This is your seven-year-old brother I assume?

Eighteen. =)

He should also try Grasshopper in Alston - very excelent vegan quisine in the Chineseand Vietnamese styles.

Million Year Picnic (specialty comic book store, the original in the area). Newbury Comics (decent comic book store, very good CD store).

Anna's Taqueria!

Kebab Factory, less than a mile from campus. Yummy upscale Indian.

I think I can only remember things that used to be there. Congrats! Boston is the greatest town in which to be a college student.

Passim, if he likes that sort of thing?

You might also assign him to find five cool places/restaurants/trips that you don't know about, and report (or whatever phrasing he'll find attractive: "dare" would work for a different kind of kid).

When my parents (briefly) lived near Ithaca, we gave them actual gift certificates to several places in town; you might try that (though it might be a logistical pain for your friends to do for you [though then again, bats22 is presumably visiting every single one of these places now that he again lives in the Boston area...]).

Something that forces him to get off the T would be my suggestion. There used to be a good Indian place in Waltham, but I've forgotten its name. Similarly, commuter rail to Rockport or Gloucester are a very good way to spend a day in September or October.

(And I'm glad you listed the Arnold.)

Diesel? Will he get eaten by the lesbians? (Will he love it if he is?)

That's exciting for him! He must be an excellent student; getting into places at that level of Harvard is much harder than when we got into MIT.

Diesel? Those lesbian pool hustlers will rob him blind.

Hm. I've not been in quite a while. (I think I completely avoided Somerville/Cambridge on my last business trip to BU, and I think I only visited pekmez & family on the previous one. So it'd probably be back to when I went to a meeting at MIT two years ago.)

Hmmm. Pandemonium isn't quite as fun as it was when sokmunky worked there.
India Globe is fun, as is Jae's (Asian Fusion), Ring of Fire (sort-of Mongolian), Middle East
(live music), and Addis Red Sea (Ethiopian). I don't know if Wordsworth's (book store) or
Harrel's (ice cream) are around any more. I think I heard the Computer Museum is closed
too.

Wordsworth's is gone. Harrel's is Colleen's now. Addis is Asmara, fancier and more expensive.

Among other things to compensate are Rodney's user bookstore in Central, and a Tibetan place in Davis.