🔥🍜 The only kind of noods we want

It’s Wednesday, Boston.

🏙️ Students: Are you bored with your current college bar rotation? Switch it up at the city’s highest bar. View Boston is kicking off its Thursday college night deal tonight on the Stratus rooftop bar with a $10 entry fee after 7 p.m. with your student ID. Cheers!

👀 What’s on tap today:

• Black student population drop

• Is Boston Common dangerous?

• One point for JT haters

Up first…

B-SIDE CERTIFIED

The key to our heart? Hand-pulled noodles.

We’re back with another edition of B-Side Certified! Per your request, we journeyed over the river to Jahunger, the second locale of Providence’s beloved Uyghur restaurant, serving up bold, fiery-flavored dishes and hand-pulled noodles.

Here’s what we thought: 

FIRST IMPRESSION

💡 Cozy meets minimal is the vibe. Just a 20-minute walk from Central Square, Jahunger’s lamp-lit dining room and plush chairs made the space feel inviting and cozy. Meanwhile, amply spaced tables, soft music, and minimal decor created the perfect low-key atmosphere to catch up with a friend (which we did!) or chat with a date.

FOOD

🥟 The apps were elevated takeout staples. Between the handmade lamb dumplings ($13) and scallion pancakes ($11), the dumplings were our favorite bite of the night, packed with a rich umami flavor and perfectly cooked lamb. That said, we still enjoyed the scallion pancakes, which were crispy, fluffy, not too oily, and plentiful (we got to take some home).

🔥 Spice warning: Uyghur cuisine is known for bold flavors and spice, and our picks of Jahunger noodles and eggplant laghman (both $17) certainly made us sweat. So if oatmeal is where your spice tolerance ends, check in with your server before you order.

🍜 The hand-pulled noodles were a cut above. These thick and chewy noods leveled-up both dishes above your average stir-fry, and they made the already solid portions even more filling. The Jahunger noodles were coated in a Sichuan sauce with sweet and savory notes from caramelized red onions and thinly sliced beef. As for the laghman, these noodles felt lighter in their bright vegetal sauce, but were balanced with hearty eggplant and a scrambled egg on top. 

🍰 Do yourself a favor: End with the not-your-typical honey cake ($9). We sure did, plus the homemade yogurt bowl ($7). The layers of honey-infused sponge cake and cream filling took us across the honey flavor spectrum from molasses to burnt caramel. And while the yogurt bowl with granola and organic honey was solid, we’d prefer it for breakfast over dessert.

🍺 Note: The restaurant is working on getting a beer and wine liquor license soon, but they don’t have one just yet.

VIBE & VALUE

😋 Go for a casual, yet still elevated, bite. Jahunger isn’t fancy: The food comes out fast, the vibe is laid-back, and you pay at the table on an iPad. That said, the handmade elements put it in a league above your usual neighborhood take-out spot, and the space was ideal for hanging.

💰 The price was right. Two apps, two entrees, two desserts, and two sodas ran us $105 with tip, which, considering the decent amount of leftovers and quality of food, felt reasonable for two in this economy.

✅ The verdict? Totally B-Side Certified.

TOGETHER WITH THE MGH FUND

Triple the money, triple the impact 

💸❤️‍🩹 Want to make your donations count? Now’s the time. For the month of September, every dollar you give to the MGH Fund will be tripled by a generous anonymous donor. That means a $50 donation can turn into $150 of life-saving potential, powering essential research, top-notch patient care, and funding for unexpected emergencies at Massachusetts General Hospital. Don’t miss this chance to amplify your impact. Donate now and see your generosity have triple the impact.

CITY

Quick & dirty headlines

🧑🏾‍🎓 At top Mass. colleges, the Black student population is plummeting. This may not be shocking given recent chatter on the subject, but a new Globe analysis found that the share of Black first-year students enrolling as freshmen at 11 of Mass.’ most competitive schools dropped about 40% compared with the past two years. This data gives us a clearer view of what enrollment looks like across the state in our first year post-affirmative action. And while one year is too soon to make sweeping claims about trends, it’s not exactly a good tiding.

🚇 This month’s Red Line shutdown is ending with a BANG. And by bang we mean BOTH the Braintree and Ashmont branches will be down for the count. ICYMI: The Braintree branch has been OOO for virtually all of September, and the MBTA just announced that shutdown wilI expand to the Ashmont branch on Saturday, Sept. 28. So, if you plan to take the Red Line south of JFK/UMass. on Saturday, be prepared to ride a shuttle bus. The good news? The Ashmont branch should be back online Sunday, with the Braintree branch opening for biz again Sept. 30.

😬 Is Boston Common … dangerous? At least one City Councilor thinks so. Councilor Ed Flynn has been quite outspoken about the matter lately after a shooting and a separate stabbing this summer, calling for an increased police presence and the halting of events in the area. And while there has been an uptick in certain crime stats this year and some anecdotal evidence from local business owners, proactive police patrolling in the area is already up 26% this year, and not all City Councilors are fully on board with Flynn’s plans.

🎓 It’s Christmas morning for nosy, washed-up college grads. A.k.a., U.S. News & World Report just dropped its annual best-of lists for top colleges and universities. Mass. schools once again showed up in the top 50, with MIT and Harvard nabbing No. 2 and 3, BC and Tufts tying for 37th, and BU tying for 41st. However, while this list may have had a chokehold on you in high school, it’s worth remembering it’s gotten major flack for favoring prestige over educational quality, prompting some schools to not participate. See if your alma mater made the list here.

QUICK QUESTION

🏆 Take a look at Jayson Tatum’s new tattoo below and tell us: What do you think?

ONE LAST THING

Two points for JT haters

As ride or die Jayson Tatum stans, there isn’t much he could do to make us join his hater peanut gallery. But his newest ink is definitely … testing us.

Tatum recently got a new tattoo to celebrate the C’s 18th banner. Great! So was it an image of the championship ring? Nope. The Larry O’Brien Trophy? Nada. Instead, he got a portrait of himself holding and looking at the trophy in a way we can only describe as … tender.

Don’t get it twisted, we’ll give credit where credit is due: JT has definitely earned the right to be a little (or a lot) corny if he wants. But that said, if whatever tattoo artist OK’d this one wants to talk, we definitely have questions.

— Written by Gia Orsino and Emily Schario

🏆  Thanks for reading! This is coming from someone who (unfortunately) also has more than one corny tattoo (*cough* Gia). Though I thankfully have zero self portraits. 

💜 Special shoutout to today’s sponsor, The MGH Fund, for supporting local journalism and keeping our city healthy. 

💸  The results are in: 42% of polled B-Siders think that we shouldn’t need to tip at fast-casual and cafe-style restaurants, but do it anyway. One reader said: “If it’s Dunkin’ on Old Colony, I always tip 20%.”

💃 Keep up with us @BostonBSide on IG, TikTok, and Twitter. Send comments and suggestions to [email protected] or [email protected].