- eating
- (6419)
-
Real deal American diner in one of Boston's ritziest areas, Beacon Hill, and full of regulars. Best for Sunday breakfast/brunch of home-style buttery pancakes with crispy bacon on the side, and steaks or burgers in the evening.
44 Charles St
Tel: 617 720 1152
www.paramountboston.com
The North End is Boston's Little Italy, chocca with delis, salumerias, bakeries, grocers, and the first Italian cafe in Boston, Caffe Vittoria. Sit and steep a while in the vintage atmosphere — antique coffee-makers adorn the windows, sepia prints line the wood-pannelled walls and little old boys suck down their espressos. Line your stomach with cappuccino and cannoli, and hum a Dean Martin tune in your head.
296 Hanover St
Tel: 617 227 7606
www.vittoriacaffe.com
Le Reconfort is a lovely little restaurant in the Marais district. Food is absolutely delicious and the waiters (who I suspect are also the owners) are really great. The menu is in an old French novel which really adds to its bohemian vibe!
37 Rue De Poitou
75003
Paris
Vegetarian restaurant near Museumplein, but a world away from the crowds. It serves cuisine themed from different parts of the world, which apparently changes every couple of weeks.
We had a lovely meal sat outside in the tree-lined street. Inside, the decor was fairly modern. Service was friendly and efficient.
My partner and I had a main, desert and wine for €60 and would definitely go again.
Only open between 17.00 and 21.30 and closed on Mondays. It's probably worth booking.
www.waaghals.nl/
29 Frans Halsstraat, 1072 BK Amsterdam
020 6799609
For a special night out while in Boston try this place. Old English style chop house, in a fine dining way (and price!). Make sure you book as it gets really busy. As does the bar, which is also a great spot for a drink apres shopping on Newbury Street.
359 Newbury Street
Tel: 617 262 8900
www.thecapitalgrille.com/Locations/Boston/Main.asp?Location=Boston
Fuxia is a vibrant and atmospheric Italian restaurant in the square of Place Marché St-Honore. Incredibly good value and great food. We had to wait around 15 minutes for a table and there was a wait all night, but never for too long and a great sign of a popular place. Also full of Parisiens, so a good place if you want to get rid of the rest of the tourists in Paris!
Marché St-Honore off Rue St-Honore
Atmospheric old restaurant in the old part of Boston. Try fresh-shucked oysters at the oyster bar.
Near Government Center.
www.unionoysterhouse.com/
Top of the Hub restaurant, on the 52nd floor of the Prudential building, is a great place to catch views of Boston. Dinners can get pricey but for lunch or dessert it is actually fairly reasonable. It's worth a few extra dollars for the views. Go during an off time so you are sure to snag a table next to the window.
Prudential Building
Back Bay or Prudential T Stop
Restaurant/bar: fabulous thin crust pizzas, great selection of wines and beers. Superbly chilled out, good value and - best of all - flat screen TVs showing the sport but with no sound... fun for the guys and the gals.
27 Church St
Cambridge, MA 02138
617-868-5362
T stop: Harvard Square
Don't miss creamy New England clam chowder... Atlantic Fish co restaurants are ubiquitous and serve very fine chowder.
Very touristy, but still very atmospheric. Go to Durgin Park for some Boston Baked Beans.
Great Jewish soul food in Brookline.
335 Harvard Street, Brookline
Tel: 617 975 0075
www.zaftigs.com/aboutus.html
This is the best bar in Cuzco (after much extensive research!!). It serves amazing daquaris in every flavour under the sun and the steaks are huge! They also serve amazing roast veg!
The best bit is the decor, half is covered with blue skies, clouds, cherubs etc and the other half of it is red leather, rubber and fetishy!
The sofas are actually old-fashioned iron bedsteads and the tables are old baths with glass tops with real live fish living in them. The service is amazing and the owner and his four boxer dogs are just the nicest people in the world!
Attached to the La Calcina pensione this wonderful restaurant has great food at a fair price, which is not bad in Venice particularly given the view here. A good mix of meals and light snacks and good for vegetarians.
In Dorsoduro by the Zattere vaporetto stop.
The bars and restaurants around Hakescher Markt & Oranienburger Strasse are great: lively venues offering good value with great service. The 'ladies of the night' plying their trade on Oranienburger Strasse was an eye opener.
However, under no circumstances visit 'Dante' in the row of restaurants situated in Hakescher Markt's S-Bhan station arches. We waited 50 minutes before we found that the kitchen had lost our order and a further 30 for the food to arrive, the staff were rude and at no point was an apology offered. This is not the norm as all other retsuarants in the area provided very friendly and efficient service.
In the Mitte. There are countless restaurants situated in and around the railway arches of Hakescher Markt's S-Bahn station, which is on lines; S-5, S-7, S-9.
A great restaurant which offers good discounts to guests at Globetrotters Backpackers hostel. It has a Pharsee section which is Persian so really the restaurant has quite a few menus to choose from.
91 Berkeley street,station charing cross
Fantastic place to eat, drink and recover from a hard day out on the hill. Also has accommodation if you're not a hard-up climber. Can get pretty lively on winter weekends. Great selection of real ales and even better selection of single malts.
Clachaig Inn
Glencoe
Argyll
Scotland
PH49 4HX
t. 01855 811252
e. inn@clachaig.com
In this respect São Paulo is truly exceptional. When you see these you begin to understand the city's culinary reputation. São Paulo's street markets receive fruit and vegetables from all over Brazil and from Chile and Argentina. What is more, ringing the city are thousands of Japanese-Brazilian market gardens.
The selection of greens alone is massive: mustard, many types of lettuce, chicory, fennel, rocket, bok choy, fresh melokias (not many places outside of the Middle East where you can get it), spinach, kale, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, watercress...stalls and stalls of massive bunches of fresh herbs: dill, mint, basil (several types), lemon grass, rosemary, oregano, coriander, parsley, sage - basically everything you can think of.
As for the fruit, it ranges from Amazonian looking stuff, to tropical: pineapples, papayas, mangoes (palmer, Tommy Atkins, small green citrus-flavoured ones, and more) and jackfruit. A good pérola pineapple when in season will impregnate the flat and your hands with its aroma for the whole day. It will be very sweet, not sharp and not fibrous. It literally melts in your mouth. Similarly a perfect mango.
There is also plenty of fruit more associated with temperate weather: apples, pears, strawberries, blackberries, plums, as well as Mediterranean-climate fruit such as watermelons, grapes and so forth.
Also at the markets: fish stalls, meat stalls, spice stalls (you can find most of the basics you'll need for curries, for example), hardware, cheap toys.
The tradition is to drink a cane-juice (with lime juice) and eat a fried "pastel" (minced meat or palm heart are my favourites).
There are markets all over the city. The ones I've used are:
Friday: Rua Sergipe, in Higienópolis, opposite Zilana. Genteel. You can stop off for excellent coffee and sweetmeats before or after at "Dulca".
Saturday: Corner of R. Helvetia with Barão de Campinas. Far less genteel. The neighbourhood used to be the administrative center of the city. Now faded and nervously on the edge of crack-land.
Sunday: Amaral Gurgel, at Sta Cecília underground station. Huge, bustling, under the flyover (flyover incidentally closed to traffic on Sundays for pedestrians to amble).
Sunday: Praça Roosevelt. A smaller version of the Amaral Gurgel one, at the bottom of Rua da Consolação. Easier to handle, but very bustling nonetheless.
Although a chain, the Cheesecake Factory is an absolute must for those who love all things American and want to steep themselves in the local culture e.g. huge portions, great food. The Cheesecake Factory is located in the Prudential centre so it's pretty central, the bar's good with a range of cocktails and I would recommend the Cobb salad, surely the largest salad in the world!
Bakery. 120-years old, belonging to the Albanese family, originally from Calabria. Wood-burning ovens. The bakery bakes 2,000 loaves a day, but the outlet is a small shopfront. Sausages and cheeses hanging from ceiling. The best calabreza sausage-bread in the city, great aubergine bread. Great, crusty and chewy Italian bread. Sfogliatelli and Portuguese pastries, Italian wines etc.
Rua São Domingos, 330 Bela Vista.
Keep going down Augusta, center-bound, until it turns into Martins Fontes. Turn right at Martinho Prado. Keep going past impressive synagogue (incidentally opposite São Paulo's oldest Lesbian bar). Turn left when you reach Santo Antonio. First on right, then right again.
Not easy to find. Never mind there are a lot of similar bakeries nearby (Bexiga) that are nearly as good.
Is this your business?