South End Buttery
314 Shawmut Avenue, 617-482-1015
The Buttery is an organic bakery where the cupcakes are named after two local Labrador retrievers. Madison, the yellow Lab, is honored by the vanilla with vanilla frosting, and Simon, the chocolate Lab, by the chocolate cupcake with chocolate frosting .
28 Degrees
1 Appleton Street, 617-728-0728
www.28degrees-boston.com
28 Degrees is a bar that shimmers with flashy cocktails, a flashy circular bar and an even flashier party going on inside. There are Bellinis, pomegranate cosmos and Herradura tequila and Cointreau margaritas to be downed with a mixed crowd of Euro-students, chic-beyond-belief adults and neighborhood regulars. This bar alone fills Boston’s glamour quotient.
Toro
1704 Washington Street, 617-536-4300
Toro is a Barcelona-inspired tapas restaurant that is hopping. The interior is simple and modern with whitewashed brick walls and large mirrors. The high bar stools at the communal table are the best seats to take in the action as you drink sassafras mojitos and caipirinhas with caramelized limes.
Or pick a Spanish Rioja from the four-page wine list — the wine is served in giant tumblers.
Order the Pincho sampler (a chef’s selection of small bites) that the chef, Ken Oringer, a former winner of a James Beard Award, prepares using a flaming brick oven.
Everything at Toro tastes smoky, including the pan con tomate, a Spanish dish of grilled bread rubbed with tomato, garlic, olive oil and salt; and don’t pass up the foie gras with rhubarb and strawberries.
Flour Bakery + Café
12 Farnsworth Street, 617-338-4333
www.flourbakery.com
Flour Bakery & Cafe is a small sandwich and pastry shop that serves pain aux raisins ($2.50) for breakfast and made-to-order salads for lunch. It opened behind the just-expanded and just-reopened Boston Children’s Museum (300 Congress Street, 617-426-8855; www.bostonkids.org), known for its science playgrounds and hands-on activities.
1634 Beacon St
Brookline, MA 02445-2101
www.fireplacerest.com/home/
Drive a few miles north to Brookline, where you can thaw out by a stone hearth at the Fireplace, known for coziness and New England comfort food. The sweet-spiced squash bisque with Great Hill blue cheese and pumpkin seeds was a standout on my visit, but the tuna melt with Vermont Cheddar and the turkey club rolled in a Rhode Island johnnycake.
Check schedules for weekly live music and winter fireside chats!
L. A. Burdick @ Harvard Square Cafe
52-D Brattle Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Phone: 617-491-4340
www.burdickchocolate.com
L. A. Burdick, a cafe and chocolate shop on the other side of Harvard Square. Choose from dark, milk or white chocolate, and if you dare risk overdosing, try one of Burdick’s famous chocolate mice on the side.
Charlie’s Sandwich Shoppe
429 Columbus Avenue, 617-536-7669
This diner serves breakfast until 2:30 in the afternoon. You can twirl on stools at the Formica counter and eat fried eggs and bacon, fat English muffins and heaping stacks of blueberry pancakes — with Boston cream pie for dessert.
Orinoco Kitchen
477 Shawmut Avenue, 617-369-7075
www.orinocokitchen.com
A cozy Venezuelan restaurant, the tiny, tin-ceilinged room is packed with the South End’s beautiful people listening to Nuevo Latino music and drinking plenty of wine — malbec from Argentina, carmenères from Chile — as they wait for tables.
There isn’t a lobster roll in sight! The chef is Carlos Rodríquez, and his hearty food is not for calorie accountants. Order the arepas (grilled corn muffins stuffed with shredded meats and cheeses), or the empanadas (dough filled with beef, plantains and cheese).
The line is outside the door every night around 6, but you can skip the wait if you eat later; Orinoco serves until 11 p.m. on Fridays.
Uni
Eliot Hotel, 370 Commonwealth Avenue, 617-536-7200
The city is thick with restaurants that say they serve flopping-fresh seafood, but few are brave enough to dispense with the plastic bibs and drawn butter.
In its low-slung confines, the chef Ken Oringer serves sublime fish with inventive accompaniments that actually work. Peppery onion seeds and Amarillo vinaigrette cut the richness of sea urchin and hamachi ($16); the Chinese black beans on wild king salmon come off like caviar ($14). No reservations, and no humdrum soy sauce either.
