Trying to be Trendy

I am not trendy. I don't pretend to be, and I don't think anyone would ever use trendy as an adjective to describe me. But last night I hit up 2 - yes 2 - spots that may in fact be considered trendy.

Trendy Spot #1: Wagamama. I may be overestimating the trendiness of dinner last night at Wagamama since Chris and I went to the Prudential Center mall location. Can dinner in a mall actually be trendy? As someone who's not at all trendy, I can't judge this one. But Wagamama certainly does its best to be trendy. I almost laughed as the waitress enthusiastically described how our entrees may come out a few minutes apart because it's part of the "experience" and then scribbled numbers on our paper place mats and entered our orders into a funky electronic handset (all while seriously violating my personal space - I'm not sure why she had to do all this about 6 inches from my face).

But the food was good, if not that interesting. I had shrimp chili men, which was a shrimp and vegetable stir fry on top of noodles, with what pretty much amounted to a ladle of chili garlic sauce straight out of the bottle spread on top. The shrimp and vegetables were well-cooked, but I am spoiled by Chris's amazing sauce construction, so I wasn't too impressed with the one-dimensional (that dimension being spicy) chili garlic sauce. Chris whipped up a spicy pork & pepper stir fry over whole wheat udon noodles the night before for dinner, which had so much more depth of flavor and complexity (yet still delivering some good heat) than my Wagamama meal. Ranking the two meals, the homemade pepper & pork wins, but I still enjoyed the Wagamama "experience."

The main event of our evening was the play "All My Sons" at the Huntington Theater. I'm pretty confident that this does not qualify as trendy since we got a ticket discount for being under 35. We had to laugh as Chris got carded for his beer at Wagamama, and we also got carded to prove that we're under 35 at the theater. I guess being 28 puts us right in the middle of the 21 - 35 age cut-off, but I'm not sure most people mistake either of us for being 35+. Most new people I meet outside of a work context actually think I'm still in college...

On to Trendy Spot #2: Red Mango. This frozen yogurt spot we hit up after the play also does its best to appear trendy, though I just looked at their website and see that it has many mall locations. So this just proves how non-trendy I am - the places I thought were trendy are actually chains that appear frequently in malls. I am now officially branded as non-trendy. But the Red Mango location we went to was not in a mall - it was across the street from the Huntington Theater. Red Mango pitches itself as a healthy alternative to ice cream, and I was pretty impressed with how good it tasted given it has zero fat. I had a small original with 2 toppings - strawberries and Newman O's. The original has a very strong yogurt tang to it, which I quite enjoyed. Chris, who's usually not a frozen yogurt fan, ordered the pomegranate flavor and enjoyed it as well. It was a great way to satisfy my recent ice cream craving without indulging too much.

So it looks like I need to work on discovering what is actually trendy before I claim to be trying trendy spots, but trendy or no, it was a great evening!