Fill up your lunch tray

As far as I’m concerned, possible run-ins with Christ and/or lottery officials notwithstanding, there’s nothing as influential as lunch in deciding whether a day is good, bad or McAverage.

But you can’t just step haphazardly into the lunch arena and hope to score. The crowd is on its feet chanting and all eyes are on you. What, dear adjacent-to-broke Boston University student, are you gonna do?

Well, luckily I am now able to convert my perhaps misguided and surely valueless enthusiasm into some damn good lunchy advice — a real delicatessen of wisdom, believe you me.

So here — in quick reference, easy-to-read format — is a handy guide (might I suggest a little rip and keep action?) to a few lunch hotspots around this fine institution.

Boca Grande: A fiesta of flavor! Granted, Boston is not and absolutely should not (not ever, ever, ever) be known for its Mexican food. After all, most German cities probably have a more significant Mexican population than the (non-refried) Beantown and spicy food traditionally mixes with Puritan taste buds about as well as the Bushes mix with enlightened leadership. Despite this desert of Mexican flavor, a burrito-shaped flower has blossomed in Coolidge Corner. Forgive me. I’m practicing for an unrewarding career as a Sunset Magazine writer.

Boca Grande ropes you in right from the beginning. The fresh ingredients (kinda depends on the time of day, but what the hell — sour cream covers all evil) are prominently displayed behind el sneezeguardo, and the very hiss of the tortilla-warming machine (there’s probably another name for this) will likely make even the biggest spice-aphobe in your group at least look fondly back on his or her limited grade school Spanish classes with distant homage. Refresh yourself, ask for a Grande.

The Grande Burritos are built and rolled before your very eyes with a strip of Reynolds Wrap in place to keep the enemy of digestion contained until the magical hour of consumption. The burritos are often good to the last bean, sometimes nasty by middle, but rarely reminiscent of burro guano, which is more than most Boston burrito shops can claim. The food’s good, cheap and filling to that point that exists right before “pushing it.”

Victoria Seafood Restaurant: I’ve spent sleepless nights agonizing over the name of this restaurant. After serious investigation and trips to the lunch special, I’m determined that Victoria is a Chinese restaurant that happens to feature seafood as an element of its menu. You know, kinda like, well, Chinese restaurants. Did they randomly select a piece of their menu and name the restaurant after it? Could it just as easily be the “Victoria Pepsi Restaurant,” or the “Victoria Gratuity Will be Added to the Bill for Groups Larger than Six Restaurant.” Just some dim sum for thought.

But name, shname, this place has got the eats. Victoria’s lunch special leaves soup, appetizer, entree and rice at your table for $3.95. Total. Out the door. Everything must go. It’s such a good deal you’ll find yourself feeling funny, but not — as Victoria’s menu will remind you —- because of MSG or anything crazy like that, but just because the explosion of food on your plate is twins in price with a GSU bagel and cream cheese. But you have to use that bothersome real, non-parentally, non-electronically-granted money. Pain in the General Gau, I know, but well worth it by any standard. The Victoria lunch special is a sure-fire way to get your afternoon kicked off with a bang, and a little cookie-aided premonition on the side.

The Campus Trolley, or, the trol trol to trol trol regulars, is simply the only way to go if you’ve got that hunger that only a Middle-Eastern wrap served out of a simulated trolley will satisfy. I get this specific hunger upward of bimonthly.

But when I do go, it’s always trolleyrific. The menu’s pretty damn big for a restaurant based within transportation and everything’s reasonably priced despite the trolley’s on-campusness. A bubble of sensible prices. Ding, ding.

Lunch away, children. Lunch away.