Xi'an Famous Foods expands to Boston, with more locations on the way; Post 1917 plans Lexington debut
After Downtown Crossing, Wang says that Xi'an will continue to expand with locations throughout Greater Boston.
Advertisement
In Lexington,
Post 1917
(27 Waltham St.) is poised to open by the end of the month, building off
A 10-ounce Brandt fillet served with a lobster tail at Post 1917.
JOSH REYNOLDS FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE/Josh Reynolds for The Boston Globe
In Lynn,
Scopa
is now open, serving Italian dishes with waterfront views (829 Boston St.). Visit nightly for pastas and parms (Tuesday is $16.95 chicken parm night), plus brunch from 10 a.m. on weekends.
Closings
: Fried chicken parlor
Naco Taco
and
Advertisement
Festivals
:
The Boston Pizza Festival
returns to City Hall Plaza this weekend, featuring slices from 30-plus pizzerias, demos, and wine. Sample dishes from
Eataly
,
Florina
,
Quattro
,
Sally's Apizza
, and more. Tickets start at $10; get them at www.bostonpizzafestival.com.
Kara Baskin can be reached at
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Los Angeles Times
4 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
‘The Damned' brings the Civil War to intimate life, obliquely and mesmerizingly
How much can you strip away from the war film and still have a war film? That question invigorates 'The Damned,' the new movie from Roberto Minervini, an Italian-born director who has spent the last 25 years living in America, our worrying cultural undercurrents seeping into his portraits of the marginalized and the discontent, usually documentaries. 'The Damned' represents his first foray into more traditional narrative storytelling, yet this existential drama bears all the hallmarks of his earlier work, less concerned with incident than conjuring a sense of place, time and, most important, a state of being. In his latest, Minervini brings viewers into the thick of the Civil War, only to find the same dazed souls and gnawing uncertainties that have always been his focus. It's a war film with very little combat, but it's about a war that still rages today. Minervini's naturalistic, observational style is on display from the film's first scene, which lingers on a pack of wolves meticulously digging into an animal carcass. 'The Damned' stays on the images just long enough for them to grow discomforting — when will Minervini cut away? — before introducing us to his anonymous protagonists, a collection of volunteer soldiers in the U.S. Army who have been sent out west in the winter of 1862. The specifics of the mission are as mysterious as these men's names as we watch them carry out the minutiae of military busywork. They set up tents. They play cards. They do target practice. Are they meant to represent the hungry wolves from the movie's opening? Or are they the prey? To call 'The Damned' an antiwar film would be to assign an arbitrary value to what is really a series of offhand episodes consisting of only modest activity. In Minervini's recent stellar nonfiction projects 'The Other Side' and 'What You Gonna Do When the World's on Fire?,' the director collaborated with his subjects to create unvarnished glimpses of everyday lives, sometimes working from prearranged scenarios. Although Minervini is credited as 'The Damned's' screenwriter, his new film draws from a similarly close relationship with his cast, the actors drawing on aspects of their real lives to inform their roles, scenes developing from a loosely sketched-out plot. In such an intimate, pensive atmosphere, characters emerge gradually out of the rugged landscape like windswept trees or weathered stones. The man identified in the end credits as the Sergeant (Tim Carlson, one of the subjects of Minervini's 2013 documentary 'Stop the Pounding Heart') is ostensibly the leader, but as the untamed Montana wilderness goes from barren to snowy over an unspecified period of time, the more apparent it becomes that no commanding officer is necessary. The skeletal score by Carlos Alfonso Corral, who doubles as the film's cinematographer, hints at an elemental menace just over the horizon. But real danger rarely occurs. Instead, these men are trapped in their own heads, their tender, confessional musings about God, war and manhood so rudimentary that they never aspire to the heights of folksy poetry. These soldiers are nothing special — as unimportant as their assignment. Because Minervini avoids the tropes of the antiwar film — no big speeches, no ponderous metaphors — it's almost a shock that he allows for one convention, an actual battle scene, which occurs about halfway through the 88-minute runtime. But even here, 'The Damned' refuses to follow formula, resulting in an intentionally haphazard sequence as the soldiers are ambushed, the characters fleeing and shooting in every direction, the camera trailing behind them, desperate to keep them in frame. Whether it's enemy forces or some random buffalo, the movie's shallow depth of focus ensures that we only see our troops. Everything else resides in a permanently fuzzy, unsettled background, a constant middle distance that traps the characters in their spiritual purgatory. There are limitations to Minervini's spartan approach. Whereas his documentary films crackle thanks to his unpredictable interactions with his subjects, 'The Damned' cannot help but feel slightly overdetermined, the outcomes predestined rather than organically unearthed. And yet, the concerns he brought to those earlier movies ripple here as well. 'The Other Side,' his somber 2015 study of racist drug addicts and gun-toting militia members in rural Louisiana, remains the definitive warning of our modern MAGA age, while 2018's 'What You Gonna Do' prefigures the Black Lives Matter movement. Now, for the first time, this prescient filmmaker visits America's distant past, subtly pinpointing the economic inequalities, senseless brutality and thwarted masculinity that will bedevil the nation for the next 160 years. The Civil War is long over, but the country's divisions remain, those core tensions naggingly unresolved. Don't think of 'The Damned' as an antiwar film — consider it an origin story for Minervini's perceptive, understated exploration of an America still in conflict.
Black America Web
5 hours ago
- Black America Web
Spirit.Ed: Celebrate National Martini Day 2025 With One Of These Martinis
Today (June 19) is National Martini Day, and we're putting a focus on the classic cocktail along with some riffs. Whether using gin or vodka, a Martini can go in a lot of directions, and we've got some unique twists in our roundup below. If I sound like a broken record in this next sentence, forgive me, because I love a Martini made with gin. Gin, which wasn't my favorite in my early days of imbibing, is probably my favorite spirit and far more versatile than expected. As I've learned over time, the origin of National Martini Day is hard to pinpoint, as is the actual history of the Martini. Some historians point to the Martinez cocktail as the precursor to the Martini, which was introduced to the masses in the 1800s. There are also claims that the drink rose to prominence in 1910 at New York's Knickbocker Hotel. What we can determine from older bartending manuals is that the drink usually involved gin, Italian fortified wine, and bitters. My first Martini was made with Hendrick's Gin, a curious choice for some due to the brand's infusion of cucumber and rose, along with familiar gin botanicals of chamomile, elderflower, juniper, lemon peel, orange peel, caraway, coriander, cubeb berries, angelica root, yarrow root and orris root. Thanks to the expert bartenders of now-closed Washington, D.C. bar, Wisdom, I became adept at understanding different gins and expanding my choices. In this year's National Martini Day roundup, we have some familiar brands I've featured before, like Still G.I.N. and Reyka Vodka, along with brands new to me, Prairie Organic Spirits and Four Pillars. I didn't get a lot of pitches for this day, so this will be a quick read. If there are some brands or recipes we need to know about, email D.L. Chandler at dchandler@ to get those on our radar for future roundups. Have a happy National Martini Day. — Photo: Ali Waxman / Getty Celebrate National Martini Day 2025 With One Of These Martinis was originally published on Source:Still G.I.N. RECIPE: 1.5 oz dry vermouth 1 dash orange bitters METHOD: Place your serving glass in the freezer to chill (ideally 10+ minutes before making drink). Add gin, vermouth, and bitters to a mixing glass. Fill mixing glass with moderate size/up to 1'x1' cube ice cubes. Stir gently for 30-45 seconds (until very well chilled). Remove serving glass from freezer. Strain into the chilled glass using a julep strainer. GLASSWARE: Nick & Nora glass or classic martini glass (4-6 oz size ideal) GARNISH OPTIONS: Lemon twist Source:Prairie Organic Spirits (Featured in the 2025 Cocktailmanac, a free-to-use tool for learning about mixing drinks.) 1 ½ oz Prairie Organic Vodka ½ oz Kamora Dulce de Leche Liqueur1 ½ oz chilled espresso ½ oz pistachio syrup Paint the inside of a martini or rocks glass with pistachio syrup. Shake remaining ingredients with ice until well chilled. Fine strain into the prepared glass over fresh ice. Source:Four Pillars Ingredients 1 1/2 Oz Four Pillars' Rare Dry Gin1/2 Oz Orange Liqueur2/3 Oz Lemon Juice1 Barspoon Orange MarmaladeEgg White (optional) Orange Method: Combine all ingredients in a tin with ice and shake. Strain into a coupe glass and garnish with an orange twist. Source:Reyka Vodka Created by Reyka Vodka Ambassador, Jeffrey Naples Ingredients: 2 parts Reyka Vodka2 parts olive brine 2 dashes fish sauce Method: Build in a mixing glass over ice and stir until chilled. Serve in martini glass with seaweed garnish. Source:The Old G Ingredients: 2 oz The Old G Gin1 oz passion fruit purée0.5 oz vanilla syrup0.5 oz fresh lime juice1 oz passion fruit liqueur Passion fruit half for garnish Method: In a cocktail shaker filled with ice, combine The Old G Gin, passion fruit purée, vanilla syrup, fresh lime juice, and passion fruit liqueur. Shake well until chilled and silky smooth. Strain into a chilled martini glass and garnish with a halved passion fruit for a bold, exotic finish. Black America Web Featured Video CLOSE
Boston Globe
7 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Xi'an Famous Foods expands to Boston, with more locations on the way; Post 1917 plans Lexington debut
After Downtown Crossing, Wang says that Xi'an will continue to expand with locations throughout Greater Boston. Advertisement In Lexington, Post 1917 (27 Waltham St.) is poised to open by the end of the month, building off A 10-ounce Brandt fillet served with a lobster tail at Post 1917. JOSH REYNOLDS FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE/Josh Reynolds for The Boston Globe In Lynn, Scopa is now open, serving Italian dishes with waterfront views (829 Boston St.). Visit nightly for pastas and parms (Tuesday is $16.95 chicken parm night), plus brunch from 10 a.m. on weekends. Closings : Fried chicken parlor Naco Taco and Advertisement Festivals : The Boston Pizza Festival returns to City Hall Plaza this weekend, featuring slices from 30-plus pizzerias, demos, and wine. Sample dishes from Eataly , Florina , Quattro , Sally's Apizza , and more. Tickets start at $10; get them at Kara Baskin can be reached at
