A Culinary Tour of Boston; or, Taters We Got At Home

For those who don’t know, Mark and I went to Boston last Saturday for an early anniversary trip. We decided back in January to take a trip for our 15th, and didn’t know where we wanted to go. Mark found out in late July that he would be going to Boston on business, and it worked out for him to go early and take me along!!

You know me: I was particularly excited about the food. Whenever we traveled when I was a kid, my dad used to say “Taters we got at home.” I have adopted the same philosophy when I travel, and I do my best to eat food unique to the place I’m visiting. Let’s see how we did – I’ll give you a meal-by-meal play-by-play of our culinary adventures:

First off, we didn’t rent a car. For the most part, it would have been more trouble than it was worth in the city. But we stayed outside Boston, in Newton, and there wasn’t any real public transportation in Newton. The hotel offered shuttle service to and from the nearest MTA stop, but that was about it. So for our first meal on Saturday night, we were on foot. We started out in the early evening looking for a restaurant near our hotel. There were several restaurants on a map supplied by the hotel that were not really in walking distance, but since we are young and fairly healthy, we thought we’d try. After walking a ways and realizing the map was clearly not to scale, we called Ben and had him MapQuest the address. “Two miles.” Not too bad. After walking well over two miles through a suburban area that was obviously celebrating “grill outside week”, we gave up and went back to the hotel. (We actually contemplated the appropriateness of knocking on doors and offering a hundred bucks for whatever they were grilling. Ultimately, we decided against it.) In the hotel bar, we ordered a couple of appetizers, one of which was lobster and crab cakes. They were delicious. But there were only two of them. Shaft.

On Sunday morning, we took the train into Boston and got breakfast at a Dunkin’ Donuts. Now, I know what you’re thinking. There’s Dunkin’ Donuts everywhere. Well, actually, there’s not. We don’t have a Dunkin’ here, and it seemed like such a Bostonian thing to do, we felt comfortable running on Dunkin’. We took our bagels and coffee to Boston Common, found a bench, and ate while people-watching. Then we hit the Freedom Trail.

We ate a very late lunch (about 3:00) in north Boston at Cantina Italiana on Hanover Street. Mark had the chicken parm, and I had the gnocchi. I had never had gnocchi before, and it was exactly what I expected. And very good. Mark’s food was good to. I have since found out that Cantina Italiana is the oldest Italian restaurant on Hanover Street, a street famous for Italian restaurants. And old places. So there.

We went back down the Freedom Trail to Quincy Market for dessert. Mark had a black and white cookie, and I had a canoli. Good stuff.

We had such a late lunch and were so tired Sunday night that we just went back to the hotel and crashed without eating again.

For breakfast on Monday we ate blueberry muffins purchased at Quincy Market the day before. We toured Fenway Park, and went back to Quincy Market for lunch, where I had my first ever lobster roll, and Mark had a BBQ burger. Dessert was from a gelati place – I had Nutella and Mark had tiramisu. After an afternoon excursion to Harvard, we went back to Quincy and split a Boston Cream Pie (a single serving, not a whole pie.)

Dinner Monday night was at Fenway. All the local places were crammed with Red Sox fans, so we headed several blocks out to relax and give the scalpers time to come down off their outrageous prices. We had a very relaxing meal at a steakhouse chain (Longhorn, I think?). It was a good, it was not crowded, and it was air conditioned – the exact tri fecta we were looking for. (It totally violated our Taters rule, but sometimes, if we don’t bend, we break.) In the end, we skipped the game, so no peanuts and crackerjack for us.

Tuesday morning we ate in the hotel restaurant again as Mark needed to meet up with his work folks. We both had the banana-oatmeal Brule. It was oatmeal topped with custard and bananas, caramelized just like a crème Brule. Then it was topped with strawberries. It was really, really good. I thought it would be too sweet, but the oatmeal balanced out the sweetness. Delicious!

We went our separate ways for the day. I had lunch at Figs, a restaurant on Charles Street that I found in my guidebook. I ordered the signature fig and prosciutto pizza. It was the most amazing thing!! Really tiny place, but really good food. And they had bread that I would kill a bear for. I heartily recommend it.

For dinner, I met up with Mark again, and joined the work folks for dinner at Legal Seafood. Legal started way back in the day as a local seafood joint, and is now a large chain (mostly in Massachusetts and airports around the country). I had the clam chowder, and the baked scrod, two very Boston dishes I wanted to try before we left. Neither one disappointed. “Scrod”, as I understand it, is a Bostonian term for the fresh catch of the day, breaded and baked, not fried. Mine was a delicious white fish (no clue what, exactly) topped with breading and a roasted tomato.

And that was it – we had a very early flight on Wednesday morning, so we ate at the airport. Nothing special there.

All in all, though, I ate everything I wanted to and nothing I didn’t. Except maybe more of the Boston Cream Pie.