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Guides
Where to catch A Christmas Carol in Boston, starting at the hotel where Dickens first read it in America
Boston banned Christmas from 1659 to 1681. Less than two centuries later, it was the first American city to hear Charles Dickens read A Christmas Carol. According to the Omni Parker House’s history, Dickens gave his first American reading of the story privately at the Parker House in 1867, then read it publicly at the Tremont Theatre, and WBUR dates the start of that reading tour to Dec. 2, 1867, in Boston. The hotel still has the mirror he used to practice his reading, and the original door to his suite came back in 2015 and is on display in its History Gallery. This year you can hear the story in that hotel, see it on stage with the voice of PBS’s Frontline as Scrooge, watch the Muppets do it with the Boston Pops, and finish with a toast at taverns that were pouring before Dickens was born. The hotel’s historic Press Room hosts A Christmas Carol readings on Saturday, Dec. 19 at 7 PM and Sunday, Dec. 20 at 2 PM and 5:30 PM. Veteran actor Johnny Kinsman reads the story while vocalist Ann Moss and multi-instrumentalist Justin Ouellet weave in carol tunes and foley sound effects, and Parker House historian Susan Wilson opens with the story of Dickens and the hotel. The show is for ages 6 and up, and refunds are available up to seven days before. That Press Room has its own history, too. The hotel’s timeline says a six-year-old John F. Kennedy gave his “first public speech” there in 1923, and he held his bachelor party in the same room in 1953. The Omni Parker House is running two holiday pop-up bars this season, according to the reading’s event page. Ebenezer’s Bar at Parker’s Bar leans into the darker, Dickens side of the season, and Blitzen’s at The Last Hurrah goes merry and bright. Blitzen’s opens Friday, Nov. 27 and pours daily from 4 PM to midnight, with cocktail recipes from Julie Reiner, a co-founder of New York’s Clover Club and a judge on Netflix’s Drink Masters. The Last Hurrah takes its name from the 1956 novel inspired by James Michael Curley, who was a Parker House regular. Parker’s Restaurant has its own claims to fame. The hotel says the Boston cream pie and Parker House rolls came out of Parker’s after French chef Augustine Anezin was hired to open it in 1865, and JFK proposed to Jacqueline Bouvier at table 40 in Parker’s Restaurant in 1953. Commonwealth Shakespeare Company’s Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol runs Friday, Dec. 11 through Sunday, Dec. 20 at the Emerson Cutler Majestic Theatre, with Will Lyman, the longtime narrator of PBS’s Frontline, as Scrooge. Steve Wargo’s adaptation is full of 19th-century carols arranged by Dianne Adams McDowell, the vocal arranger for Broadway’s A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder, and Steven Maler directs. Every performance is open captioned. The Saturday, Dec. 19 evening show and the Sunday, Dec. 20 matinee are ASL-interpreted, and the show runs about two hours with one intermission. Students can get $25 rush tickets in person at the box office starting two hours before curtain, and groups of 10 or more save 10%. WBUR has hosted a reading of A Christmas Carol every year since 2002. This year’s is Thursday, Dec. 17 at 7 PM at CitySpace, 890 Commonwealth Ave., with doors at 6 PM. Steve Brown, Meghna Chakrabarti, Tiziana Dearing, Ben Brock Johnson and Robin Young read, The Mistletones sing, and there are cookies and hot cocoa at intermission. Ticket sales support Rosie’s Place, which opened in 1974 as the first women’s shelter in the United States. Disney’s The Muppet Christmas Carol in Concert plays Symphony Hall on Sunday, Dec. 27 and Monday, Dec. 28, both at 2 PM, with the Boston Pops and conductor Lawrence Loh. Michael Caine is Scrooge, Kermit is Bob Cratchit, and Gonzo narrates as Dickens with help from Rizzo the Rat. The songs are by Paul Williams, who also wrote “Rainbow Connection.” For a spookier night, Massachusetts Poet Laureate Regie Gibson reads two Victorian Christmas ghost stories at Old North Church on Saturday, Dec. 12 from 7:30 to 8:30 PM. One is Dickens’s The Goblins Who Stole a Sexton, which the church calls a sinister precursor to A Christmas Carol. The other is A.M. Burrage’s Smee, where a Christmas Eve game of hide-and-seek in a dark mansion goes very wrong. Josiah Reibstein leads an ensemble playing a live original score. Everyone sits in the church’s box pews. A single ticket is $36, and private pews are $100 for three, $130 for four or $160 for five. For $12 more, a 20-minute crypt tour at 6:30 PM takes you beneath the floorboards to 37 brick tombs holding the remains of 1,100 early Bostonians. Three of the city’s oldest drinking and dining spots sit within a block of each other near Creek Square, according to the Historical Marker Database, a short walk from the Parker House. The Bell in Hand was founded in 1795 by Jimmy Wilson, the city’s last known town crier, and its marker says the only time it ever closed was Prohibition, from 1920 to 1933. Women were not allowed in until the late 1960s, and in the early days last call was 9 PM and the last round was on the house. Union Oyster House has served food since 1826 and calls itself America’s oldest restaurant. Daniel Webster was a constant customer at its oyster bar. Around the corner, The Green Dragon Tavern carries the name of the tavern established in 1654 where, its site says, plans for the march on Lexington and Concord were overheard. Across the river in Charlestown, Warren Tavern dates to 1780, calls itself the oldest tavern in Massachusetts and says it once welcomed George Washington and Paul Revere.
5 best Korean BBQ restaurants in Boston
Korean BBQ in Boston can mean settling in around a grill with several cuts of beef and pork, or ordering a plate of bulgogi with a bowl of stew. Those are different meals, and choosing the right restaurant starts with knowing which one you want. These five places cover Boston, Cambridge and Medford. Naksan has staff cook the meat for you. Sura offers all-you-can-eat barbecue. Seoul gives downtown diners barbecue combinations alongside a much broader menu. Gather people who are willing to share, then work out the order together. Naksan Korean BBQ is on Commonwealth Avenue, where staff handle the cooking at your table. Its beef and pork combinations come with egg soufflé and a choice of kimchi or soybean stew. For a bigger meal, the Grand Tour adds beef tartare with caviar, several beef cuts and ice cream. Japanese A5 Wagyu is another option. This is a place to look at the combinations before adding separate dishes. Let the size of your group and the cuts you want guide the order. Naksan’s reservation policy says Friday and Saturday dinner is walk-in only, and parties larger than seven should call. Sura Korean BBQ in Medford is the all-you-can-eat choice on this list. The Boston menu currently lists a $30 regular package and a $40 premium package per person, before additional charges such as tax and drinks. Everyone in the party must choose the same package. Premium adds short-rib options and beef tongue. You select meat from the self-service area and cook it at your table. The meal also includes the appetizer and salad bar and made-to-order Korean dishes, including pancakes and steamed egg. Reservations are offered. Start with a manageable selection; you can decide what to repeat after the first round. Korean Garden in Allston offers both tabletop barbecue and dishes cooked in the kitchen. The barbecue menu lists short ribs, beef brisket, pork belly, chicken and shrimp, with a minimum of two orders for table cooking. The broader menu includes kimchi pancakes, rice cakes, soups and bibimbap, which helps when a group wants more than grilled meat. Its posted hours run later Thursday through Saturday than on the other nights. Confirm the last kitchen order if you are heading over late; the closing time alone does not tell you when a full barbecue meal can still begin. Koreana gives Cambridge diners a tabletop barbecue option on Prospect Street near Central Square. The built-in grills have ventilation above the cooking area, and the menu includes galbi, bulgogi and pork belly. Seafood scallion pancakes, cold noodles and tofu stews give you several ways to round out the meat order. Choose it for a meal where the table is sharing, rather than trying to fit barbecue into a rushed lunch. Ask the restaurant about the grill setup and ordering requirements when arranging your visit. A pancake for the table and a couple of different meat dishes make a more varied starting point than everyone choosing the same thing. Seoul Restaurant on Cambridge Street offers Korean barbecue plates alongside sushi, noodles and stews. The barbecue combinations pair choices such as beef bulgogi, pork belly or LA kalbi with soft tofu stew, cold noodles or stone-pot bibimbap. That gives you a way to order barbecue as part of a complete individual meal. It is a useful downtown option when everyone wants a different dinner. One person can choose a barbecue combination while another orders soup or sushi. Reserve through the restaurant’s website if you are planning an evening visit, and specify what kind of meal you have in mind. Before booking Korean BBQ in Boston Ask for a barbecue table if you want the grill, and confirm any minimum order before sitting down. Compare the price of a meat combination with its recommended party size, rather than assuming every listed price is per person. At an all-you-can-eat restaurant, agree on the package with everyone at the table and order quantities you expect to finish. For drinks afterward, our Boston speakeasy guide includes choices in Boston and Somerville. If part of the group would rather skip barbecue, the restaurant guide offers shared plates and other dinner options.
Get to know Boston
Candlepin bowling gives you three chances to miss
Candlepin bowling gives you a small ball, ten thin pins and three chances to discover that this is harder than it looks. The ball fits in your hand without finger holes. The pins seem obligingly narrow until you realize how much space there is to miss them. The biggest surprise comes after the first roll. Fallen pins generally stay on the lane, where they can help knock down the ones still standing. The mess is part of the game. Learn to use it before asking someone to clear it away. How candlepin bowling works A game has ten frames, with up to three balls in each. Knock down all ten pins with your first ball and you have a strike. Do it with the first two and you have a spare. Clear them with all three and you have ten for the frame, without a strike or spare bonus. That third ball is not a free spare attempt. It lets you finish the frame and collect more pins, but it does not turn three throws into two. People arriving from tenpin bowling sometimes need a moment with that distinction. The International Candlepin Bowling Association’s rules explain which fallen pins remain playable and which must be removed. You also have to wait for the wood to stop moving before rolling again. Let the last pin finish its argument with gravity. For a first visit, you do not need to memorize every official ruling. Ask the desk to explain the reset button and scoring before starting. Knowing when to leave the pins alone saves confusion and preserves the next player’s turn. The fallen pins change your next shot A standing pin may look isolated, but a fallen one can give you another way to reach it. Instead of aiming only at the upright target, look at what lies around it. A useful piece of wood can turn a difficult leave into a manageable shot. The reverse happens too. A pin lying across the lane can interfere with the path you wanted. Each roll changes the arrangement, so your next attempt is not necessarily a repeat of the last one. The light ball makes the game approachable for a new bowler. It does not guarantee an easy score. You are sending a small object a long way toward a set of slender targets, then working with whatever remains. Bringing friends supplies witnesses, who will probably remember the misses. Worcester gets the origin story Candlepin belongs to the wider New England bowling tradition rather than to Boston alone. The Museum of Worcester credits Justin “Pop” White, who owned a pool hall on Pearl Street, with inventing the game in Worcester in 1880. The museum’s account places the sport in a neighborhood business, not a professional stadium. That scale still suits a game you can learn during an evening out. You can take the score seriously, or spend the next frame trying to explain the last one. Where to try it around Boston Sacco’s Bowl Haven in Davis Square combines candlepin lanes with American Flatbread’s wood-fired pizza. The operator dates the bowling alley to 1939, and the old name remains part of the business. It is a useful choice when the plan needs to accommodate both bowling and dinner. Sacco’s bowling reservation page explains how its lanes are booked. Treat a bowling reservation and a dining plan as separate arrangements unless your confirmation says otherwise. A table does not automatically give your group a lane. Boston Bowl on Morrissey Boulevard in Dorchester offers both candlepin and tenpin bowling. Specify candlepin when making plans so you get the smaller balls and the rules described here. The venue’s bowling information distinguishes the two formats. Wear the required bowling shoes, keep food and drinks away from the approach, and ask staff about anything that has stopped working. Then give the fallen pins a second look. One of them may be more useful on its side.
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.