My Italian-American buddy here on my job in Boston's financial district who was born, raised and still lives in Somerville never heard about Rauxa. He also confesses to getting lost there sometimes. If people are still open to other ideas and are more interested in the company than specialty foods, I would suggest the "Midships Lounge" at the Harborside Hyatt (http://boston.hyatt.com/bosha/dini/di02a.html). Selling points - it's in keeping with our FT theme - located at Logan and all, reachable by both the T and car (parking avialable), and you can't beat the dramatic view of the harbor and the city anywhere.

Ahhh - problem with going to a restaurant near Logan - the Tunnel! It is a nitemare, and anybody coming from the West or South would have to go through it, possibly getting stuck for a long time.

I vote that we stick with Rauxa. The reviews look pretty good (see above for links of reviews) and it seems like fun.

It doesn't look that far at all from Harvard University in Cambridge, as well as it being close to I-93. Take a look at it on the map:
see:
http://maps.expedia.com/pub/agent.dl...$7F$97$30E$40$ 3C$248$99$1C$C6Q$C060001000!8$FF000$14000!4$FF!I01 0

[This message has been edited by steve100 (edited 06-23-2000).]

The only cavil I have about Rauxa is that the reviews indicate it's hip and crowded. As it was virtually impossible to hold a conversation in the space when it was the Elephant Walk, we might have to take frequent trips out into the Union Square evening just to hear ourselves.

The links had interesting comments about the food ...

My vote is to stick with Rauxa unless we get to be a really big group.

The main reason I suggested Rauxa was that it is convenient for Anna and me and that the food is quite good. My experience of going there on a Wednesday is that it is not loud at all and not terribly crowded.

I wouldn't mind going into Boston but others just hate driving and parking there, so Somerville seems like a nice compromise.

How about a final count so I can make a reservation for Wednesday? So far we have:

dgolds
AnnaS
papollo
violist
Steve100

Can everyone still make it?

Camera Guy: Can you make it?

BajanYankee: Can we convince you to come out to Somerville and join the fun?

Anyone else who might be able to make it? I sent private e-mail to jetsetter, how about some of the other Bostonians around here?

[This message has been edited by dgolds (edited 06-27-2000).]

I'll be there!

Thanks for the invitation but I'm afraid I'm probably not going to be able to make it. Although I work downtown I actually live in Bristol County which makes Somerville a bit out of the way for me. Hope you guys have fun and do it again soon.

Was this an enjoyable get-together? I'm sorry to have missed you all. My employer works on a July - June fiscal year, and being a programmer I got snagged into some last-minute end-of-the-year reporting tasks. I hope to meet you at another time.

We were scheduled at 8 at Rauxa, a Catalan-themed restaurant in Union Square,Somerville (space formerly housing the Elephant Walk, which is now in Porter Square). I missed my bus so walked the easy mile from Sullivan to the restaurant (not something to do after dark, perhaps, but it was a balmy and bright evening), getting there just a couple minutes ahead of time. At 8:00:10 a cutish dark-haired woman walked past me - I asked her if she was AnnaS ... no. A couple minutes
later, another cute woman, with bright red hair, arrived - the real AnnaS. After the usual preliminaries we headed down into the restaurant, where we found jetsetter waiting for us. We made ourselves comfy at the waiting area and were shortly joined by dgolds and his colleague Kevin (who reminds me quite a lot of my friend Fiona in SF, but I didn't get round to asking if they're related).

No room at the bar for us all, and a party of 10 in the dining room had expanded to 17, eating up not only all the food in the place but also a couple much-needed tables. We elected to take our appetizers in the waiting
area: artichoke-manchego cheese salad, braised short rib, garlic shrimp on toast, broiled chorizo, and octopus-squid-chickpea salad (I didn't find any octopus, but the squid was good). Tasty and not too expensive at $7 a pop off the tapas menu. In retrospect I think we'd probably forgo the garlic shrimp (very inefficient flavor/cost
and calorie/cost ratios), but everything else was quite nice.

At some point five places opened up at the bar, so we claimed them. It's difficult to carry on a conversation strung along a bar, though, so I took to wandering down to talk to people: and the inevitable happened, someone nicked my place. Luckily, the folks at the other end made room for me: Robert, a planner (city? fiscal? we didn't ask) and Mary, a poet (the woman I'd originally
accosted, asking her if she was AnnaS). We ended up including them in our conversations, and the upshot is that we might have another flyertalker or two someday - we told Mary that she could even post in haiku if she chose. After a little plate of jamon serrano (not on the menu) we split:

the short ribs again, served as a main dish with a chickpea mash - didn't taste this iteration, but the appetizer serving was delicious

black and white paellas with shellfish - quite good

the signature and most expensive dish in the place, a toasted pasta in paprika broth with lobster, about which I've read a lot - this was fine but not worthy of the press it's gotten

and a couple cremas cremadas (cremes brulees) for dessert.

Accompanying all of this were bottles of Ty Nant water and Segura Viudas Aria, a very nice clean sparkler from Freixenet. Also all the assorted olives and crusty breads one could dream of.

At our end of the bar, the conversation ranged from flyertalk to flyertalk: I tried to steer it more toward the food end, as that's my field of interest; dgolds did the
mileage talking; and jetsetter and dgolds brought in a few arcane computer-related topics. Sorry to miss out on what Kevin and AnnaS were saying, but the layout was such that a unified discussion was impossible.

The restaurant is pleasant and homey, and both the manager (name forgotten) and the waiter (Julian, or was it Jason?) made us feel comfortable. The food, although regionally inspired, isn't particularly
Catalan that I can see: I'd expect much more garlic, salt, peppers, and olive oil in the dishes, and lamb and duck instead of beef and chicken on the menu. That being said, what we were served was very tasty, and I'd order most of the dishes again. A restaurant worthy of the big city at just slightly less than big-city prices.

A very pleasant evening, good company, I was made to feel right at home, and if I had paws I'd put them up.

Hey, I'll put my paws up. All of 'em. Thanks for writing up the evening, violist, and thanks for a fun time, everyone.