Alewife
The first stop we visit is Alewife on the Red Line. This station is named after the alewife fish, a North American herring. Alewife is on the border of Cambridge, Somerville, and Arlington.
The T station has a massive multilevel parking building for commuters and it is surrounded by modern office buildings and condos. The area still has a lot of ongoing construction, with new residential buildings being added. They look fancy, but do not have much character or life, at least so far.
We start with breakfast at Revival, itself located on the first floor of a modern office building, on the Cambridge side. It is the only food and coffee option near the T stop, besides a Dunkin’ Donuts in the station building and a Bertucci’s. Revival was opened by Liza Shirazi who also ran the recently closed Crema Café in Harvard Square. We figured this out because Revival has drinks called “crema” and has a Crema coffee cart inside.
We try Revival’s latte and golden crema (latte with cardamom), avocado toast (comes with kimchi and a six-minute egg), and the black cap (an English muffin with Italian cold cut and egg). Despite being served in beautiful notNeutral cups, the lattes are mediocre. The sandwiches are interesting and quite a bargain compared to the rest of Cambridge. A definite plus, in our opinion, is the free sparkling water on tap.
From Revival, we head to the Alewife Brook Reservation a large urban forest with wetlands. It is quite surprising to find such a wild area in the city. It looks like it has been recently restored and is nice to walk through.
Through the reservation, we arrive in Arlington. We walk up the main street which has a variety of interesting restaurants, the library, the town hall, and churches. Like every town around here, Arlington also has a First Baptist Church. We have yet to come across a Second Baptist Church. Locals claim that the original Uncle Sam, meat packer Samuel Wilson was from here, though Arlington was called Menotomy at the time. Not only is Arlington the site of the 1775 Revolutionary War site of the Battle of Menotomy, but is home to the 2006 and 2007 Arlington Pop Warner “D” Squad National Cheerleading Champions.
For lunch, we head to Adventure Pub, a gastropub specializing in boardgames. They have a collection of more than 500 games. You can try one from their complementary menu for free and play the others for a $5 cover. We play 5-minute dungeon, and in 90 minutes manage to complete only one dungeon, failing about ten times on the second one. For food, we have Korean beef tacos and chicken tenders, both of which were flavorful.
We walk back to Alewife Station on the Minuteman Bikeway which is actually also for pedestrians.
