Bar development is cyclical: A bar starts out as a dive, becomes popular because of the cheapness of the food/drinks, then gets modified into a douchebag lounge and/or tapas bar that only pretentious people go to.  Once this happens, nobody can go there except for the exclusively rich, and it no longer becomes fun.  Nobody comes to it anymore, you change ownership, and it converts to an Irish pub.  It then slowly becomes squalid and turns into a place only alcoholic locals go to, then becomes a dive again.  From what I’ve been told, The Good Life is a perfect example of bar cycle. A former dive bar, The Good Life appears in ascendency towards the gleaming orb of douchbaggery with a downstairs Vodka Lounge, high ceiling, and pseudo-fancy menu.

I decided to go with Kenny and Rebecca to the Good Life one evening, when Kenny was keen to grab food and drinks nearby and Rebecca and I were the only people still working so late.  Rebecca actually was working very hard, as she ended up coming later, while Kenny and I shared an erstwhile plate of nachos.  We both agree, that while the chips were very tasty, a good quality plate of nachos needs gooey liquid cheese that oozes down to the bottom, soaking the lower layer of chips.  While there was a solid top layer, the lower recesses still required cheese, making it an inferior plate.  Furthermore, the guacamole and beans and jalapenos were very sparsely ordained.  Overall, a mediocre nachos at best.

Once Rebecca arrived, we ordered a garden pizza, which was listed as: seasonal vegetables, parmigiano and artichoke spread, san marzano tomatoes. By seasonal vegetables, they meant broccoli and spinach and red peppers (which had to have come from the southern hemisphere, as they are a summer vegetable).  The pizza was very very cheesy (perhaps compensating for the inferiorily cheesy nachos) and lacked a tomato sauce, which likely would have made it taste a little less salty.

There are quite a few vegetarian options at the Good Life, which emphasizes comfort food.  I have yet to find a vegan dish that is actually comforting (perhaps veggie pho?), so there are limited options here, but they do have a veggie panini without cheese that could placate you.  The food at the Good Life is above average for standard pub fare, but the prices are well above average (corresponding to its ambitions for douchebaggery).  The music here is very good, playing great independent hip-hop, which is really hard to find in Boston.  We left before the Ed Hardy shirt wearing crowd got too big (i.e. more than 2 people).  I’d recommend the Good Life as a good place to come grab lunch, where there will be some good music, few Ed Hardy shirtters, and decent food at more reasonable lunchtime prices.  I give the Good Life three and half cheese sandwiches for food, four cheese sandwiches for music.

The Good Life
28 Kingston Street
Boston, MA 02111-2205 
(617) 451-2622

Regular readers of this blog are likely familiar with the fact that I’m on a work basketball team that regularly gets destroyed, as I regularly get smacked around by 6’6” 280 lb monsters.  Our season finally finished (2-12 with 2 forfeits! Just win baby!), so we had to organize our end-of-season gala dinner.  You may remember that last year we went to Jillian’s in Fenway with the intention of going bowling, but never actually bowling.  This season, we were committed to the bowling motif (much to my chagrin - explained later), and decided to go to Lanes and Games in Cambridge, near Alewife.

Unlike Jillian’s, Lanes and Games is a dedicated bowling alley, which coincidentally has a bar that serves food.  Also unlike Jillian’s, Lanes and Games is amazingly cheap food, as we were able to get a smorgasbord of food for the team for a low low price.  This would be subsequently followed by the worst bowling game of my life.

For $8 you get a DiGiorno’s quality pizza that probably would have easily fed three of us on the team, a pretty good deal, especially when compared to the expensive pizza at Jillian’s.

The nachos were $4 and were the quality you’d expect to get at a sporting event (velveeta cheese, crappy salsa, and pickled jalapenos).  But at $4, I can’t complain too much.

The fried mushrooms ordered by recently herbivorized Otis were very delicious.  Otis is leaving the country for greener pastures (aka Canada).  I suppose the pastures there aren’t really greener, more permafrosty, but this meal would be his farewell meal with the Elephants basketball organization.  We’ll miss his hustle and 4-6 points per game.  I will miss him most, since his inability to box out drew most of the ire from the good players on the team, I will now be the proverbial whipping boy.  Perhaps it would be a misstatement to say that vegetarians are naturally inferior rebounders?

Nevertheless, after this smorgasbord of unhealthiness, we decided to burn off a few calories by going candlepin bowling.  Since Otis was leaving, he had the bold proposition that the loser of the candlepin bowling got to be captain of the team.  Fortunately, I am an atrocious bowler, so I was able to position myself to become captain, thereby controlling the destiny of the Elephants basketball club.  While the others mocked my horrendous bowling, little did they know the number of suicides I would make them do in practice prior to the game.  Mwahahahahahaha!

If you ever plan on eating crappy food with a bunch of people and follow that by bowling, Lanes and Games is the place to go!  They have both candlepin and regular bowling, as well as pool.  So I highly recommend it if you’re coming in a big group.  And there is enough vegetarian options that you don’t feel like a weirdo (but obviously vegan options other than chips and salsa).  So, I’ll give them three and a half cheese sandwiches.

Lanes and Games
195 Concord Tpke
Cambridge, MA 02140 
(617) 876-5533

Sometimes you make mistakes in life, sometimes you may great mistakes, and sometimes you make colossal mistakes (ask George W. Bush).  One day, Kenny and I decided to go grab some falafel from Falafel King (always a good idea).  However, I was noticing recently, that I haven’t tried a new restaurant in the Downtown Crossing area in a while, so I thought, why not go a little further in the terrible food court that Falafel King is in, and try Jay Bo Pizza.

I have no idea what Jay Bo Pizza is, but the closest estimation would be that it is the pizza equivalent of Chao Cajun.  While Chao Cajun is cajun food served by Chinese people, Jay Bo is pizza served by Chinese people.  I’m going to warn you, the rest of this post is going to be kinda racist (slightly less than Mark Twain levels, but more than Outsourced).  But, I feel that certain ethnic cuisines (including pizza), should be made by the ethnicity that developed them.  So, Middle Easterners/Eastern Meditteraneans should make falafels, Indians should make Indian food, Italians should make Italian food, and Chinese people should stick to Chinese food. The worst quesadilla I’ve ever had was in New York at what I thought was a Mexican restaurant, but ended up being run entirely by Chinese people.  It’s pretty hard to screw up a quesadilla, but they did it, and I don’t know how.  It seems like the Chinese are the only people with the boldness to attempt to make other nationalities’ cuisines.

Beyond just being a bad pizza, Jay Bo Pizza figured out a way of completely ruining cheese pizza for me.  I’m very tolerant when it comes to quality of cheese pizza.  One of my favorite meals in grad school were heated frozen Freschetta cheese pizzas, which is not the greatest pizza ever, but it was 100 fold better than the overly salty inedible pizza that Jay Bo makes.  Within a certain level of confidence, I can say that Jay Bo Pizza is the worst pizza I have ever had, including Indian pizza and frozen pizzas.  So, don’t even bother.  One cheese sandwich, and that’s only because they offer vegetarian slices.

Jay Bo Pizza
48 Winter Street
Boston, MA 02108 
(617) 482-0606

Don’t ask me why, but I was in the BU area (and no not to creepily follow the co-eds) for a concert at the Agganis Arena.  Well, I guess that pretty much explained why I was in the area…  Anyway, prior to the concert, I decided to try out Sicilia’s Pizza, because I am drawn to pizza places like a Snooki to a publicity stunt (like a Lohan to coke?).

Sicilia’s is one of your typical Greek style pizza places, which aspires to be a Chicago style pizza place with its deep dish pizza and devil-may-care attitude (I made that last part up).  Like other Greek style pizzeria’s, Sicilia’s has over 4 million different menu options, and fortunately, about 4 different vegetarian options (which is actually pretty good for a Greek style pizzeria, though it is also a cafe, which I think skews its number of vegetarian options).  There are even a few vegan options to cater to the Allston hipsters that might stop by prior to seeing an Agganis show.  I decided to order the veggie pizza on regular crust, which tasted DiGiorno’s-y.  Although I did enjoy the fried eggplant topping, I couldn’t escape the feeling of eating a frozen pizza.  While the food is quite reasonably priced (compared to the 6 dollar nachos at the Agganis!), it’s pretty average fare.  Much like other Greek restaurants, they don’t seem to actually want to feed you good food, just enough calories that allows them to make a profit.  So, I’ll give them two and a half cheese sandwiches.

Sicilia’s Pizza
840 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, MA 02215-1205 
(617) 566-0021