The Hole in the Wall

In all my four years at Smith, I've never gone to Boston for the weekend. I was determined to change that, especially as a senior, and took the chance to explore the city this weekend with one of best friends. We had decided to be the most economical by staying in a hostel, which happened to be located in the South End. As we walked out of the bus station to our hostel, we passed through Chinatown. The change was immediate - the shops became closer together and small nondescript signs with beautiful squiggles of Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Korean called to us. "HOT POT" or "DUMPLINGS" and "SHABU SHABU", translations at the bottom of their windows, caught our hungry eyes. We returned quite a few times over the course of 3 days, but the most memorable restaurant we ate at was Avana Sushi.

Before leaving, we did our research. We both were craving fresh seafood and decided to go with sushi. As we google searched, Avana kept popping up as not only the most reasonable in price, but one of the best rated and beautiful pictures. However, it was a tough gem to find. We had been warned by other reviewers that Avana was not a typical storefront, but it still took us over 15 minutes walking up and down its street to find the actual entrance. Turns out, it was in the back of a small, nondescript store selling cheap phones and cases.

When we entered, it seemed rather pitiful at first glance. It clearly had not always been a restaurant as there were grooves all along the store where racks had seemingly hung before. There was bright fluorescent lighting, plastic chairs, and cheap fold up tables that had been strategically maneuvered to maximize seating but encouraged waiters to watch their step. I raised my eyebrows at my friend, but we took a seat and looked at the menu. As promised, the food was quite cheap, and we were able to order 3 rolls to share right off the bat.

After a reasonable wait, our food arrived. It was beautiful. Here is a salmon and mango roll, spicy tuna roll, and a spicy seafood roll.

We happily munched away, taking pauses to talk about how fresh the tuna was, or how the sweet mango complimented the salmon, and how the sauce was not too much to overpower the seafood. We then were bold and ordered one more, a specialty maki called the spicy volcano roll that came with eel and avocado, topped with spicy seafood.

We knew it would have some sort of spice in it, but we did not know the glorious mix of seafood had been baked on top of the cold sushi. When you ate a piece, it was such a different experience to have unctuous, hot, and savory seafood melt in your mouth, but also to taste that clean, cold, fresh traditional sushi with eel and avocado underneath.

In the end, we only ended up spending a total of $27 for two, quite a steal for Boston. In addition, as we had been chomping away, a line had formed for Avana that had since gone out the door where some poor souls had resorted to hopping up and down outside in the cold. No wonder, as our meal had been so delicious. Avana seemed to be a local favorite not only in Chinatown but in the greater Boston area, as we overheard the excited conversations of hungry customers. In the end, we decided to walk the 20 minutes home in hopes to help digestion. Funnily enough however, we were not even 3 minutes our of Chinatown when we saw a sign for "DIMSUM" and became excited again at returning the next day.