Dining Well In the North End of Boston

by admin | August 4, 2017 8:24 am

BOSTON — The famed North End of this city is barely a third of a square mile in area. It is packed with more than 100 restaurants, wine bars and bakeries. It also contains Old North Church (now called Christ Church) and Paul Revere’s house. North End is Beantown’s oldest residential area, home to immigrants since the 1630s when the Pilgrims arrived. North End became the preferred neighborhood to a heavy population of Italian immigrants in the early 20^th century, a trend that has continued. Italian is spoken almost as often as English in the North End. You can close your eyes and imagine you are in Europe, though I don’t recommend it. The traffic is pretty heavy to be walking with eyes closed. Hanover Street, the main drag, is narrow and congested.

We traveled [1]to North End while on vacation in Boston and New England, in search of a delicious lunch. That is not hard to accomplish anywhere in Boston — one reason we love this city and show up most every summer. On this day we were searching for Italian cuisine, a rare treat for us.

On the advice of the hotel’s concierge, we stopped for lunch at a venerable but reasonably priced establishment. I suspect we could have stopped most anywhere on Hanover Street and had a great meal. But Ristorante Saraceno was perfect — relatively uncrowded, elegant table settings, a few tables filled with Italian families, an attentive waiter, and windows open to let in the cool breeze and patter of the North End.

The luxury of dining somewhere without air-conditioning, the windows open and not sweating profusely is a big reason we are in New England. We ate outside nearly every meal, luxuriating in an unseasonably cool week even for the North.

Two tables at the rear of the restaurant were occupied by middle-aged to elderly Italian families. A minor ruckus erupted about halfway through our linguini and shrimp entrée, accompanied by insalata caprese — tomato and mozzarella slices sandwiched together with basil, best drizzled in olive oil and balsamic vinegar. And washed down with a glass of red Italian wine. A fellow stood up, bellowing at another man in the far corner.

“No, Franco!” he said. “You can’t pick up our check. I won’t allow it.”

Franco was having none of it, hands clasped comfortably across his girth. He had already paid. The other man protested a bit more, complaining that Franco had just paid for a half-dozen meals, and “Can you believe that?” Then everybody hugged and cheek-kissed, and the paid-for party departed.

We enjoyed the exchange as we finished our plates, leaving nothing behind. The waiter appeared with three shot glasses containing a yellow, slushy drink. How nice, I thought. A bit of gelato to settle one’s digestion. Except it was actually limoncello, a delicious Italian liqueur. We sipped it cautiously.

I asked the waiter how we had become the recipients of the limoncello. He nodded in the direction of Franco.

“Franco. The boss. He sent it over.”

We dispatched Abbie, our beautiful daughter, over to say thank you and hug his neck.

“Mi bella,” he said. My dear. Old men will not turn down a hug from a pretty girl. We raised our glasses in thanks to Franco. He nodded and smiled, waved slightly.

I have no idea what Franco is the boss of — the restaurant, the North End, something else. We waddled away to stop in at Mike’s Pastry, a few doors down — “Home of the Cannoli.” The concierge had advised us to just crowd our way to the counter, since most of the folks milling around were simply observers. We did so and came away with a cannoli and cups of gelato.

It was time for a siesta, so we caught a cab back to the hotel. When in Rome, or the North End…

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