming later today: bonus pic of me on a park bench with Ben Franklin.

We had a long, long, long drive back from Boston today — counting stops, 6 hours and 40 minutes. We left the city in moderate snow, and hit another even heavier part of the storm system just south of Hartford. Aside from the stop midway at the freeway-close Athenian Diner III in Milford, Connecticut, it was almost unbearable, especially the last 30 miles of I-91 which hadn’t yet been plowed.

We stayed in the Liberty Hotel on Beacon Hill, which is built around and into the old Charles Street Jail, closed in 1991. They did a nice job in the conversion — historically and architecturally respectful, accessible, whimsical without being cheeseball. They named the bar “Clink.” How cool is that?

About Montreal, not much to say except that it still rocks, and it’s even more fun when it isn’t all slushy (as now) than it is when it is (as when we were there a year ago).