The Best Places to Eat and Do in Boston

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

Carmelina's sends food to the table in the pans it was cooked in, which tells you most of what you need to know about this North End Italian. Garlic, butter, cream, and tomato do the heavy lifting across a seafood-forward menu, and the portions are large enough to require reinforcements. There's no dessert, though that turns out to be less of an omission than it sounds. Weekday lunch is your best shot at a table.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. James Beard Awards 2022 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: Northeast · John DaSilva
2. James Beard Awards 2024 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: Northeast · John daSilva
3. James Beard Awards 2025 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: Northeast · John DaSilva

1. AAA Approved
2. Boston Magazine 2025 · Best Casual Lobster Roll · Best of Boston

1. AAA Approved
2. Boston Magazine 2025 · Best Clam Chowder · Best of Boston

1. James Beard Awards 2022 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Chef · Douglass Williams
2. James Beard Awards 2025 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Restaurateur · Seth Gerber and Douglass Williams
3. James Beard Awards 2023 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: Northeast · Douglass Williams

1. James Beard Awards 2022 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Chef · Douglass Williams
2. James Beard Awards 2025 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Restaurateur · Seth Gerber and Douglass Williams
3. James Beard Awards 2023 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: Northeast · Douglass Williams

1. James Beard Awards 2022 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Chef · Douglass Williams
2. James Beard Awards 2025 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Restaurateur · Seth Gerber and Douglass Williams
3. James Beard Awards 2023 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: Northeast · Douglass Williams

The Koji Club is a sake bar of about sixteen seats in the Allston Speedway, where the bottle storage doubles as a coat rack and a rice cooker sits behind the bar like it pays rent. The staff will walk the sake-curious through the list, so no one gets quizzed. The snack of choice is a bowl of rice with furikake, miso, and pickles. It's dim and cozy, and it's on the Esquire list of best bars in America.

1. Esquire The Best Bars in America
2. Eater The Best Bars Around Boston
3. The Infatuation The Best Bars In Boston

1. Bon Appétit The Very Best Bagels in the US (Yes, Outside New York)

1. New England 20 Best New England Cideries

1. New England 20 Best New England Cideries

The dining room alone causes arguments: depending on your table, you're sitting in sun-drenched whimsy, blood-red velvet, or the amber spill of an open Basque grill. Dalia is a Spanish restaurant that treats Spain as a starting point rather than a period piece, so calamari stand in for noodles in a riff on dan dan, and patatas bravas arrive as lacquered, shatteringly crisp pavé cubes. The New York Times named it to their 2026 Restaurant List.

1. The New York Times 2026 · The Restaurant List

1. New England 20 Best New England Cideries

1. New England Best Breakfast in the Boston Area · Best Breakfast in Every New England State

1. New England 20 Best New England Cideries

1. James Beard Awards 2025 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: Northeast · Lee Frank
2. James Beard Awards 2024 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: Northeast · Lee Frank

The wood-fired oven sits in plain sight from every table, which is either a promise or a dare depending on how the pizza turns out. This Neapolitan pizza spot in Assembly Row keeps things bright and airy, with big windows and a long bar stocked for cocktails alongside the pies. The team has been sourcing Italian flour, dairy, and tomatoes for years, and the crust shows it: soft, properly blistered, with a little lift to the cornicione.

1. 50 Top Pizza #35 · 50 Top Pizza USA

Neapolitan-inspired pizza shares the menu with pastas and grilled dishes at this North End Italian restaurant, where the neighborhood's old-school density of red sauce joints makes landing here feel like a small victory. The dough holds up under generous toppings, the crust comes out blistered and colorful, and the wine list is worth a look. It landed on 50 Top Pizza USA, which the regulars probably already knew.

1. 50 Top Pizza #49 · 50 Top Pizza USA

Lines form outside this Turkish-inspired bakery and cafe before the doors open on weekends, drawn by za'atar and caramelized kouign amann scenting the street. Pastry chef Maura Kilpatrick builds her pastries from New England grains, so the simit, a sesame-crusted braided ring, tastes a little local even when it doesn't look it. The brunch and mezze menu runs to poached eggs over green garlic yogurt and baked feta, and the shelves of Mediterranean spices make the wait useful.

1. The New York Times The Restaurant List
2. Eater The Best Bakeries Around Boston

1. AAA Approved

1. James Beard Awards 2025 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: Northeast · Valentine Howell

1. AAA Approved

1. AAA Approved

Sicilian-style square slices, thick and airy, come out on paper plates at this cash-only North End slice shop that's been an institution forever. The compact menu runs to arancini, calzones, and potato croquettes, all at prices that feel like a clerical error in 2024. Arrive early on weekdays; on weekends they only open for dinner, and popular items have a habit of disappearing before the line does.

1. AAA Approved

1. AAA Approved

1. AAA Approved

1. AAA Approved

1. AAA Approved

1. James Beard Awards 2025 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: Northeast · Nicole Nocella

1. AAA Approved

1. AAA Approved

1. AAA Approved

1. Eater The 38 Essential Restaurants in Boston

1. Eater The 38 Essential Restaurants in Boston

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops Around Boston

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops Around Boston

A former Darwin's location reborn as a worker-owned cooperative coffee shop, where the staff collectively run the place and share in the profits. The menu carries over some old favorites alongside new ones, and the coffee comes from Equal Exchange, another worker-owned co-op, because apparently the solidarity doesn't stop at the door. A neighborhood spot in Cambridge where your latte is, in a small way, a political act.

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops Around Boston

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops Around Boston

The broccoli rabe sandwich with tomato jam and melted provolone on a griddled sesame torta is the kind of thing that makes you question every sandwich you've ever eaten. This Brookline sandwich shop runs on the conviction that bread choice is not a casual decision, and the team's fine-dining background shows in every layered, deliberately toasted result. The New York Times put it on their Boston list, which feels about right.

1. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in Boston Right Now

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops Around Boston

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops Around Boston

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops Around Boston

A rosemary-honey cortado tells you everything about what kind of coffee shop this is. Jadu is a Jamaica Plain cafe pulling Counter Culture espresso alongside masala chai sourced from Boston's own Madhrasi Chai, with seasonal drinks that lean into unexpected flavor combinations. Pastries come from a nearby nut-free bakery, and there's a breakfast and lunch menu to keep you longer than you planned.

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops Around Boston

1. Eater The 38 Essential Restaurants in Boston

1. Eater The 38 Essential Restaurants in Boston

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops Around Boston

A Kyoto-born coffee roaster with a downtown Boston outpost, Ogawa treats the morning latte as a quiet art project, right down to the foam. It's a coffee shop in the composed, Japanese sense: calm, precise, and a little more interesting than you expected. The house blend skews rich and fruity, the hojicha latte earthy and caramel-edged, and seasonal drinks like a smoked maple latte suggest the menu takes itself just seriously enough.

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops Around Boston

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops Around Boston

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops Around Boston

The name is short for Serene Republic of Venice, which tells you exactly how seriously the team takes the concept. This South End cicchetti bar and trattoria runs a Venetian Italian menu that shifts with the seasons without abandoning the dishes regulars would notice missing. The room skews sophisticated, the kind of place where the staff actually remembers you by the second visit and seems to mean it.

1. Eater The 38 Essential Restaurants in Boston

1. Eater The 38 Essential Restaurants in Boston

1. Eater The 38 Essential Restaurants in Boston

1. Eater The 38 Essential Restaurants in Boston

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops Around Boston

1. New England Ice Cream Shop of the Year · Yankee Food Awards

1. Eater Best Pop-Up

1. Eater The Best Bakeries Around Boston

The bakery tucked into the basement of this West Roxbury Middle Eastern grocery has been an old-school institution for Lebanese-style sweets, pies, and breads. Baklava, za'atar manakish, and spinach pies come out daily, and you can pair a pita sandwich with hummus or baba ganoush while stocking up on groceries and house-made kibbeh. The kind of market where the list of things to grab keeps growing the longer you browse.

1. Eater The Best Bakeries Around Boston

1. Eater Tourist Trap Restaurants That Are Actually Good in Boston

1. Eater The Best Bakeries Around Boston

The shop occupies a small residential corner in Brookline with room for maybe three customers inside, which explains the line of thirty-plus people stretching down the sidewalk on a Tuesday morning. This old-school neighborhood bakery turns out French and Italian classics alongside German specialties like soft pretzels and Vollkornbrot. A next-door coffee counter now handles grab-and-go for anyone with a low tolerance for waiting in the cold.

1. Eater The Best Bakeries Around Boston

1. Eater The Best Bakeries Around Boston

This is a narrow natural-wine bar near Downtown Crossing, the sort of place that introduced a lot of Boston to tinned fish and has been quietly smug about it since. The list is long and a little nerdy, but the bartenders will talk you through it without making you feel graded. Half bottles of nearly everything let you change your mind twice. It was a James Beard semifinalist for its wine program, and on Wednesdays there are fancy hot dogs.

1. Eater The Best Bars Around Boston
2. The Infatuation The Best Bars In Boston
3. James Beard Awards 2024 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Wine and Other Beverages Program

1. Eater The Best Bakeries Around Boston

1. Eater The Best Bakeries Around Boston

1. Eater The Best Bakeries Around Boston

1. Eater The Best Bakeries Around Boston

1. Eater The Best Bakeries Around Boston

1. Eater The Best Bakeries Around Boston

1. Eater Tourist Trap Restaurants That Are Actually Good in Boston

1. Eater Tourist Trap Restaurants That Are Actually Good in Boston

1. Eater Tourist Trap Restaurants That Are Actually Good in Boston

A sun-filled corner bakery in Jamaica Plain where the croissant menu changes often enough to keep regulars guessing. Third Cliff built its following at a farmers market cart before settling into its permanent spot, and the French pastry classics get unexpected company here, kimchi cheddar croissants alongside vegan cardamom morning buns. The espresso is taken seriously. Neighborhood coffee shop energy, pastry-destination ambitions.

1. Eater The Best Bakeries Around Boston

1. Boston Magazine #10 · Top 50 Restaurants in Boston
2. Boston Magazine 2025 · Best Jamaica Plain Restaurant · Best of Boston
3. James Beard Awards 2022 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: Northeast · Jeremy Kean and Philip Kruta

1. Bon Appétit America's Best New Restaurants
2. James Beard Awards 2023 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: Northeast · Yahya Noor

1. Boston Magazine #47 · Top 50 Restaurants in Boston
2. James Beard Awards 2022 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: Northeast · Tico Huynh

1. James Beard Awards 2023 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Restaurant

1. James Beard Awards 2023 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Chef · David Vargas
2. James Beard Awards 2022 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: Northeast · David Vargas

The broad blue doors open onto a jazz-age fantasia: gold-accented walls, live music, and soul food in a Seaport dining room that feels like a speakeasy that upgraded its permits. Restaurateur Nia Grace runs this dinner-and-show spot, where oxtail and grits share the menu with easy cocktails and the band is not background noise. Boston Magazine named it one of the city's top fifty restaurants, and gave it Best Dinner and a Show.

1. New England Best New Restaurants in Boston
2. Boston Magazine #38 · Top 50 Restaurants in Boston
3. Boston Magazine 2025 · Best Dinner and a Show · Best of Boston

1. James Beard Awards 2022 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Chef · Douglass Williams
2. James Beard Awards 2023 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: Northeast · Douglass Williams

1. James Beard Awards 2023 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: Northeast · Ellie Tiglao

1. James Beard Awards 2023 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: Northeast · Paul Callahan

1. Boston Magazine 2025 · Best Yemeni Restaurant · Best of Boston
2. Boston Magazine #33 · Top 50 Restaurants in Boston

1. Boston Magazine 2025 · Best New Bar · Best of Boston

1. Boston Magazine 2025 · Best Brunch · Best of Boston

1. Boston Magazine 2025 · Best New Bakery-Cafe · Best of Boston

1. Boston Magazine #45 · Top 50 Restaurants in Boston
2. Boston Magazine 2025 · Best Back Bay Restaurant · Best of Boston

1. James Beard Awards 2022 · Semifinalist · Emerging Chef · Chris Viaud

Duck on white tablecloths, no apology. Mistral is a full-service French-Mediterranean restaurant in the South End that has been around forever and still packs the room with business-casual regulars alongside tourist groups, both of whom tend to end up with the signature grilled thin-crust pizza in front of them regardless of what they planned to order. The bread is warm and crusty, the service is attentive, and the portions are substantial enough to quiet anyone who finds elegance unsatisfying.

1. Boston Magazine #40 · Top 50 Restaurants in Boston

1. Boston Magazine #30 · Top 50 Restaurants in Boston
2. Boston Magazine 2025 · Best Allston/Brighton Restaurant · Best of Boston

Nine seats, seventeen courses, and Johnny Cash on the speakers: No Relation is a sushi omakase tucked inside the South End's tropical bar Shore Leave, which you pass through to get here. The team behind it takes the fish seriously, mapping each source on the wall, while keeping the room loose enough that smiling-cat sake cups feel completely right. A caviar supplement exists for those who want to go further.

1. Boston Magazine #20 · Top 50 Restaurants in Boston

Parker House rolls with cultured butter arrive at the table early, which tells you something about where this New American restaurant's priorities lie. Will Gilson's Inman Square spot reworks New England staples with local ingredients and the occasional global detour, the kind of cooking that makes baked scrod feel like it had a bad publicist. Comfortable and neighborhood-rooted, it draws regulars who treat the bread course with appropriate seriousness.

1. Boston Magazine #37 · Top 50 Restaurants in Boston