January 26th 2013: Volunteering at the American Red Cross Food Pantry in Boston

Early this morning, my friends arrived from NYC at my place for a weekend of doing food truck business together. After sleeping only a few hours, we dragged ourselves out of bed and headed to Boston to do some community service at the American Red Cross Food Pantry.

We had a fun time packing food into bags and handing them out to the poor who came by the droves for the free food, but I have to say that I am disgusted with the people who simply take advantage of the welfare system, driving up to the place in Lexus cars and Hummers, still expecting us to carry the food to their cars.

After doing our part for the community, we headed to Oishii Boston for some lunch. The lunch menu is pretty different, being a kind of sampler dish, of which there are 4 different choices. All the girls in our group decided to go with Set A, consisting of Soba noodles, Steam Broccolini Sesame Dressing, Salmon Avocado Maki, Spicy Tuna Tempura Maki, Agedashi Tofu, Shrimp and Asparagus Tempura, Seaweed Salad and Grilled Miso Black Cod,

while the guys went with Set D, consisting of Fresh Lobster Wild Mushroom risotto, Crispy Rock Shrimp Lemon Aioli, Oishii Crabcake, Seared Wild King Salmon Sweet Soy, Spicy Tuna Salad Handroll, Maguro Sashimi, Hamachi Sashimi, Sake Sushi, Rocky Sushi and Grilled Miso Black Cod.

As always, our chef friend kept serving us complementary stuff as well, including a new Buri (wild yellowtail) sashimi dish,

and bonbon desserts.

As always, an exquisite experience for all of us, and this time round we did not spend an arm or a leg.

After lunch, I decided to show everyone the various sites where our food truck would be operating, like at the junction of Milk Street and Kilby Street in the Financial District, at the junction of Stuart Street and Trinity Place near Copley Square, at the corner of Huntington Avenue and Opera Place in the middle of Northeastern University, and beside the Prudential Center at the corner of Huntington Avenue and Belvidere Street.

Finally, we headed into Cambridge along Memorial Drive, which has an excellent view of the Boston skyline from across the Charles River. This is where we decided to film most of our promotional video tomorrow.

Finally done for the day, we decided to head nearby to Zagat rated Basta Pasta for a cheap dinner after an expensive lunch at Oishii. This place is actually just like any pizza takeout place, and I felt that the dishes we ordered, which included Homemade Meatball Pomodoro with wheat Radiatore,

and my Calamari Basil and Tomato Risotto,

were just okay.

With that, we headed all the way back to my place for the night. We got to get up early tomorrow again for more action in the freezing cold.