RESTAURANTS
1.L’Espalier
Adjoining the luxury Mandarin Oriental Hotel, this is one of Boston’s top restaurants, in the heart of fashionable Back Bay. The award-winning, modern French cuisine emphasizes local ingredients, producing dishes such as butter-poached Maine lobster and cocoa-rubbed venison. Only expensive fixed-price and tasting menus are offered during dinner service (for further details see L’Espalier).
Elegant L’Espalier
2.Rialto
Charles Hotel, 1 Bennett St, Cambridge • 617 661 5050 • D only • $$$ Chef Jody Adams takes a luscious and delicately innovative approach to regional Italian cuisine. A green olive and balsamic vinegar sauce perfectly balances the unctuousness of her signature roasted marinated duck. The comfortable and soothing dining room is perfect for special occasions.
Rialto’s roast duck
3.Mamma Maria
3 North Square • 617 523 0077 • D only • $$ This up-scale eatery is located in a 19th-century row house and is loaded with old-world charm. Its daily changing menu specializes in classic Italian comfort cuisine with just a bit of a twist. For example, the clam pasta features not only famous Falmouth (Cape Cod) clams, but also toasted pine nuts, prosciutto, and sautéd green pea tendrils. Save room for a dessert, such as Nonna’s chocolate torte with espresso gelato.
4.Café ArtScience
650 Kendall St, Cambridge • 857 999 2193 • $$$ Patrick Kempbell, one of the country’s rising chefs, serves an ingredient-driven menu featuring innovative dishes made from local produce. Try the roasted pumpkin soup with goat’s cheese and huitlacoche (corn fungus) fritter. The restaurant indulges in some nifty science tricks, including drinks that have to be inhaled.
5.Trade
540 Atlantic Ave • 617 451 1234 • $$ Trade is the fine-dining anchor to the Greenway Park that links Downtown and the waterfront. Set in the Atlantic Wharf building, it makes use of Mediterranean flavors while remaining true to its New England roots. Both ends of that historic trade route shine in dishes such as braised short rib with Jerusalem artichoke, olives and orange. The light lunches are good value.
6.Toro
1704 Washington St • 617 536 4300 • $$$ Chef-owners Ken Oringer and Jamie Bissonnette team up for one of the city’s hardest-to-get-into restaurants. The South End hot spot serves a mix of modern and traditional tapas and upscale Latin fare in stylish environs, from a menu filled with trendy imported items and original dishes (for further details see Toro).
7.Menton
354 Congress St • 617 737 0099 • D only • $$$ Superchef Barbara Lynch’s elegant Fort Point dining room regularly receives national-level rave reviews. Diners can choose from one of two tasting menus, with offerings such as lobster and chamomile with fava, hazelnut, and Meyer lemon, or tart of foie gras enhanced with wild ramps, beetroot, and spring onion. All diners at a table are requested to choose the same menu.
Menton’s exquisite cuisine
8.Craigie On Main
853 Main St, Cambridge • 617 497 5511 • $$$ Award-winning chef Tony Maws, acclaimed for his French-inspired nose-to-tail approach to fine dining, presides over a bustling open kitchen facing the dining area, filled with an eclectic mix of diners. The menu changes daily, based on the locally sourced organic ingredients of the day. Head to the bar for its wildly popular gourmet burger.
9.Meritage
70 Rowes Wharf • 617 439 3995 • $$$ Chef Daniel Bruce showcases perfect pairings of food and wine at this elegant eatery in the Boston Harbor Hotel. Diners choose dishes from either a red/rosé wine menu or a white/sparkling wine menu, as part of his innovative vineyard-to-table philosophy.
10.Harvest
44 Brattle St, Cambridge • 617 868 2255 • $$$ Since the 1970s, this relaxed restaurant has been a leader in setting the direction of American cuisine. Chef Mary Dumont reinterprets New England classics, matching monkfish with artichokes and cockles, or filling ricotta gnocchi with butternut squash and sautéing them in pumpkin seed oil.
Bar at Harvest
Price Categories
For a three-course meal for one with half a bottle of wine (or equivalent meal), taxes, and extra charges.
$under $40$$$40–60$$$over $60
