Another bread to try, especially if you need wine/beer in the same run…Bread Obsession at Berman’s in Lexington. Bread gets delivered Thurs-Sat, which included bagels on Thurs only (although check that). Very tasty bread. They have a freezer in back with Coop’s and JP Lick’s ice cream as well. And friendly wine/beer advice if you need it. You could do a Trader Joe’s/MA France/Berman’s run (all on Mass Ave, which is the great avenue that runs through Boston, all the way out to the 'burbs). There’s also a Great Harvest Bread right up the street from those 2 shops.
And Dave’s Fresh Pasta has Red’s Fresh for sale on Thursdays and Fridays.
Add City Liquors (616 Cambridge St Cambridge, MA 02141), next to New Deal Fish market in East Cambridge to your list of Liquor stores. I went in there for the first time today. Fantastic selection of beer and other spirits in a clean, well organized store. Spot checking bottles of tequila, scotch and mezcal I buy and each had the cheapest price I have found in the area. When going to New Deal, Courthouse or Mayflower you can kill two birds with one stone.
Somerville Winter Farmer’s Market at the Arts at the Armory on Highland Avenue, Somerville - http://www.somwintermarket.org/
So we are now living for three weeks in our house in Watertown and the first three weeks at work went from 0 to 100 in just the first day and so far we had much less time to dive deep into the food scene of Boston than we originally expected.
Overall the restaurant scene seems to be quite good. but overall after eating in very few restaurants but reading hundreds of menus it seems that the menus are much more meat heavy than we are used to and could definitely used a bit more creativity and unusual combination of flavors. Good vegetable heavy cooking seems not to be the strength of Boston (and I don’t think that Red Lentil as the only purely vegetarian restaurant we visited was also the worst of all so far is no coincidence).
So far the big let down is more the shops to buy ingredients. After all the comments here and CH we came with very low expectations but unfortunately not even those were rmet. Buying good, fresh produce is just painful - the quality and variety at WholeFoods, Russo’s or other places is really lacking. Especially Russo’s was a bit underwhelming after all the positive comments here - yes, it is one of the better places so far but still surprisingly limited quality and variety. We also went to the Farmer’s Market in Waltham which was very small and had too much ready to eat stuff but very little actual produce (3 sellers).
Another surprisingly complicated thing to buy is good quality meat. Yes, there are some speciality butcher but you also need some decent places during the week to buy some meat for dinner. WholeFoods meat selection is pathetic in Newton (we like their 1-5 grade levels for the origin of their meat and it is telling that nearly everything in their shop is grade 1 which is a small step (if at all) above CAFO meat.) Are there so few serious farms in this area which sell their meat to WholeFoods or other supermarkets? We had problems to buy simple stuff like fresh duck breast or duck legs, stuff we normally find in a regular supermarket
Today we went for the first time to some of the Armenian markets close by in Watertown but unfortunately very limited selection (and all three shops have very big overlap). We went to Arax, Sevan and Massis - did we miss any shop with a different selection ? even simple things like for example a decent selection of Ajvar wasn’t available in any of these shops.
Where do people buy good meat (for example grass fed beef) during the week when there is no time to go to places like MF Dulock ?
If Russo’s and Arax are lacking in variety for you, you are not going to like it here. Go to MF Dulock on the weekend.
I had a hard adjustment moving here in 1989 from the SF Bay area. It is so much better now than then. I do understand your pain, and hope that when our brief summer produce season comes full speed after a hard late winter freeze/fairly mild winter before that, you’ll see more options. There are some great NE cheeses, breads, charcuterie.
Focusing on what you can get here, as opposed to what you can’t get compared to San Diego, will be helpful for you in the long run.
It’s New England. It’s not Southern California. I know you know that, but adjusting to what is here as opposed to not what is here,…well. I lived in the SF Bay area for 10 years and in Spain for two years. I went to LA once and was stunned by the produce difference, even though what was available in SF Bay area then was extraordinary, compared to most of the country. I was still glad to get back to Palo Alto. I am still glad to live in Boston.
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Oh, wanted to respond to the duck issue.
I love duck and I’ve asked around for a few years. Although duck eggs are available from several local-ish farms, it’s been explained to me by both the farm stand people at farmers markets and at the Boston Public Market, that the issue is that there is no local-ish place to slaughter ducks and remove the feathers, which are much more difficult to remove than from chickens. More often you can find duck around the winter holidays at Whole Foods, and perhaps at Wegman (I’ve only been to the one in Burlington when I was at the mall there for other reasons). You can get rendered duck fat at Savenor, Formaggio, etc. because they purchase it from elsewhere.
You can find non local duck at Savenor on Beacon Hill, Boston, and in Cambridge. Sometimes “fresh” more often frozen. Also at Formaggio Kitchen in the South End, Boston, and in Cambridge. Both of which have amazing cheese selections and other gourmet items.
The cheese so far is very good. Where do you get good charcuterie on a day to day basis (I know there are speciality shops on the weekend but my general problem is the stuff we buy during the week at WF, supermarkets etc) ?And where do you get good darker true whole wheat or sourdough bread, so far WF, When pigs fly, Iggy and Russo were OK but not what we were looking for ?
And re: produce - variety is one thing which I didn’t expect to be even near Southern California (but hoped for a bit more, simple things like for examaple chervil, thai eggplants, shiitake etc recently were just difficult to find) but in particular the quality of what is available at Russo and WF is underwhelming.
And yes, Arax was completely underwhelming for their Middle Eastern stuff.
And yes, focusing on what you can get is one thing (and we are not only comparing to SD) but if you have problems to find basic things in good quality you are using normally very regularly it is tough to adapt.
well, I feel for you, and I know it is tough to adapt. And it’s not even winter yet.
Formaggio, Russo do have great charcuterie. The Daniele outlet at the Boston Public Market, we like. Though I don’t know San Diego standards (never been, and believe it or not, I don’t even want to visit there). Ask for tastes. Daniele at BPM has tastings available, as do the cheese stands there. MF Dulock makes house sausage and charcuterie.
We love Capone Foods in Somerville, but then, he’s in our neighborhood. He’s Argentine and imports lots of great stuff from Spain and Italy, makes his own pasta and empanadas, and also sells great USA products, including Daniele. He also makes his own ricotta and mozzarella, which we like. Not open Sunday. Yeah, you have to drive … The ready made products in Watertown vary by shop to shop, product by product.
If you like vegetables, as we do very much, restaurants Sarma and Oleana, in Cambridge and Somerville, but yes, you will have to drive from Watertown.
I think you’ve already logged in reports that Iggys and Clear flour bakery (Brookline) are great. Maybe not by your SD standards, but my husband and I love them both. Iggy’s has their location in Cambridge where you can try out some of their products and buy them all…some Whole Foods locations carry Iggys as do some area farmers markets (we get their breads at our neighborhood Union Sq Market in Somerville every Saturday). Other locations, like some local wine stores, carry Iggys and Clear Flour breads.
I know moving and dislocation is difficult. It takes a long time.
Maybe Hamburg has better choices.
I was only there once, when I was doing my art history dissertation research and using a train pass. I loved the museums there, which were extraordinary, I thought, for the location.
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Wegman’s sells rendered duck fat, too. I think it’s D’Artagnan but don’t hold me to that.
The restaurant and market suggestions presented in this thread are the best that this area has to offer. The OP may want to start a home garden - or start thinking about his next career move.
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I think that every store in the area that sells duck fat got it from D’Artagnan. I did see some fish stock at Reds at the Boston Public Market last Sunday. I suspect they made it themselves.
Cape Ann Fresh Catch now sells fish stock, fish soup, fishcakes, and other seafood items it makes in its own facility, both to its CSF shareholders, and at the farmer’s markets it goes to. All the sites are listed on its website.
I am hoping we can commit to the CSF Cape Ann the next season…I’m on their email list,
CAFC doesn’t advertise the fact, but you don’t have to commit to multiple dates. You can order online up to the day before the day of the pick-up most convenient for you, with no obligation to order more often. This is what I’ve done since they dropped the never-well-subscribed-to location for which I was the distribution volunteer. I noticed at the time that there were a lot of “one-off”
people and this is what they told me they do.
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thanks. good to know.
So the restaurants are too meat heavy, but there aren’t enough markets to buy meat for the amount you ratchet home? I’d suggest joining MF Dulock’s meat club and that should be more than sufficient keep you supplied for the entire week.
There are plenty of restaurants in the area that do a great job with veg dishes and menus, which ironically wasn’t one of the specific requests on your initial encyclopedic restaurant inquiry thread. As you pointed out you have not had much time to explore, so hopefully you get some more hits when working through the copious suggestions a bit further.
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In theory, Clear Flour in Brookline will have more of what you’re looking for in terms of breads. They sell at the Brookline Farmer’s Market on Thursdays and one in Cambridge as well. I don’t cook much meat at home, but both River Rock Farm and Stillman’s sell at the BFM and I know people have been very happy with their offerings. There are also vendors that selling fresh herbs, which might be to your liking.
I’m sure it’s a big change with new state/job/home, so maybe try and focus on one or two things at a time and getting settled. Take a deep breath before declaring that what you’re finding is not up to snuff. You have two lists full of the best of Boston and beyond.
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We don’t eat much meat and most of the time only as a “flavoring” that’s why we prefer to buy little but high quality meat. And a meat club would require freezing meat which we never do as it deminishes quality. We prefer, if possible, to buy fresh meat on the day we use it.
So which ones are the restaurants in our area with great vegetable dishes ?
And overall most suggestions seem to imply that there are always certain specialized shops somewhere in Boston for most things but is everybody always traveling through Boston multiple times a week to shop ? Or to say it differently, the disappointment so far is that before even an average neighborhood supermarket had a good selection of produce and good quality meat and so you could easily buy everything multiple times fresh throughout the week whereas now you can only get decent stuff if you plan everything to buy on the weekend and travel all over Boston.
We freeze stuff. If you want to buy groceries daily, you have to travel around a lot, or else lower your standards and pick a convenient supermarket. Those of us in the more distant suburbs get by with chain supermarkets. I am happy with Wegman’s, Hannaford, Trader Joe’s, and Market Basket for almost all my shopping, with the occasional trip to the farmer’s market July-Oct. Even if I could afford the prices at specialty markets, the time, fuel (and pollution) costs, and parking hassles would keep me away from most of them.
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