Loyal Nine is an intimate and cozy place to have dinner but also a nifty place to have lunch or brunch. I dig its smooth and creamy nitro cold-brewed coffee, but one of the more recent reasons I’ve been popping in is the simple things it does with chicken and eggs.

There’s several good reasons to visit Grendel’s Den, a Harvard Square institution celebrating its 50th year. One is that the boho eatery won a Supreme Court case in 1982 that could become the precedent to flip the recent Texas abortion ban.

Labor Day has passed, but there’s still an end-of-summer vibe in the air that can be savored with the spicy lobster salad at Hooked Fish Shop; grilling with meatless burgers from Whole Foods; and discovering the fine wines of Bonde in Harvard Square.

Dumpling House, the sister outpost to the wildly popular Gourmet Dumpling House in Chinatown, also has a lunch menu with solid offerings that are good deals for the dollar. But why bother? The only real question for a visit is: plain pork soup dumplings, or the crab and pork version?

Fans of meatless food have a new option in Union Square that emphasizes organically grown veggies with a Mediterranean spin.

Over the past few weeks the Porter Square Shopping Center got two more eateries: the local chain Soup Shack, specializing in Asian rice and soup bowls, and New York-based Halal Guys, which does classic spins on gyros and flatbread sandos.

We’ve written about Chez Henri pop-ups before and hopefully will keep getting to – but the next ones are coming up as fast as Thursday and Aug. 19 from Paul O’Connell, the chef and owner of the French-Cuban eatery that closed its doors on Shepard Street nearly a decade ago.

If onion dip sounds a bit boring, this wasn’t like your mom used to serve at cocktail parties. The dip is lavished with trout roe, dill, egg and capers, and your dipping chips are golden-light potato waffles.

Spyce’s “infinite kitchen” looks like something from Disney World’s Tomorrowland, a series of silos with prepped and precooked foods such as rice, quinoa, beets, corn and cucumber slices.

Opened in haute Davis Square more than 20 years ago by Lydia and Steve Liakos, the Out of the Blue Restaurant offers simple, quality seafood done with a Sicilian accent in a cozy, nonpretentious atmosphere.