A guide on where to eat in Boston’s Seaport District for breakfast, lunch and dinner (plus some spots in the North End/Little Italy)! Plus a review of our food tour with Boston Secret Food Tours!

Last week while chatting with my cousin on the phone, she asked me, “What did y’all do in Boston?”

My answer: “Oh we ate a lot of good food…and….hm..what else did we do…”

If you followed along with my foodie posts on Instagram, you may have been wondering if we really were doing anything else besides eating. I promise we did! Today I’m sharing a recap of our food tour with Boston Secret Food Tours as well as talking about all the other goodness we ate. It’s a long one, so grab a cup of coffee (and your notebook to jot down places to go!) and settle in.

What you’ll find in this post:

• Some tips for planning before you go to Boston (including $ saving tips!)
• A review of our food tour with Secret Food Tours Boston
• Other places we ate delicious food (mostly in the Seaport District-broken up into breakfast, lunch, and dinner)

Planning Your Trip

First, it’s helpful to know what Boston is known for so you have an idea of what to put on your must-do list. I started my list in this $11 bullet journal and also set aside time each morning to write about everything we did each day. I love that I’ll be able to look back and remember all the fun little moments about my travels.

• Boston’s North End has a Little Italy that is (obviously) known for their incredible Italian food. There’s restaurants, bakeries, little family owned grocery shops and delis, and more. It’s very packed on the weekends but tons of fun.
• Seafood. Again, kind of obvious. You’ve got to get a lobster roll while you’re there! I’ll talk about the two places we tried below.
• If you’re a foodie and want to get a little bit of everything like we did, I highly suggest a food tour. It’s such a fun way to sample lots of good food while getting a little history in as you walk around from place to place. We did ours with Secret Food Tours Boston and you can read the whole review below.

Next, there’s a few ways to save money since you’re eating out a lot. Here’s what we did:

• Stopped at Whole Foods before we went to our Vacasa rental to pick up a few breakfast basics- bagels, cream cheese, almond milk, coffee, muesli and fruit. We tried to eat breakfast at the apartment before we would go out for the day so it’s one less meal we paid for.
• Split lunches. Especially if you’re eating in Little Italy, the portions are HUGE. Split your lunch or dinner if it’s possible (you know you’re not going to eat your leftovers the next day- you’re going to want to try something new!) This isn’t a money saving trick but another thing we did at restaurants was order two smaller things and split them so that we got to try everything we wanted.

Secret Food Tours Boston

Before we went to Boston, I didn’t even know food tours were a thing. You get to walk around and try everything a town is known for at all the best spots? Count me in.

We met up at Boston Public Market and our guide, Christina, was so fun and very knowledgeable about the history of the areas we walked. Our group was small- about ten of us- which was something else I appreciated (rather than trying to deal with a large group). In general, their tours are limited to small groups which is one of the reasons we chose this one.

We weren’t planning on walking the Freedom Trail, so I really enjoyed how we stopped at a few spots during the tour and learned some history along the way. We saw Paul Revere’s house and learned about buildings and what went on in the area so many years ago.

On our food tour we got to try amazing pizza, local honey, roasted nuts, the freshest lobster roll I’ve ever had, a classic Italian sandwich, a secret dish and fresh cannolis. If you look at the menu for a food tour (they do them all over the world!) and think, “there’s no way I could eat all that…”, don’t worry. You get adequate portions of each food (one slice of pizza or 1/3 of your standard sub sandwich, for example). I was very pleased by this because I thought for sure by the end I would be absolutely stuffed.

The tour lasted about 3.5 hours which we felt was just right! We even went back to one of the spots for a meal the next day. I loved that we did this food tour because I felt like we got to try everything worth trying and I didn’t “miss out” on anything Boston is known for.

Our food tour was by far one of my favorite things we did in Boston! You can read more about Boston Secret Food Tours here!

Where We Ate In Boston

Like I mentioned earlier, we picked up a few staples from Whole Foods to try to eat breakfast at our apartment most mornings, but we did go out our last morning and I wandered into some bakeries while I was there.

Coffee Shops in Seaport District

• Caffe Nero: There’s tons of these around Boston and it was recommended to me by an instructor at CorePower Yoga. I’m a little embarrassed to say I went here four times during our stay! Haha. They have a great aesthetic (pictured above) and really great cold brew coffee on tap.
• La Colombe always had tons of people in it and I always saw people on the street with their coffee. I didn’t get to try it but it looked good!
• Barrington Coffee Roasting Company is another Seaport area coffee shop with great reviews!

Where To Eat In Boston For Breakfast

• On our last morning we went to Boston Public Market for breakfast. It’s a farmer’s market filled with vendors so everything is sourced locally. You’ll often find the owner themselves behind the counter, so it’s neat to visit with them about their methods and history. The three of us chose to get a little bit
  of everything and share, which was such a great way to try a lot of things! Here’s what we had:
  • Green juice from Mother Juice
  • Breakfast sandwiches from Levend Bagelry (my husband’s favorite)
  • Ham and cheese breakfast croissant from Swiss Bakers
  • Strawberry donut from Union Square Donuts (my favorite from our breakfast)
  • A cinnamon sugar popover from The Popover Lady

This obviously wasn’t for breakfast but Boston Public Market is also where I had the best lobster roll: Red’s Best.

• Flour Bakery + Cafe: I had a blueberry cornmeal muffin here for an afternoon snack but this would be great for a quick breakfast, too! All their pastries are totally drool-worthy (pictured above).

• If you’re in Boston on a Sunday in May-October, you HAVE to go to SoWa market. This was another one of my favorite things that we did. They have one plaza that’s all farmer’s market booths, and another separate plaza that’s all vendors with cool things like art prints, jewelry, ceramics, etc. This is the perfect place to grab coffee or juice and a bite to eat while wandering around! We caught the legendary Cookie Monstah food truck here and shared a cookie and ice cream even though it was 11 a.m. and we hadn’t had lunch. When in Rome, right? (It was insanely good and so worth it. If you find this food truck, get yourself something here no matter what time it is. You won’t regret it.)

Where To Eat In Boston For Lunch (North End/Little Italy)

Where we went:

• We ventured into the North End for lunch on Sunday and Little Italy did not let us down. We ventured off the main road (this is a great tip for avoiding crowds) and had lunch at La Famiglia Giorgio’s. The portions are huge so we split the chicken/eggplant parmesan combo and it was insanely good. I would so come here again! We had lunch around 2 p.m. and had about a 15 minute wait (for four people), and by the time we left around 3 p.m., there was already a line down the street. Honestly if you’re eating in Little Italy, you can’t go wrong- everything is authentic! Think of it this way- if it wasn’t good, it wouldn’t still be in business.
• After lunch we headed to Mike’s Pastry which is known for their cannolis! The line was crazy long but it moves pretty quickly. It’s cash only and they have over 6K reviews on Yelp so they’re obviously doing something right!
• On our last day before we headed to the airport, we tracked down Roxy’s Gourmet Grilled Cheese food truck at the request of Andrew’s best friend. It won Food Truck Wars on Food Network and the guys were so happy with their sandwiches! Andrew got the green muenster and his best friend got the Muenster Club.

Where To Eat In Boston For Dinner (Seaport District)

Where we went:

• Our first night we met up with friends at Harpoon Brewery which was so much fun. The atmosphere was great but it’s very loud, so I don’t think I would recommend it for large groups. We did have to wait in line outside as they were at capacity on a Saturday around 5 p.m., but the line moved fairly quickly. By around 6:30 there was no line. They don’t serve food here so for dinner a bunch of us went to Yankee Lobster (Guy Fieri has been there!) The place has thousands of reviews on Google and Yelp, but I preferred the lobster roll we had at Boston Public Market a few days later. The lobster mac and cheese (pictured above) was so good and so worth it. Be prepared to wait if you’re here during peak hours.
• We were in Boston for a wedding so dinner the second night was on the Spirit of Boston cruise. They also do lunch and dinner cruises which would be such a fun experience!
• The very last night we were tired, and a classic burger and fries sounded great to us. We went to Shake Shack and then grabbed dessert at Ben & Jerry’s. Shake Shack had a watermelon basil lemonade that was crazy good!

Other good Seaport District dinner (or lunch!) spots:

• A friend recommended Sportello for a nicer romantic dinner
• The Barking Crab is another very popular seafood joint
• Legal Test Kitchen looked really good too!

WHEW. I think that’s everything! If you’re planning a trip to Boston, I hope this guide is helpful. If you take anything from this post or only have a short time in Boston, just make sure you get a lobster roll and some Italian food in the North End!

Happy traveling (and eating!)