Many health-conscious beer lovers, who have been looking for suds without the buzz, just haven’t found the right brew. The problem is that alternatives, with less alcohol, don’t taste like the real thing —

For over a decade, during the Independent Activities Period between semesters, MIT has offered a non-credit class on “old food’’ from the region around the Mediterranean Sea. The idea came from conversations history department chair

Swati Banerjee barely knew how to cook when she came to this country five years ago from India. Now the Boston University biochemistry doctoral student always cooks dinner after she gets home from the lab.

SOMERVILLE — Losar, the Tibetan New Year, begins with a spoonful of dessert. Dresyl, also known as deysee, is a warm dish of sweetened rice that women make for their families on the morning of

LONDON — Dishoom, which opened last summer and calls itself “A Bombay Cafe in London,’’ takes its name from the Indian comic book equivalent of “Pow!’’ and “Wham!’’ In some Bollywood films, “dishoom’’ is, at

On that busy stretch of Mass. Ave. between Harvard and Central squares, a sidewalk vent lets out a sudden gust from below. The Red Line rumbles underfoot. A few doors away, inside the Greater Boston