My friends Michael and Imtiyaz have been trying to get into Tres Gatos Tapas Bar, Books and Music since it opened about a year ago.

Talking to Steve Johnson, the gentle and clever chef at stylish-but-casual Rendezvous in Central Square, Cambridge, I’m impressed by his devotion to community, to local sourcing, and to good old-fashioned home economics.

I like my gazpachos pureed but still with some bite, with quite a lot of heat and tang. I’ve discovered that the cucumbers (especially the regular ones) can be pureed quite small but retain some crunch (or, at that size, a pleasing “graininess”), and that, by substituting tomatillos for some of the tomatoes I get an interesting fruity tartness and avoid having to deal with the dreaded red beast in the raw (see my previous neurotic confession).

I don’t know when it began. I don’t know how it began, considering I have a primal aversion to raw tomatoes. (Sauce is fine; a bloody mary makes me happy; but keep that beefsteak away from my burger, please.) But somehow I’ve become obsessed with the emperor of summer soups, chilled gazpacho.
 

Island Creek Oyster Bar in Boston is serious about their oysters. The first thing you’ll notice is the oyster bar proper, a sparkling mountain of ice studded with twelve to eighteen different varieties of oysters and subtly highlighted by a grid of cone-shaped lights.