Brookline Lunch

Tiki bars usually fall into one of two camps: serious cocktails with sad food, or kitschy rooms where nobody's really cooking.

Here's the thing about El Jefe's on Boylston: it stays open until 2am, which means it exists in two registers.

Theo's Cozy Corner earns its name honestly: a galley-kitchen sliver on Salem Street seating about twenty, where you climb through the kitchen and lift a trap door for stairs down to the bathroom.

Angela Atenco Lopez learned to cook at eight, beside her mother in Puebla, and that lineage is the whole point at this East Boston room on Lexington Street.

Giulia has been producing what many consider Cambridge's most serious Italian cooking for over a decade, and the consistency of that reputation is, by most accounts, the point.