Wednesday, November 11, 2009
INSTITUTION
Dave sent this:
Last serving, to go; Brigham’s only Boston shop closing after 37 years
I ate at Brighams every day for a number of years. Lunch. The store in Charles River Plaza. Chicken salad with fries and a black and white frappe.
Gloria was my waitress. I would wait to sit at her station.
Probably one of the reasons they went under was Gloria's generosity with the ice cream in the black and white frappe.
You don't know what a frappe is? Go to Boston. Find out. It is not, emphatically, a milk shake. It is a frappe.
When I read this, I could smell the Brighams. A mix of coffee, a slightly sour ice cream and the top notes of burgers and other grill items.
They had the old fountain style U-bars. Gloria reigned in her U's. Two I think.
Many years before, in an earlier phase of my life, I got ice cream at the Brighams in Harvard Square which was a really old fashioned fountain place.
It was the precursor to the more modern, highly stylized store that I ate at many years later.
They are the victims of corporate selloffs, serial. So finally they ended up in a company that doesn't even know that Brighams exists. Doesn't care. They had already cut health insurance and failed to pay rent for months. Faceless bastards.
Times have changed and it is not some old codger telling you about it either.
Watch this.
