No Particular Place

I wanted to add this to the list of things I miss about Boston even though I still live here.

There used to be a certain non-Chinese restaurant in Chinatown. It’s windows were covered with stiffened and yellowed up-side-down take-out menus, strange posters, and well placed pieces of cardboard. From the outside, no one saw in, and no one I know ever went to this small restaurant for the food. They went for the tea, the “cold tea”.

(Explanation: Cold Tea = Beer, or really any alcohol you wanted, including Whiskey, Sake, Scorpion Bowls, etc.)

This little restaurant wasn’t remarkable for the fact that it served alcohol, it was remarkable because they never stopped serving alcohol. 2 am: ‘Last call? What’s last call?’ 3am: ‘You need another shot of whiskey? No problem.’ 4am: ‘You’re still drinking? I’m still selling.’ The weird thing about this place is that we all referred to our late night drinks as “cold tea” but it wasn’t really a password. You didn’t actually order “cold tea”, because if you did, you would really just get cold tea. You ordered whatever you wanted to drink and pretended that there was nothing strange about this place flaunting Boston’s puritanical alcohol and entertaining laws into the wee hours of the night. Sure, every once and a while you would have to order some dumplings or some soup otherwise the owner would remind you weren’t at a bar, but this place really was like some special Island unto itself where the laws of Bostonia held no sway. Kind of like the Vatican or the Cuban embassy.

I don’t know how late this place actually served drinks, all I know is that you never lasted longer than the owner. You never closed the place out.

Sadly this little restaurant moved a few years ago and ‘modernized’. I don’t know what the story is. Maybe they got busted, maybe they just had a change of heart, or maybe the kids inherited the business. All I know is that “cold tea” is no longer being served in Boston.