Tue, Nov 3
Berklee Asia Rising: Celebrating Asian and Asian American Voices in Contemporary Music
8:00–11:00 PM
Berklee Performance Center · Boston
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20 Boston restaurants worth making dinner plans for
Choosing a restaurant is easier when you know what kind of evening you want. Sometimes that is a long dinner built around pasta, sometimes it is a lobster roll, and sometimes you want a room that gives you a reason to dress up. These 20 restaurants cover those different moods across Boston and the surrounding cities. The numbers help you work through the list; the right choice depends on what you want to eat, who is coming and how much planning you feel like doing. Sarma’s menu is built for sharing, which makes it a useful choice for people who want to order broadly rather than commit to one main course. Black Sea cornbread with jalapeño, feta, honey and sesame gives you a good idea of the approach, as do lentil nachos with feta queso. Reservations open 30 days ahead at 10 a.m., while the bar and high-top tables take walk-ins. sarmarestaurant.com Darling puts cocktails and Chinese-inspired dim sum together in Central Square. Its current menu includes hot-and-sour pork wontons with house chili crisp, scallop rangoon and a Filet O Fish bao with fried fish, tartar sauce and cheese. Choose it when you want drinks and several things to share, with a menu that leaves plenty to talk about. Darling Mai brings French cooking techniques to a Japanese izakaya in the Seaport. Handrolls are made to order and served individually, while the wider menu includes miso butter cod and duck confit. It is a good option when the table wants Japanese food but not an evening devoted entirely to sushi. boston seaport At 89 Charles, the drinks lead and the food follows. This subterranean Beacon Hill bar serves snacks including green goddess dip with Ruffles, sardines with bread and butter, and a wagyu hot dog with truffle kewpie. Pick it for cocktails and a lighter meal rather than arriving expecting a conventional three-course dinner. Bar & Restaurant in Boston, MA Giulia gives pasta lovers plenty to work with. Its latest menu includes bucatini all’amatriciana, braised-beef pappardelle and squash and brown butter agnolotti, so choosing one may be the difficult part. Tables can be booked two weeks ahead, with reservations released at 10 a.m. The 18-seat bar offers a walk-in alternative. Giulia Restaurant Tonino takes inspiration from the neighborhood trattorias, wine bars and aperitivo spots around Rome. The emphasis is scratch cooking and a small neighborhood setting, which makes it appealing for a dinner you have actually planned. Reservations open 30 days ahead at noon; walk-in space is usually limited to one or two people and is never guaranteed. toninojp.com Holdfast is the choice when you want seafood without booking a long restaurant dinner. This Allston spot combines counter service with lobster rolls, oysters and crudo, giving you room to keep things simple or order a wider spread. It is especially useful for a casual seafood meal away from the waterfront. Experience Fresh Boston Seafood Fallow Kin comes from the Talulla team and chef Marcos Sanchez, with vegetables and relationships with local farmers central to the restaurant’s approach. Choose it when you want the produce to get as much attention as the rest of dinner. Its Cambridge location makes it another option beyond the familiar Italian and steakhouse choices. fallowkin.com The Shawmut Inn serves dinner in its bar, dining room and patio, so there is more than one way to settle into this South End restaurant. It is a useful option when you want a neighborhood dinner and a full bar without making the evening revolve around a tasting menu. Now Open in South End Neighborhood Qiao Lin makes dinner a shared activity. Start by choosing your broth arrangement, with single, half-and-half and triple-flavor pots available, then build your dipping sauce and cook at the table. Its Chongqing-style hotpot is an appealing choice for a group that wants something more involved than ordering individual mains. Best Chinese Restaurant Parla is an Italian kitchen and cocktail bar on Hanover Street, offering a different approach from a straightforward North End red-sauce dinner. Its menu draws on Mediterranean influences, while cocktails are a central part of the restaurant. Choose it when you want to make drinks and food equally important to the plan. parlaboston.com Oleana’s cooking draws on Turkey and the Middle East, with small plates, spices and produce from its farm helping shape the menu. It is a good choice for a table that wants to share and try several dishes. Reservations are available 30 days ahead, and the restaurant also holds space each evening for walk-ins. oleanarestaurant.com Da LaPosta gives you pizza and pasta options in Newtonville, with starters that make it worth sitting down properly. The current menu includes housemade ricotta with orange honey, cacio e pepe supplì and rigatoni carbonara. Build dinner around the pizza if that is what brought you, but leave room to look beyond it. Da LaPosta Field & Vine lets ingredients shape the menu, which changes with availability from its farmers, fishermen and suppliers. Its online sample gives a sense of the cooking through dishes such as cheddar-scallion cornbread with miso butter and tuna tostadas with daikon kimchi. Use it to understand the style rather than to promise yourself a particular dish. field & vine Zuma is a good fit for a bigger night out, with contemporary Japanese food inside the Four Seasons Hotel One Dalton Street. The dining room has views of three open kitchens, including sushi and robata counters, and signature dishes include saikyo-miso black cod and a mushroom rice hot pot. Consider the robata counter if watching the cooking appeals. Zuma restaurants Asta serves a multi-course tasting menu in Back Bay, making it a choice for people who want the kitchen to guide dinner. It is worth considering when the meal itself is the evening’s main plan. Discuss dietary requirements when booking rather than assuming a tasting menu can be changed once you arrive. resy.com Thistle & Leek takes inspiration from London’s modern gastropubs, with seasonal small plates, an Old World wine list and straightforward cocktails. Choose this Newton Centre restaurant when you want an interesting shared dinner in a neighborhood setting. There is also weekday lunch, which gives you another way to try it without arranging a full evening. thistleandleek.com La Padrona brings Italian cooking from chefs Jody Adams and Amarilys Còlon to Back Bay. It suits the kind of dinner where you want to make a reservation, give yourself time and turn the meal into an occasion. Browse the current menus before booking so you can decide how extensively you want to order. 38 Trinity Place, Boston, MA, USA All’Antico Vinaio is here for the days when a substantial sandwich is the right answer. The Boylston Street menu includes La Paradiso, with mortadella, stracciatella and pistachio, and La Favolosa, with salame toscana, pecorino cream, artichoke cream and spicy eggplant. This is a lunch choice worth making deliberately. Italian Sandwich Shop Bogie’s Place sits behind a curtain inside Jm Curley, with white tablecloths, leather seating, steaks and classic cocktails. That change of setting is part of the appeal: you enter a busy downtown bar and continue into a more intimate steakhouse. Choose it when you want a steak dinner with a little more character to the arrival. Bogie’s Place in Boston, MA If everyone wants something different, start with a shared-plate restaurant such as Sarma or Oleana. If the occasion calls for a longer meal, look at Asta or La Padrona. For a more casual plan, Holdfast and All’Antico Vinaio give you plenty to look forward to without building the whole night around a reservation.
20 Italian restaurants in Boston for your next pasta craving
Boston’s Italian restaurants can turn a pasta craving into a fairly long argument about where to go. The North End has plenty of answers, but so do South Boston, the South End and East Boston. A table of cicchetti, a bowl of lobster ravioli and a sandwich eaten on the way somewhere else all deserve a place in the discussion. These twenty choices cover different kinds of meals. Some are sit-down restaurants for a long dinner; others work for a board of cheese and salumi or a quick lunch. Start with the food and the neighborhood, then check the booking arrangements. A busy sidewalk is not a reservation system. Carmelina’s serves Sicilian comfort food with Mediterranean influences in a small Hanover Street room with an open kitchen. Pasta and seafood are central to the menu. Its reservation rules are specific: online bookings through Yelp, parties of no more than six and ninety-minute table slots. Plan the after-dinner conversation somewhere else. Giacomo’s on Hanover Street is a cash-only, walk-in restaurant, with phone arrangements listed for parties of ten or more. Its menu centers on house-made pasta, seafood and its Giacomo and Fracomo sauces. Come prepared for the actual seating process rather than arriving with a tight deadline for the next part of your night. Mamma Maria overlooks North Square and changes its regional Italian cooking with the New England seasons. It has several private dining rooms as well as its regular dinner service, making it worth considering for a meal with a particular occasion attached. Ask about the room and group arrangements directly when planning a celebration. The Salty Pig on Dartmouth Street lets you build a board from meats, cheeses and accompaniments before moving on to pasta or pizza. Its menu includes house-made charcuterie alongside products from other makers. It works for a table that wants to share a few things, then decide whether dinner needs another round of food. Bar Volpe brings southern Italian cooking to West Broadway in South Boston, with handmade pasta, vegetables and wood-fired seafood. Karen Akunowicz’s restaurant is also a pastificio, or pasta shop. You can sit down for dinner or buy pasta, sauces and ricotta to make the following night considerably easier. SRV on Columbus Avenue takes its name from the Serene Republic of Venice. The menu gives you cicchetti, fresh pasta and risotto made to order, with Italian wines and cocktails. Start with small bites before deciding on the larger dishes; a Venetian-inspired meal has more routes through it than an appetizer followed by chicken parm. Coppa is Ken Oringer’s South End enoteca, serving Italian small plates, house-made pasta, pizza and charcuterie. The Shawmut Avenue restaurant also has outdoor seating when conditions allow. It is a useful choice when one person wants pizza, another wants pasta and everyone is willing to share at least the first part of dinner. Trattoria Il Panino serves pasta and other Italian dishes around Hanover and Parmenter streets, with a covered patio among its seating options. Its website lists a separate late-night menu on Fridays and Saturdays. Check which menu applies to your arrival time if you are planning dinner after a show rather than before one. Bricco on Hanover Street combines an Italian dining room and wine bar, with pasta, seafood, meat and chops across the menu. The bar offers a different way into the evening, including cocktails and pizza. Make sure you are booking Bricco Ristorante; its nearby bakery and salumeria are separate stops with different purposes. Prezza on Fleet Street gives pasta and wood-grilled dishes equal room on the menu. Its listed options include smoked mozzarella ravioli, fish stew, grilled swordfish and steaks. That range suits a group that agrees on Italian food but does not all want a bowl of pasta. Read the current menu for seasonal preparations. Rino’s Place in East Boston serves handmade pasta and substantial red-sauce dishes, including lobster ravioli, baked pasta and chicken or veal preparations. Its menu also states that the restaurant is cash only. Bring what you need to pay before sitting down; this is a detail to settle before the check arrives. Fox & the Knife on West Broadway is Karen Akunowicz’s Italian restaurant and enoteca, with handmade pasta, antipasti, aperitivi and amaro. The bar serves the full menu and is held for walk-ins on a first-come basis. It gives a solo diner or pair another option when the reservation calendar does not cooperate. La Famiglia Giorgio’s on Salem Street is built around Roman cooking and large portions. The family-run restaurant explicitly encourages the kind of meal that leaves you with something to take home. Ask about portions as you order, particularly if the table is considering several appetizers before everyone chooses a main. Arya Trattoria on Hanover Street offers a three-course menu called Fare un Viaggio alongside its individual dishes. The whole table must participate in that option, which includes appetizers, pasta and an entrée for each person. Agree on the format before ordering; it is meant to be a shared decision rather than one person’s add-on. Lucca on Hanover Street offers Italian dinner service, with separate wine, cocktail, dessert and children’s menus. Its private dining options include a wine room and other spaces for groups. Keep it in mind when the meal involves several generations or an organized gathering, and discuss the group’s needs before choosing a room. MIDA’s South End restaurant is the Tremont Street location of chef Douglass Williams’s Italian neighborhood restaurant. Use the South End menu and booking page when making plans, since MIDA also has restaurants in East Boston, Newton and Fenway. The shared name does not mean a reservation at one will get you seated at another. Euno’s menu runs from linguine with clams to mushroom gnocchi and pappardelle with a meat sauce. Seafood and meat entrées give non-pasta eaters options too. The North End restaurant also lists nightly specials based on available produce and seafood, so ask about those before deciding the printed menu has settled everything. Terramia on Salem Street serves northern and southern Italian dishes in a small North End restaurant. Its menu includes vegan ravioli as well as seafood pasta and meat dishes. It is worth a look for a mixed group of eaters, with any allergy or strict dietary requirement discussed directly with the restaurant before booking. Ciao Roma looks onto North Square and serves Roman-inspired Italian food, including homemade pasta. Outdoor seating is a separate reservation choice, and the restaurant warns that it may not be able to move patio diners inside in bad weather. Book the setting you actually want and read the terms before choosing an outdoor table. All’Antico Vinaio is the sandwich option here, with Boston branches of the Florence-born shop. It belongs in a lunch plan or a quick meal rather than a list of formal dinner reservations. Compare the fillings at your chosen location and order for the appetite you brought; a restaurant guide can leave room for paper wrapping. For another night, our Boston restaurant guide covers meals beyond Italian food. If dinner is only the start, keep the next stop nearby: the speakeasy guide gives you a few places to continue the evening.
Get to know Boston
What the colors of the Zakim Bridge lights mean
Green on the Zakim does not automatically mean the Celtics. Purple does not have one permanent meaning either. The Zakim Bridge lights change for holidays, memorials, and awareness campaigns, and the same color can stand for several unrelated things in a single year. MassDOT publishes a dated lighting calendar. Match the night to the entry, check that the Zakim is one of the bridges listed, and you have a better answer than guessing from the color alone. That last part matters. The state schedules several bridges on the same page. An entry for the Longfellow or the Braga is not automatically an entry for the Zakim. Where to check the Zakim Bridge lights The MassDOT bridge lighting schedule lists the occasion, color, date, and participating bridges. Use the current year, especially if the photo you are looking at has been reposted without a date. The 2026 calendar is a useful demonstration of why a universal color key would fail. Green has already been used for St. Patrick’s Day, Boston Legacy Football Club, and Living Donation Week. Blue has appeared for World Parkinson’s Day and for the twenty-fifth anniversary of September 11. Those are not competing theories. They are different nights. A blue bridge photographed in April cannot explain a blue bridge photographed in September. Two September nights this year make the point. On September 11 the Zakim was blue. On September 13 it was green, and that night the Zakim was the only bridge on the list. Same week. Different colors. Different reasons. Multi-color displays can be easier to tell apart, though the date still matters. The schedule names combinations as well as single colors. Read the full line before attaching a meaning to a picture, particularly when the occasion is a memorial or a health campaign. Who gets to decide MassDOT’s bridge lighting policy, dated November 14, 2023, says special displays express the agency’s official views. The bridges are not a public billboard and not an open platform for anyone’s message. A change needs approval from the department’s Office of the General Counsel and the transportation secretary’s concurrence. The policy covers state and federal holidays, other national observances, and public commemorations and celebrations at the national, state, or local level. The calendar can still move after that approval. A screenshot is useful evidence of an earlier plan. The live page is the better place to check what is scheduled now. The Zakim is one of several state bridges with programmable lights. The policy also names the Longfellow, Fore River, Kenneth F. Burns, and Braga bridges. Matching colors across the state can be one coordinated observance, not a coincidence. Why blue looks familiar Blue is also the bridge’s ordinary night look. Color Kinetics, which worked with MassDOT on the LED system, describes the design as blue-lit towers with the cables picked out in white. The company cites architect Miguel Rosales, who wanted a formal entrance to Boston. The LED system was unveiled in December 2012. It replaced older metal halide lights that had been on the bridge since it opened in 2002 and had grown dim. The new fixtures can hold the familiar blue or shift for a listed occasion. The lighting is not a new coat of paint. It is a programmed change. Blue by itself is therefore not enough to identify a tribute. Check whether a special blue display was on the calendar for that night before assigning it a meaning. Read the date before the symbolism For an old photograph, establish the date before looking up the color. For a night you have not seen yet, check the calendar again close to the date. If the page has no matching entry for the Zakim, leave the occasion unconfirmed rather than borrowing one from another month or another bridge. The fastest route to the answer is the least dramatic: date, bridge name, calendar line. Boston has other lights with a code, including the weather beacon on the old Hancock. This one usually comes with a schedule.
Order a milkshake in Boston and you might be missing the ice cream
Order a milkshake in Boston at a shop that still keeps the old distinction and you can get exactly what you asked for: milk and flavoring, beaten until it foams. No ice cream. The thicker drink, the one visitors usually mean, is a frappe. Not every counter still bothers. Plenty of menus now use milkshake the way the rest of the country does. The shops that list both drinks are not offering two sizes of the same thing. Those are the last places where a milkshake in Boston and a frappe are different orders. What goes into a milkshake in Boston The traditional local milkshake is milk plus a flavoring, often chocolate syrup, shaken or blended until air gets into it. A frappe adds ice cream. Yankee’s account of the two drinks is useful on a point people skip: the milkshake is not a glass of chocolate milk. Stirring syrup into milk mixes the ingredients. Blending them is what makes it a fountain order. If a menu lists both, look at the prices before treating the cheaper one as a deal. You may be comparing a milk drink with one that has scoops in it. Say “frap” The regional drink is one syllable, rhyming with map. The American Heritage Dictionary records that pronunciation and treats the noun as regional usage, mapping it to Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts. Shops in Boston still put it on the board. That entry is a different word from “frappé,” two syllables, which the same dictionary defines as a frozen fruit dessert or a drink poured over shaved ice. The spelling overlap is how visitors end up performing French at a Jamaica Plain counter. A shop owner paid for the lesson Vincent Petryk, who later opened JP Licks, learned the difference as a newcomer from Philadelphia. Boston.com reported that he ordered a milkshake at Bailey’s in the 1970s, saw that it cost half as much as the frappe, and then asked where the ice cream was. Bailey’s is gone. The mix-up is not. The same report found “frappe” in late-nineteenth-century Boston Globe pages attached to chilled and partly frozen drinks, including alcoholic ones, long before it settled on the ice-cream version. Recipes a few years later included cafe frappes and pineapple frappes, sometimes with a scoop of ice cream already in the mix. Boston University food scholars told the paper that regional names for ordinary foods were common before national food media flattened the vocabulary. Megan Elias, who directs BU’s gastronomy program, pointed to a 1920s overlap: Prohibition pushed people toward new places to sit, and electric equipment made ice cream cheaper to produce in volume. Soda fountains did well in that gap. The scholars also said the exact reason this particular word stuck here is not established. There is no inventor to toast and no afternoon when Boston renamed the milkshake. The term showed up in more than one drink, attached itself to the ice-cream one, and stayed. The word is still on the menu JP Licks still lists a regular frappe, an extra-thick frappe, and an espresso frappe, separate from smoothies, frozen coffee, ice-cream sodas, and floats. Extra-thick is a texture, not a citizenship test. In 2023, Mark Parrish, president of Crescent Ridge Dairy in Sharon, told Boston.com his shop still served the ice-cream-free milkshake next to the frappe and asked customers which they wanted. He also said tourists, students, and younger customers increasingly ask for a milkshake. Other counters have given up and will put ice cream in whatever you called it. Rhode Island complicates the map again. In parts of that state, and into southeastern Massachusetts, the ice-cream drink is a cabinet. Same general idea. Different word. This is the same class of local vocabulary as why Bostonians say “wicked.” Get the word wrong and you can still have a conversation. Get this one wrong and you may drink a glass of flavored milk. If the menu says milkshake and you want ice cream in it, ask. You do not need to win the regional argument first.