December 5th 2012: Spending My Half Day Off in the Boston Area

Today, I had to take a day off to attend a meeting in Boston, so I decided to have lunch at the Manna House in Arlington. This place is a restaurant which sells both Korean and Japanese cuisine, and as always, I had a Groupon here for $20 of lunch food.

This place is pretty small and simply decorated for a typical Korean/Japanese restaurant. There wasn't much variety or originality in the menu items either,

 so I decided to just go with the Rice Cake Soup

and the Fish Jigae stew dish.

The side dishes provided were ok,

while both soup dishes were pretty bland and uninteresting, although the fish was really fresh. Overall, not a place I would come back to again.

After my lunch, I headed into Boston by taking the T. When I got to the Park Street Station, I still had a little time before my meeting, so I decided to walk around the Massachusetts State House area. This time, the entrance to Ashburton Park behind the State House was open, so I decided to head in to take pictures of the memorials there.

After my meeting, I headed back to my car in Arlington before driving to Somerville, where I decided to have dinner at Yak and Yeti, a Nepali and Indian restaurant on Broadway.

I had to use $30 here in this simply decorated restaurant, and looking at the relatively low prices of food here, I knew I was going to have a hard time. I had to resort to ordering the Mango Lassi for a drink, the Bhedako Tarkari (Boneless lamb cooked with ginger, garlic and nepali herbs) for my entree with Basmati rice,

the Lamb Samosas

and the Khasi Ko Sekuwa (Goat marinated overnight with herbs and Nepali spices, cooked in charcoal) for appetizers,

and the Kheer Badami (Creamy and sweet rice pudding) for dessert.

On top of that I was also given 2 vegetable Pakoras for starters.

Other than the lamb samosas which was a little too strong in flavor for me, while the dessert was just okay in my opinion, the Nepali dishes were actually pretty good, especially this being the first time I have tried Nepali cuisine, which is pretty similar to Indian food.

Overall, I would say the food here is decent,although decor and neighborhood is not that great.