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Winter break in Cambridge. After the student exodus homewards for great feasting and general laziness, who's left? Mostly stranded internationals and sullen graduate students. I biked to Toscanini's for coffee and some lolling about with a crisp treatise on Tel Quel for what will probably be a painful term paper, then S calls and it's off to Cafe Baraka for lunch. Hurtling down Mass Ave. towards Central Square without a helmet, I remember an article in Dig about this being the best place in the Boston area to get "doored" - have someone open a car door right in front of you as you bike past. The loud Tunisian woman in the gown is not around. By day Baraka is a real treat of sun-flooded cushioned comfort on upholstered banquettes, and you really get to see the riotous color of the various throws and hangings and lampshades. Potted plants on paint-frayed windowsills. There's a real nice Merguez on flatbread with a cress-tahini salad and rather limp frites doused with harissa. And of course the rosewater lemonade at the bottom of which S notices a suspiciously glutinous deposit of what seems like pollen- flecked phlegm.

Several hours later, after a quick grocery pitstop at Kotobukiya, I set off the fire alarm with the runaway fumes from my searing monkfish. I calmly extinguish the heating coil, make sure the monkfish is safely to one side to cool before throwing on my coat and leaping downstairs to wait for the Cambridge Fire Dept. Who, when they arrive, are politely greeted by an apologetic Asian kid who sheepishly directs them to the culprit kitchen. Whereupon he wonders if he would have to explain the weird groceries lain astrew the table. He's left in peace to tend to the monkfish.

So, there is tobiko spaghetti tossed with the monkfish, garlic, shiso, nori, and?????topped with radish sprouts and toasted walnuts. And some of that Korean yuzu tea.