Student Groups And Their Haunts

Although they meet in places like the basement of Memorial Hall, the Castle on Bow Street or a Winthrop House common room, many of Harvard's student groups have homes-away-from-home at the Square's restaurants.

The local eateries--adopted for their convenient location and returned to time and again out of force of habit--become sentimental favorites, staked out by student groups as their own turf.

Last summer, for instance, the Let's Go staff mangaged to swing a lunch deal with Cafe of India, right next door, says Muneer I. Ahmad '93. "It was a swell partnership. We laughed, we cried, we ate well," he says.

Let's Go writers could eat in or take out from the restaurant for a discount, says Cafe of India manager Jagdish Singh. And in return, says Ahmad, "we provided steady business throughout the summer."

Singh says the lunchtime arrangement worked well and also benefited the restaurant. "[The Let's Go staff] tells others the food is good," he says.

The summer deal made fans out of many Let's Go staff members, says Ahmad. "Choley bhaturi was definitely the office favorite," he says.

Although Let's Go staffers are no longer eligible for meal discounts, the writers' fondness for choley bhaturi is lasting.

"There's still some loyalty in their hearts," Ahmad says. The editor of the Greece and Turkey guide even included the name of his favorite dish in the acknowledgments, Ahmad says.

When Lampoon writers get hungry, they slip out of the Castle and go to Tommy's or Pinnochio's, says John Aboud III '95. During the production of the recent Las Vegas issue, the staff kept themselves going on Pizzeria Uno's, he says.

But usually the staff is simply to lazy to go that far, he says. The closer Tommy's Lunch is a favorite spot for the "ambience," says Aboud. "You can't beat that," he adds.

Tommy's is also a haven for staff writers of The Crimson, according to Ira E. Stoll '94. Tommy's is at one end of The Crimson's "bipolar axis" extending from the building at 14 Plympton St., he says; the Hong Kong is at the other end.

"Both of them we go to for location rather than culinary excellence," says Stoll. "They're both pretty greasy."

Nevertheless, "the Tommy's run" has been a nightly Crimson phenomenon for the past 20 years, says Crimson Production Supervisor Patrick R. Sorrento. Each production night, a member of the staff drops by Tommy's to buy him coffee: extra large, three creams, three sugars.

"It's the best coffee in the Square," Sorrento says. "Christy's coffee tastes like it's from the bottom of the urn every time you go in there. They don't put enough cream in it," he says. "It always tastes like tar, or pitch."

The high-quality coffee is just one part of Tommy's goal to maintain the "ambience" that Aboud and other student groups praise. "I try to run a neat, clean, efficient store," says owner Tommy Stefanian.

Student groups who prefer French pastries to french fries might choose a setting like Rebecca's Cafe. Manager Andrea J. Dozier says that a lot of rowers come because of the restaurant's proximity of the Charles River. Other groups also use the cafe's "more intimate" atmosphere as a meeting place, she says.

"It's something we encourage. We're not just looking to turn tables, or for high volume," says Dozier. "It really is a cafe in the true sense of a cafe. There's no rushed feeling," she says.

One of the groups who met at Rebecca's regularly for lunch meetings before the dining halls opened was CityStep, according to a director, Tina M. Villanueva '94.

CityStep directors liked to order bagels, she says: "We're a big bread group." And the group felt no pressure to hurry through their meetings, says Villanueva. "If we sit for a long time they never tell us to leave or anything."