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Okay, here’s a math problem for all you clever so-and-sos crawling one of the world’s most educated cities: if a food writer travels 1900 miles from her new hometown of Denver to her old one of Boston to catch up on the current dining scene, how many days does it take her to hit 10 restaurants, down 30 drinks, sample 25 dishes, and gain five pounds?

If you guessed two and a half, you get a gold star. But so do I. I took a crash course in multicourses and passed with top honors. For that matter, so did the chefs, bartenders, and servers I tested in turn, dishing up as they did the creamiest of this summer’s crop. Now it’s time for you just-returned vacationers and brand-new arrivals to brush up on the latest in local dining. So here are the Cliffs Notes — and here’s hoping my crash diet goes half so swimmingly.

On the screeching, shuddering T of life, Neptune Oyster (63 Salem Street, Boston, 617.742.3474) will always be my first stop. That gleaming little showcase of all the fruits of the sea was my home away from home when I lived in the North End, so it was the natural starting point for a whirlwind reunion tour (joined by the Coloradan who had better continue to prove worth the relocation effort — we’ll call him Rocky). As our sweet young thing of a waiter, Daniel Tebo, and I dished like groupies about former chef David Nevins’s current whereabouts (Osetra in Norwalk, Connecticut — next time, road trip!), he filled us in on new chef Nate Nagy and his even newer menu — replete with such picnic-on-the-dock-of-the-lake-worthy stuff as cornmeal-crusted, panfried rainbow trout ($23) dabbed with intense parsnip purée, drizzled with blueberry brown butter, and crowned with crabfilled hush puppies. We ate accordingly, lingering over flutes of prosecco and brachetto d’acqui as though we were barefoot and carefree and had nowhere else to be.

But we did: as we drained our last drop, it was nearly happy hour, and time to go spelunking in the supersleek cave that is banQ (1375 Washington Street, Boston, 617.451.0077). Beneath the stalactites lining the sculptural ceiling of the bar, there was no need for any flashlight-mounted headgear — we ourselves got plenty lit, equipped as we were with the elaborate contraption they call the Hot Mess ($11). A sexy dirty thing indeed — flecked with shaved ginger, toasted coconut, and bits of sambal paste — it blends Finlandia grapefruit vodka with white cranberry juice and almond extract; the smart result is no sweeter and rather spicier than it has to be. Speaking of spice, banQ’s recently launched Spice Menu amounts to the Happy Meal of the East-West fusion world. When you savor a dish like the exquisite squash blossoms ($10 when available) — fried and stuffed with scallop mousse, they remain delicate inside and out, a neat feat only emphasized by sundried tomato–miso pesto and dollops of sambal — you get the gourmet toy, a takehome packet of spices, in the bargain.

Not that home was next on our itinerary. Toro (1704 Washington Street, Boston, 617.536.4300) was — fittingly enough, since we stumbled all the way there as if stampeding bulls were at our backs, only to get knocked flat by yet more fire-breathing cocktails. Don’t let the hibiscus-infused, ginger-and-lime-spiked, poetically named Verdad y Amor ($10) fool you: this is no seabreezy love potion but a saltrimmed shock of tequila plus. More gently refreshing is the Taza ($9), a twist on England’s beloved Pimm’s Cup. Two twists, really: while lemon-ginger tea replaces lemon-lime soda, muddled kumquats make you forget all about more traditional sliced apples and oranges (granted, the gin-based liqueur from which the original gets its name hastens the mind-erasing process).

Our whistles no longer whetted so much as increasingly drool-soaked, we lurched on to Kingston Station (25 Kingston Street, Boston, 617.482.6282) for yet more funishment. With a name like Guaracyara Pimenta, the chef, we figured, had to rock the peppers, so we split the Kobe dog ($12). Strewn all over the charred half-footer was a so-called relish you might more accurately label slaw — not chopped but loopy and chunky, and neon-bright with vinegar peppers galore as well as onions, celery, and herbs. On the more traditional side was a crock of baked beans festooned with diced bacon and positively smacking of molasses and brown sugar. Meanwhile, jocular bar manager Eric Pierce kept us crocked too (in case you’re wondering whether I ever get sick of drinking puns — nah) with a preview of his contribution to the teetotaling trend: the now-available ginger-green-tea martini ($12) features Pravda vodka, green tea, Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur, and a slice of what looks like dried pear but turns out to be pure, bite-you-back ginger.

Needless to say, we missed breakfast. Day two didn’t really get underway until mumble o’clock, with the first spoonful of spiked granita that launched a late lunch at Dante (Royal Sonesta, 40 Edwin Land Boulevard, Cambridge, 617.497.4200). Though you can get any flavor separately ($6), the combo ($16) of Campari and grapefruit, limoncello, and bourbon puts the triple treat in triple threat — as sour as they are sweet, each boasts bits of citrus pulp and zest, too, for a lovely touch of bitterness. More fluid but no less solid were the libations with which Ray Guerin, our seeming gentleman but secret enabler of a bartender, slyly kept plying us. Especially memorable despite their lethean-makings were the Zagara ($12), whose blend of orange-blossom vodka, pomegranate, and orange bitters went down like the Moroccan sun at dusk; the gin-based Smania ($12), likewise sultry and musky with housemade orange-cardamom liqueur, brightened by fresh lemon sour; and the Vitalita ($12), in which eversharp Campari snuck up on mellow vanilla-and-ginger-infused rum. Somehow, between all those nips, we got a few nibbles in edgewise. And they got us — particularly the gnocchi ($12/appetizer; $24/entrée), which remarkably didn’t drown in their pool of concentrated roasted-peach juice but just softly soaked it all up, along with rich dollops of pistachio pesto and gorgonzola dolce (though they’ve since been replaced by gorgonzola-and-mascarpone-filled cappellacci).

By midafternoon, there was no going back — only onward through the wonderfully gaudy, raucous fog of the Monday Club Bar at UpStairs on the Square (91 Winthrop Street, Cambridge, 617.864.1933), guided (or misguided, as the case may be) by the comic duo of director of operations Matt Lishansky and bartender Chris O’Neill, whose gregariousness led me to suggest somebody make a movie about him. “They already did,” said Lishanksy. “It’s called Porky’s.” This prompted O’Neill to attempt a kick in the ass so forceful that he ended up on his own instead. But he saved more than enough, er, face by pouring us off-menu cocktails ($10–$14) whose names you need only drop. Take the Citrus Stone Fruit Smash — a/k/a the Ruth, according to a laughing O’Neill when I asked for the appellation of the heady two-tone gem, combining vodka, orange juice, Grand Marnier, peach liqueur, apricot nectar, and housemade cherry juice. Or the Aperation, as he dubbed his subtly pretty departure from an Aviation: Hendrick’s gin, elderflower liqueur St. Germain, and lime juice with a sinker of the bitter-orange Italian aperitivo Aperol. And so on, and so on; suffice it to say the ensuing swirl of wackiness was so thick that co-owner Mary Catherine Deibel finally suggested we all go skinny-dipping in Walden Pond — even as Lishansky recommended Hungry Mother (233 Cardinal Medeiros Avenue, Cambridge, 617.499.0090): “The food is so smart. It’s such a balance between what you want to do and what you can execute the way your mother would have done it.” We went with the latter (you know what they say about swimming drunk on a full stomach).

No offense, Mom, but Lishansky was wrong: Hungry Mother’s Alon Munzer, Rachel Miller-Munzer, Barry Maiden, and John Kessen kind of have you whipped, execution-wise. First of all, they poured me the balmiest of concoctions: the #28 ($8.50), blending white wine, orange bitters, a splash of soda, and the cognac-based French herbal liqueur known as Benedictine. Second, for all of $4, they served me a tea sandwich that, according to Kessen, will continue to appear as a sometime special — special being the operative word. It starts with house-baked, toasted pain de mie (fancy talk for “sliced bread”), which is spread with a rich and tangy, parsley-sprinkled relish of house-smoked ham hock, housemade chow chow, cream cheese, mayo, and dijon. All that house-making sure makes a house a home — which is, of course, just what Hungry Mother feels like. No less a mess o’ comfort is the evolving menu staple that is shrimp and grits ($9): a maque choux of local corn, tomatoes, and red peppers bathes the late-summer version, fortified by shrimp stock and Tabasco.

And boy, did we need fortifying in preparation for our next journey — epic indeed: we were off to see the wizard, a/k/a Jamie Bissonnette, to get ourselves some brains and bone marrow and thymus glands, oh my. Of course, we’d need liquid courage first and foremost — hardly a tall order at KO Prime (Nine Zero Hotel, 90 Tremont Street, Boston, 617.772.0202). Heck, had the Cowardly Lion ever gotten his paws on a Shiso Smash ($14) — Bissonnette’s own zesty invention, combining Hangar One Kaffir Lime, sparkling rosé, St. Germain, and muddled red shiso leaves — he could have skipped Oz altogether. As for us, a round or two gave us just the boozy boost we needed to plow through not only all that offal but also the more recent additions to the menu fetched by our awesome server Asher Karnes, who works the lounge like he’s hosting a fabulous soirée (which he kind of is). As vibrantly layered as a Rothko painting in red and yellow and green, the heirloom tomato salad ($14) is superb, each precisely ripe bite slicked with one of two vinaigrettes (grapeseed oil and lime juice or olive oil and cabernet vinegar), smeared with avocado, and topped with crottin, a gooey French-style goat cheese from Vermont. The heirloom varieties will change throughout the season; likewise, the chef’s selection of cured hams ($15) rotates regularly to remain a novelty. May your timing be as good as ours: alongside neatly arranged slices of jamón ibérico garnished with truffled aioli and slivers of pickled lily stem, we got some Cape Fear country ham that Bissonnette had discovered just two weeks before on his (apparently working) honeymoon, as well as some Bayonne ham he had just begun to offer — having cured and stored it himself for eight months.

 
Rocky will tell you that at this point we called it a night. Like his cinematic namesake, Rocky, I fear, was totally punchdrunk — hit so hard during round after round of alcohol that he apparently suffered a technical knockout (no wonder they call it KO Prime). In the reality he doesn’t recall, we literally bellied up to the bar at No. 9 Park (9 Park Street, Boston, 617.742.9991) for a nightcap, namely the Capetown Collins ($11) — a greenly aromatic, Oh-so-aristocratic blend of rooibos tea, rosemary-infused simple syrup, and Bombay gin. And come morning, with just enough time for a hangover lunch before bidding the city adieu, we hustled to Scampo (Liberty Hotel, 215 Charles Street, Boston, 617.536.2100) to ask frighteningly sexy mixologist Christina what was new under the sun, or at least behind the bar. By way of an answer, she poured Rocky the aptly named Burn Care ($12) — essentially a mojito gone soothing with pulpy aloe juice — and me the Safire ($12), a real eye-opener with its fresh lemon tang and smoked-lavender salt rim. And then we were off, swearing never to drink that much again.

If you’re guessing we broke that vow within hours, you get the whole damn box of gold stars.