Spicy Chicken Sandwich and Bland Avocado Sandwich from Andala in Cambridge

Harvard students have the tendency to think that anywhere outside of Harvard Square is simply too far. This notion restricts many students to the "Harvard Bubble," preventing them from venturing into other parts of Cambridge/Boston. While spending a part of summer in Cambridge, I visited a couple of restaurants and cafes in Kendall Square and Central Square, including Andala Cafe. According to its website, Andala opened to serve as "a warm place where people can socialize in an environment that fosters intimate conversations."

In addition to coffee and tea, Andala offers Middle Eastern food. My friend and I decided to get a vegetarian dish and a meat dish and share them. The Chicken Khalili Sandwich ($8.95) is grilled chicken with jalapeno peppers in Jerusalem salad sauce, served in toasted Arabic bread. The dish came with hummus and some vegetable sticks on the side.

The Arabic bread looked like pita, but it was thinner with crunchier exterior. I wasn't sure whether to pick up the food and eat it like a sandwich or use utensils because the bread was too thin and everything inside sort of fell apart.

Inside the two thin slices of Arabic bread were grilled chicken, lots of jalapeno peppers, yogurt-like dressing, and basils.

The sandwich would have been...edible if there weren't jalapeno peppers because these were extremely spicy! I literally took a bite and couldn't eat it anymore. The spiciness from the peppers was definitely way too overpowering.

The Avocado Press Sandwich ($7.95) didn't have any description in the menu, so I had no idea what to expect except that there will be avocado inside. Like the chicken sandwich, it was served in Arabic bread, but it had potato salad on the side instead of hummus. The sandwich was sprinkled with basil on top.

Inside the sandwich were huge chunks of avocado, tomatoes, romaine lettuce, some sort of black bean puree sauce, and...lots of mozzarella cheese. I wish I had asked what was in there because the sandwich would have been perfect sans cheese.

The Avocado sandwich was a sharp contrast to the chicken sandwich because it tasted rather bland. Rotating a bite of the chicken sandwich and a bite of the avocado sandwich, therefore, was very complementary :)

Japanese Curry at the Curry Pot

As I mentioned before, I prefer Japanese curry to Indian curry because the former doesn't include cream. I was walking around the food court debating what I wanted for dinner when I saw a plastic model of a dish called "Sweet pumpkin and seafood/rice cake curry." Ohhh interesting! I walked into the restaurant, Curry Pot, and ordered the dish.

The portions were a lot smaller than I had expected, but it was fine because I wasn't very hungry anyways. The curry was sort of spicy. It had lots of seafood, ranging from mussels to shrimp to squid. The squash was disappoint because it was not sweet, and the rice tasted a bit undercooked. The salad was garnished with weird, artificially pink dressing.

The curry had little chewy rice cake that looked like snowman. The waitress brought extra curry on a bowl that looked like the genie's lamp.

Spicy and Savory Korean Snacks

When I come to Korea, I don't necessarily want to gorge on filet mignon, escargot and caviar, or lobster tail at a four-star restaurant. Instead I want to try food that I can't easily obtain in the United States.

A couple days ago, my aunt brought some to-go food for dinner. I hadn't eaten since 10:30 am that morning, so anything edible at that time looked delicious.

The seafood dish with bean sprouts in red chili sauce was extremely spicy. There were so many types of sea creatures, including a huge octopus that we had to scissor, scallops in shells, shrimps, a whole squid, a fish, and abalones.

The dish was enough to feed seven people. We even had leftover with which we added some kimchi, seaweed. and rice to make delicious fried rice.

Personally the sauce was overwhelmingly spicy with a hint of sweetness that didn't go too well. I was tempted to wash the bean sprouts in the water to get rid of some of the sauce. The bean sprouts were overcooked because it lacked some of the juicy and the freshness. The seafood, especially the crab, was too hard to eat so I just bit into it and the juices oozed out from the shell.

Aunt also bought soondae, or Korean sausage made with pig intestine on the outside and clear noodle and vegetables inside. It may sound disgusting, but it's one of the snacks I used to love when I was little. Eating too much of it is nauseating, but it tastes really good with some salt and pepper. The intestine used to wrap the fillings is jerky, while the insides are like the fillings in the dumplings.

There were three different types of soondae. One of them was quite spicy, while the other was overly chewy. The gray, triangular one is liver--it has somewhat of a bitter taste.

A Delicious Affair: Tiger Toppoki

I hate going to the doctor's office for multiple reasons, but by far the most frustrating is the endless wait. Today, I had a doctor's appointment at noon, and guess when they called my name? 1:20! Absolutely ridiculous. What made it even more unbelievable was that it was an extremely speedy check-up; the whole thing literally took less than 2 minutes. Wow.

Mom and I were quite angry afterward, but we soothed our frustrating and our hungry stomachs with a trip to Tiger Toppoki, a Korean fast food restaurant a few blocks away from the doctor's office.

We decided to sample all the main items on the menu. This is every Korean child's dream. Yum :)

Toppoki is a spicy rice cake dish, a very popular street food/snack in Korea. I would have enjoyed it more if it wasn't as spicy, but the rice cake was chewy and the sauce was not too salty, not too dull.

Odang, fish cake, is served in a bowl of soup. I ordered a spicy pepper odang. Nothing spectacular.

Udon Noodle. Personally I am not a huge fan of Udon, so Mom ate the whole bowl.

Sondae, Korean sausage, used to be made of noodles wrapped in pig's intestine, but nowadays a lot of places have replaced the intestines with something more artificial...thankfully! Sondae here was way too greasy.

Overall an affordable (~$10 for the entire feast!) meal/snack. It reminded me of my childhood. Haha.