Acclaimed Chef Karen Akunowicz Brings Northern Italian Food to Logan Airport

Karen Akunowicz. / Photo by Kristin Teig

Now you can get a taste of northern Italy before boarding a plane at Logan Airport. This month chef and restaurateur Karen Akunowicz has opened Fox & Flight, an offshoot of her Modena-inspired South Boston restaurant Fox & the Knife, in Terminal A.

In convenient airport-restaurant fashion, Fox & Flight is open all day: Think eggs and polenta or pancakes with lemon curd and blueberries for breakfast, followed by Akunowicz’s take on comforting northern Italian dishes for lunch and dinner (rigatoni Bolognese, pork Milanese, etc.) There are cocktails, too: In an Instagram post announcing Fox & Flight’s opening, Akunowicz was particularly excited about the Campari margarita.

The new restaurant—a partnership between Akunowicz and travel retailer and restaurateur Paradies Lagardère—is roomy, seating nearly 100 at standard tables and at a cozy bar. Eye-catching foxes grace the walls, along with attractive green tiling; you might just forget you’re in a bustling airport, waiting to board a flight.

Chef Karen Akunowicz debuts Fox & Flight at Logan Airport. / Courtesy photo

Fox & Flight isn’t a direct copy of Fox & the Knife, but more of a nod to Akunowicz’s first solo restaurant (which she later followed with the more southern Italian-inspired Bar Volpe, also in South Boston). The James Beard award winner and Top Chef alum opened Fox & the Knife to much fanfare in early 2019 after seven years as chef (and four as partner) at Myers & Chang in the South End. Fox & the Knife’s inspiration? A formative year in Modena, in Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region, where Akunowicz fell in love with pasta-making and aperitivo culture. A quick success, the restaurant snapped up local and national awards in its first year. Here at Boston, critic Julia Clancy rated it three and a half stars out of four, between “generally excellent” and “extraordinary.” Akunowicz showcases northern Italian food “exceedingly well,” Clancy wrote at the time, “not by creating an exact replica … but by absorbing all of that Italian intel and refracting it within her own framework.”

While a restaurant in an airport terminal certainly serves a different function than an intimate, neighborhood-y date-night destination, if Fox & Flight hits just a fraction of the notes that Fox & the Knife does, it’s sure to be a boon for travelers passing through Logan. The airport has been upping its culinary game in recent years: This is just one of several notable partnerships with local restaurateurs (see also: Shojo, Alta Strada, Kelly’s Roast Beef, and more), and we can’t wait to see what’s next.

Open daily. Boston Logan International Airport (Terminal A Satellite Concourse), East Boston, instagram.com/foxandflight.