Dining Out

Restaurants

Review: Grace by Nia Brings Throwback Supper-Club Glamour to the Seaport

Imagine bringing a time-traveling Bostonian from the year 2000 to the Seaport in 2023 to stand in front of the new Grace by Nia, a […]

Restaurants

Review: Comfort Kitchen Beautifully Executes a Soulful, Global Menu

Every restaurant has a story, or at least a website “About Us” section with a founder’s mission statement. Some are more compelling than others. There’s […]

Restaurants

Review: Tonino Is Unpretentious, Delicious, and Consummately Jamaica Plain

Every dedicated Boston restaurant explorer knows the varied, distinctive character of our neighborhoods—particularly the ones where tourists roam and the cost of parking infuriates. The […]

Restaurants

Review: Moëca Largely Succeeds With Wildly Clever Seafood

To paraphrase an old saying in the restaurant business: “When life gives you green crabs, make green-crab bisque.” For readers who don’t follow sustainability issues, […]

Restaurants

Review: An Indie Success Story at Lenox Sophia

I was minding my own business in a restaurant the other night when something punched me in the mouth. I didn’t see it coming: My […]

Restaurants

Restaurant Review: A Sprawling Italian-ish Menu at Faccia Brutta

At Boston, we do stars, but in my dream job, we’d size up restaurants using only Randy Jackson–isms, which I’ve admired since American Idol’s heyday […]

Restaurants

Restaurant Review: O Ya Is Still the Most Reliably Sublime Dining Splurge in Town

There’s a scene in Pretty Woman where Richard Gere whisks Julia Roberts to her first opera and, as the lights dim, ratchets up the stakes. […]

Restaurants

Restaurant Review: A Shot Across the Bao

Honestly, the biggest bummer about Wusong Road, chef-owner Jason Doo’s thrumming, tiki-themed ode to the sweet (also: sour) comfort-food pleasures of throwback Chinese-Americana, is that […]

Restaurants

Restaurant Review: A World-Famous Chef Checks into a Harvard Square Hotel

Look, I don’t know who’s calling the shots at the Charles Hotel, and frankly it’s none of my damned business. I’m just a simple food […]

Restaurants

Restaurant Review: The Banks Fish House Might Need a Stronger Hook

The photographs on the website and the walls of the Banks Fish House—salt-bleached boats, dark islands, fishermen proud and weather-worn—wordlessly signal home to many folks […]

Restaurants

Restaurant Review: Contessa Is Worth the Wait

I once got into Contessa for dinner three times in a single week. And if that doesn’t explode your brain, well, clearly you’ve never tried […]

Restaurants

Restaurant Review: Atlántico Is a Good Restaurant with Just One Small Catch

Michael Serpa’s tapas place in the South End isn’t a bad restaurant. It’s a good restaurant with some food problems. And if that last sentence […]

Restaurants

Restaurant Review: Nautilus Pier 4 Finds Gold by Scouring Global Coastlines

The nautilus, an intricate, tentacled creature with a shell like the spiraled eye of a hurricane, is a cephalopod mollusk (read: squid-like creature) that dwells […]

Restaurants

Restaurant Review: Brookline’s Exceptional Mahaniyom Proves That Less Is More

The fattiest cut of a pig isn’t actually the belly. It’s the jowl. In Italy they cure it into guanciale, dispensing it like over-the-top bacon […]

Restaurants

Boston Restaurants Are Back (Sort of), and Change Is on the Menu

It finally happened: I ventured out to eat at a restaurant. This is not the kind of thing one used to announce as a spectacular […]