While I am originally from the Boston area (Attleboro, about 40 minutes south to be exact) and used to spend a lot of time in the back bay area. However I have not been back for about 10 or 11 years and I know a lot may have changed. So I'm calling out to Boston local PAers for some help.
Looking for good food that is reasonably priced within around 4 or 5 blocks of the convention center. Hotel food is ALWAYS horribly over priced, so I'm hoping that some decent but affordable offerings get shared.
If a lot get shared I'll likely edit this first post to include food types, along with their approx. distance from the convention center. I'm sure there will be a lot of thanks from us out-of-towners.
Any type of Asian food, American, not too picky about type. Just concerned with reasonable cost and good taste. My experience with hotel food in Seattle was enough to make me stabby. The food wasn't great and pretty much everything that I would eat on the menu was $18+. Add in a soda and tip, and my meals were running over $20. Since the company I was working for was funding that trip I didn't care. This trip is coming from my own pocket, so I'm hoping to be a bit more frugal.
Honestly, I wouldn't be too worried. If you want specific food recs I'd recommend checking out Yelp or similar sites, but if your basic plan is to just find food that's better and cheaper than hotel food, all you have to do is leave your hotel and walk around for a few minutes.
I could care less about drinks, tbh. My former boss pumped me full of free drinks at PAX 08 and got me to suffer from a nasty case of alcohol poisoning. Haven't drank since then.
My biggest concern is local places that people can recommend from experience. I'll definitely look more into Yelp as it has a decent listing there. If there are any other places that can be recommended that would be good. As I said in the initial post, if there are enough suggestions I'll turn edit the first post and make a running list for all PAX East people to use.
Theres actually quite a lot of food places on the corner of mass ave and boylston. Theres Spikes hot dogs, some asian food places, and a few other places on boylston. If you go down mass ave a bit, you can find all sorts of things. McDonalds, this indian food place, theres a buffet of some sort, a boloco. I can't remember everything, but there's quite a bit of food around the area, and most of the time its reasonably priced since there are so many college students here :P
I really meant the map and a corresponding list of personally recommended places. Should've made that more clear >< But I guess that's what happens when I try to post at 1 AM...
Well, I do know I'll be trying to hit UBurger since Food Network rated it one of the top 10 best burgers in the country. Not really close by, I'd bet you could jump a bus to get there fairly easily if some of these maps are accurate.
My favorite way to save money at cons is to visit a grocery store nearby on the first day and buy up a whole bunch of trail mix, v8, fruit, and other things that won't perish too quickly so I can get a healthy breakfast or a quick lunch if I don't want to go out. There seems to be a Trader Joe's in the area, so that works out pretty well.
The one thing I want to try and find in downtown Boston, if I can, is a nice Korean place. There seems to be one or two on that map, but I'm not quite sure...
There is the Food Court in the Prudential Center, which is always cheap. Than of course there are Mc Donalds and Dunkin Donuts everywhere in boston. There used to but a pretty good Sushi bar near the Marriott in the Prudential Center. The last time I was there, the hotel was getting renavated so it wasn't open, but that will be a year since, so I am hoping it'll be open again. And than if you are will to go the extra way, you can hop on the green line to Park Street, than take the red line to Porter. In the Porter Exchange there is a fabulous selection of dinings. There is sushi, ramen, and a rice bowl and noodle shop. And 2 other places I have never actually eaten at.
My favorite way to save money at cons is to visit a grocery store nearby on the first day and buy up a whole bunch of trail mix, v8, fruit, and other things that won't perish too quickly so I can get a healthy breakfast or a quick lunch if I don't want to go out. There seems to be a Trader Joe's in the area, so that works out pretty well.
The one thing I want to try and find in downtown Boston, if I can, is a nice Korean place. There seems to be one or two on that map, but I'm not quite sure...
My favorite way to save money at cons is to visit a grocery store nearby on the first day and buy up a whole bunch of trail mix, v8, fruit, and other things that won't perish too quickly so I can get a healthy breakfast or a quick lunch if I don't want to go out. There seems to be a Trader Joe's in the area, so that works out pretty well.
The one thing I want to try and find in downtown Boston, if I can, is a nice Korean place. There seems to be one or two on that map, but I'm not quite sure...
Korean would be really good as I've only ever eaten homemade (by following a recipe) or premade stuff.
As crazy as this sounds, I'd also like some really good mexican/tex-mex if possible too. Taco Del Mar was SOOOOOOOOOOOOO good in Seattle and I've been drooling for something similar ever since. Taco Bell doesn't hit the spot XD
As crazy as this sounds, I'd also like some really good mexican/tex-mex if possible too. Taco Del Mar was SOOOOOOOOOOOOO good in Seattle and I've been drooling for something similar ever since. Taco Bell doesn't hit the spot XD
There's a place called Cactus Club on Boylston St. that has decent tex mex near the convention center. There's also a great place near Boston Common called Fajitas and Ritas, but that's a bit harder to find.
La Verdad is on Lansdowne St. right across from Fenway Park. I've been there once and it was pretty good.
there used to be another place near Fenway, but its not there due to a fire last year.
My favorite way to save money at cons is to visit a grocery store nearby on the first day and buy up a whole bunch of trail mix, v8, fruit, and other things that won't perish too quickly so I can get a healthy breakfast or a quick lunch if I don't want to go out. There seems to be a Trader Joe's in the area, so that works out pretty well.
The one thing I want to try and find in downtown Boston, if I can, is a nice Korean place. There seems to be one or two on that map, but I'm not quite sure...
Korean would be really good as I've only ever eaten homemade (by following a recipe) or premade stuff.
As crazy as this sounds, I'd also like some really good mexican/tex-mex if possible too. Taco Del Mar was SOOOOOOOOOOOOO good in Seattle and I've been drooling for something similar ever since. Taco Bell doesn't hit the spot XD
It's really tough to get good Mexican food anywhere in the U.S. that isn't the west coast or the southwest.
That being said, Anna's Taqueria is a great San Francisco-style burrito joint that has a whole bunch of locations around Boston.
An earlier poster was right when they said all you have to do is go outside and walk to find a variety of restaurants - pubs, chains, fast food. Boylston St. and Newbury St. are lined with food options.
I will list a few of my favorites around the Hynes / Prudential area. I worked in the Prudential Center, and frequented all of these. They are all reasonably priced, without being fast food / junk food. Also, they all have vegetarian and non-vegetarian options. Check their websites for more details.
Cafe Jaffa
48 Gloucester Street
Middle Eastern - great falafel wraps.
Spike's Junkyard Dog
1076 Boylston Street
Awesome hot dogs and burgers. Veggie dogs and burgers too.
Boloco
247 Newbury Street and 137 Massachusetts Ave
Wraps, burritos, and smoothies with your choice of vitamin packs: Vitality, Energy, Brain booster, etc - good for long days of con walking!
Recommended: the teriyaki tofu wrap
B.Good
131 Dartmouth Street
Good-quality burgers and fries, everything fresh and not frozen. They make their own veggie burgers and baked fries.
Paradise Bakery (cookies)
800 Boylston St
This is right in the Prudential food court. Pretty unremarkble sandwiches and soup. But the cookies. The awesome cookies. You will want to get half a dozen or a dozen, and share.
Pizzeria Regina
800 Boylston St
Also right in the Prudential food court. Great pizza, sold in slices or whole pizzas.
Teavana
800 Bolston St
In the Prudential Center, in the hall leading toward the Marriot / Copley Place.
Lots of teas, some organic. Great for non-coffee people.
Tealuxe
108 Newbury St
Yes, another place with a pun on 'Tea'! MANY kinds of tea, plus delicious sandwiches / salads / cakes. Great breakfast sandwiches, and I think they're served all day. If you're walking down Newbury St. and want a light lunch plus a personal-size pot of tea, plus a little hourglass to tell you when it's ready to drink, this is perfect.
Snappy Sushi
144 Newbury St
Standard sushi plus some creative rolls. They use brown rice.
Upper Crust Pizza
222 Newbury St
Excellent pizza, slices or whole. Fresh sauce, not loaded down with cheese. Amazing crust. Sit-down area is kind of small so you might have to get it to go.
Fluevog
302 Newbury St
Okay, this is not a restaurant but a shoe store. If you have even a passing interest in shoes, go here. Shoes for men / women / unisex. Really fun and creative shoes that are also very high quality and extremely comfortable.
Legal Seafood
800 Boylston St
In the Prudential Center near the exit to Boylston St.
If you like seafood, go here. They also have sandwiches / smaller portions for lunch.
California Pizza Kitchen
800 Boylston St
In the Prudential Center, in the hall leading toward the Marriott / Copley Place.
THE dinner place for anyone working late in Prudential center. Personal size pizzas, standard or unique. If you're getting pizzas to go, I recommend that you call and place your order in advance of walking over. Take-out gets very busy.
Many thanks Elektra. The main reason I asked, and would like to see a fair amount of favorite places shared, is so that those of us smart enough to use the forums can begin planning ahead. We know that places are going to be rather packed, so it made sense to me to know what options are around so that if one place is a bit too packed, another option should be fairly close by and just as good.
Well, being familiar with Boston I was gonna post some good places to go for eats..but Elektra beat me to the punch a tad. I'll throw in a few of my favorites as well I suppose.
Typhoon
725 BOYLSTON STREET
BOSTON'S BACK BAY
MASSACHUSETTS 02116
This place has pretty decent sushi and Maki rolls. Also an assortment of other Asian (inspired) dishes. Notable because during the day its a fairly casual place, but at night becomes a cub of sorts. Also...They fucking deliver. Right off Copley Station
Dick's Last Resort
Faneuil Hall
Are you a dick? Do you enjoy heckling and being heckled? Can you deal with meh food to have a good time with beer and friends? Then this is the place for you! Food is served is pails ( some of it anyway )! The wait staff is encouraged to belittle and insult you at every opportunity, so please dont go for steller service.
Clio / Uni
Back Bay
370 Commonwealth Ave
Boston, MA 02215
Up scale and pricy. Clio is the main resturant, with Uni inside. Uni is a tiny spot with crazy good ( and expensive ) sushi and sashimi, no maki rolls. Realistical a tad overpriced, but the food is great. Clio is great. Not much else to say..hard to do a write up on upscale food that maybe 6 people will try
Muqueca
Inman Square
1093 Cambridge St
Cambridge, MA 02139
My wife is from Curitiba, Brazil and swears by this place. I dont think it gets a better review. Try the Tripe Stew imho ( Latin food )
Although I've only been to the one over in Cambridge, Bukowski's is a great beer-snob bar. Get ready for sticker-shock on some of them if you're not used to Boston prices, though.
I wrote a post on the boards about Boston food already ...
Fine Dining
No 9 Park
L'Espalier
Eastern Standard
Hungry Mother
Mistral
Steakhouse/Fine Dining:
KO Prime
Ruth's Chris
Mooo
Abe & Louies
Mortons
Japanese
O Ya
Oishii
--- these two are in their own class
Fugakyu
Ginza (in chinatown they are open til 3:30am on weekends)
Bluefin (cheap but still pretty good)
Seafood
Oceanaire
Clio
Turner Fisheries
Thai
Thaitation (aka the old Brown Sugar in Fenway)
Brown Sugar
Mexican:
Tu Y Yo (real mexican, very good)
Casa Romero (again, no so tex-mexy)
Tapas:
Toro
Tasca
Quick Stuff
Spikes Junkyard Dogs
Anna's
Boca Grande
Chinatown has plenty of good vietnamese/chinese/etc places to eat. it's hard to go wrong by just picking one.
North End has plenty of good italian places to eat. it's hard to go wrong by just picking one.
If you like beer -
Sunset Bar + Grill is the mecca for beer drinkers in the Boston area.
Boston Beerworks is a decent local brewery/has ok food.
arsonisfun on
I am IRCs resident nerdbro and member of the PokeCrawl planning committee.
Red B/Gold Professor
[15:53] <+juju-work> ArsonIsFun is one of the best people I know.
It might be a bit more of a walk than some would like, but the best cheap food is across the Mass Ave bridge, at MIT. The food trucks there consistently turn out some of the best, quick food for extremely reasonable prices.
It might be a bit more of a walk than some would like, but the best cheap food is across the Mass Ave bridge, at MIT. The food trucks there consistently turn out some of the best, quick food for extremely reasonable prices.
Cheap food ideas are a good thought -
Chinatown - $4.75 lunch from New Jumbo Seafood or a $3 vietnamese sandwich or protein + rice/noodles from New Saigon/163
Downtown Crossing - Al Capone's, home of the 20in sandwich. $8 gets you two meals.
arsonisfun on
I am IRCs resident nerdbro and member of the PokeCrawl planning committee.
Red B/Gold Professor
[15:53] <+juju-work> ArsonIsFun is one of the best people I know.
Holy CRAP does nothing exist to the east of the Prudential or something? If you're willing to go as far as Faneuil Hall then consider going down Huntington Ave a few blocks. In order of what you'd come across:
Pepperocini Italian Cafe
Betty's Wok and Noodle
Quiznos
Burger King
Unos Bar and Grill
Boston House of Pizza
Conor Lorkin's Grill and Tap
Boloco
Wendy's
Au Bon Pain
Qdoba
University House of Pizza
(Bit of a dry spell going through Wentworth and Mass Art campuses)
Il Mondo - IF you like pizza, go here. It's about ten minutes on the T from the convention center, and it is the best slice you will ever have. Don't know what Buffalo chicken pizza tastes like? Think you know what it's supposed to taste like? You don't know, you haven't eaten Il Mondo.
After that in Bringham circle, there's about ten other restaraunts spanning pizza, indian, chinese, and traditional Mexican (the real stuff) not to mention JP Licks and a Stop and Shop right there too.
Bringham circle, the last place here, is five stops away from the Prudential on the E line. Access to the T is in the building by the east Huntington Ave entrance, and if you grab a Charlie card you can get there and back for $2.40 and about 20 minutes round trip (add on however long you spend on actually getting food.) Also, you can walk. Green line stops aren't that far apart.
It's Boston - finding good food is not the biggest challenge in the world. Regarding the food trucks suggestion, I don't believe the food trucks operate on the weekend-proper (Saturday and Sunday).
I'm personally fond of Spike's Junkyard Dogs, Trident Booksellers and Café, the Pour House, and Super 88 (which is a smidgen further away but has some of the best Asian food you will ever, ever, ever, ever find in this hemisphere). If you pick a street nearby and walk down it for more than three blocks, you're basically guaranteed to find a decent/interesting place to eat.
EDIT: Oh, and if anybody finds their way up to Harvard Square, if you can't find a good place to eat, you're not looking hard enough. The Garage has a substantial food court with a pizza kitchen, a taqueria, a Vietnamese restaurant, and a burger joint, among others. I've tried the last three on that list, and I've found them all excellent. There's also Veggie Planet, an underground vegetarian place next to a music club, and Berryline, phenomenal frozen yogurt shop. Bartley's is one of those "best burger in the country"-type places, it's not bad, but terribly expensive.
It's Boston - finding good food is not the biggest challenge in the world. Regarding the food trucks suggestion, I don't believe the food trucks operate on the weekend-proper (Saturday and Sunday).
I'm personally fond of Spike's Junkyard Dogs, Trident Booksellers and Café, the Pour House, and Super 88 (which is a smidgen further away but has some of the best Asian food you will ever, ever, ever, ever find in this hemisphere). If you pick a street nearby and walk down it for more than three blocks, you're basically guaranteed to find a decent/interesting place to eat.
EDIT: Oh, and if anybody finds their way up to Harvard Square, if you can't find a good place to eat, you're not looking hard enough. The Garage has a substantial food court with a pizza kitchen, a taqueria, a Vietnamese restaurant, and a burger joint, among others. I've tried the last three on that list, and I've found them all excellent. There's also Veggie Planet, an underground vegetarian place next to a music club, and Berryline, phenomenal frozen yogurt shop. Bartley's is one of those "best burger in the country"-type places, it's not bad, but terribly expensive.
The entire purpose of the post was to get some feedback from locals about good places to eat that are within a few blocks of the convention center. It may not make sense to everyone, but I'm fairly certain that there will be hundred, if not thousands like me that need to be able to go directly to somewhere to quickly eat because they are busy. In Seattle, I was busy from 8am through around 2am daily between the convention and various industry events thrown by a number of companies. Because of this, and my complete lack of ignorance of various food solutions nearby, I ended up relying mostly on small portions of appetizers at these functions. Avoiding that would be nice
In any case, all the suggestions have been greatly appreciated and I hope they continue to flow. Yelp is proving to be useful as well, which was suggested in here.
There's a noodle place nearby on Hereford called Men Tei - freakishly small (like, hole-in-the-wall small), but I'm told the food is good and the service is quick. Alternately, I went to Anime Boston this past fall, and although the nearby food court was crowded, it certainly wasn't unmanageable. That said, I think Anime Boston was a smidgen on the smaller side.
Posts
There's also the food court in the Pru (just down the street from Hynes).
I'm not sure what we're talking about for "good" food though.
What type of food are you looking for in particular?
man that's the only good part about the midwest I can get a 20 oz. draft beer for $2
I miss VA Beach for this very reason. Beer is way too expensive in Boston, especially for a micro-brew/craft beer snob like me.
East Coast Correspondent for 2Old2Play.com
My biggest concern is local places that people can recommend from experience. I'll definitely look more into Yelp as it has a decent listing there. If there are any other places that can be recommended that would be good. As I said in the initial post, if there are enough suggestions I'll turn edit the first post and make a running list for all PAX East people to use.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=food&sll=42.347127,-71.083839&sspn=0.005218,0.009645&ie=UTF8&radius=0.25&rq=1&ev=zi&hq=food&hnear=&ll=42.347618,-71.083839&spn=0.005218,0.009645&z=17&iwloc=lyrftr:lmq:9:food,9613896984273275042,42.347103,-71.085598
the 'teh' is silent: eljay ~ * ~ twitter ~ * ~ ravelry ~ * ~ last.fm
The one thing I want to try and find in downtown Boston, if I can, is a nice Korean place. There seems to be one or two on that map, but I'm not quite sure...
Hope this helps.
Visit the Super 88 food court in Allston.
Korean would be really good as I've only ever eaten homemade (by following a recipe) or premade stuff.
As crazy as this sounds, I'd also like some really good mexican/tex-mex if possible too. Taco Del Mar was SOOOOOOOOOOOOO good in Seattle and I've been drooling for something similar ever since. Taco Bell doesn't hit the spot XD
There's a place called Cactus Club on Boylston St. that has decent tex mex near the convention center. There's also a great place near Boston Common called Fajitas and Ritas, but that's a bit harder to find.
there used to be another place near Fenway, but its not there due to a fire last year.
It's really tough to get good Mexican food anywhere in the U.S. that isn't the west coast or the southwest.
That being said, Anna's Taqueria is a great San Francisco-style burrito joint that has a whole bunch of locations around Boston.
I will list a few of my favorites around the Hynes / Prudential area. I worked in the Prudential Center, and frequented all of these. They are all reasonably priced, without being fast food / junk food. Also, they all have vegetarian and non-vegetarian options. Check their websites for more details.
Cafe Jaffa
48 Gloucester Street
Middle Eastern - great falafel wraps.
Spike's Junkyard Dog
1076 Boylston Street
Awesome hot dogs and burgers. Veggie dogs and burgers too.
Boloco
247 Newbury Street and 137 Massachusetts Ave
Wraps, burritos, and smoothies with your choice of vitamin packs: Vitality, Energy, Brain booster, etc - good for long days of con walking!
Recommended: the teriyaki tofu wrap
B.Good
131 Dartmouth Street
Good-quality burgers and fries, everything fresh and not frozen. They make their own veggie burgers and baked fries.
Paradise Bakery (cookies)
800 Boylston St
This is right in the Prudential food court. Pretty unremarkble sandwiches and soup. But the cookies. The awesome cookies. You will want to get half a dozen or a dozen, and share.
Pizzeria Regina
800 Boylston St
Also right in the Prudential food court. Great pizza, sold in slices or whole pizzas.
Teavana
800 Bolston St
In the Prudential Center, in the hall leading toward the Marriot / Copley Place.
Lots of teas, some organic. Great for non-coffee people.
Tealuxe
108 Newbury St
Yes, another place with a pun on 'Tea'! MANY kinds of tea, plus delicious sandwiches / salads / cakes. Great breakfast sandwiches, and I think they're served all day. If you're walking down Newbury St. and want a light lunch plus a personal-size pot of tea, plus a little hourglass to tell you when it's ready to drink, this is perfect.
Snappy Sushi
144 Newbury St
Standard sushi plus some creative rolls. They use brown rice.
Upper Crust Pizza
222 Newbury St
Excellent pizza, slices or whole. Fresh sauce, not loaded down with cheese. Amazing crust. Sit-down area is kind of small so you might have to get it to go.
Fluevog
302 Newbury St
Okay, this is not a restaurant but a shoe store. If you have even a passing interest in shoes, go here. Shoes for men / women / unisex. Really fun and creative shoes that are also very high quality and extremely comfortable.
Legal Seafood
800 Boylston St
In the Prudential Center near the exit to Boylston St.
If you like seafood, go here. They also have sandwiches / smaller portions for lunch.
California Pizza Kitchen
800 Boylston St
In the Prudential Center, in the hall leading toward the Marriott / Copley Place.
THE dinner place for anyone working late in Prudential center. Personal size pizzas, standard or unique. If you're getting pizzas to go, I recommend that you call and place your order in advance of walking over. Take-out gets very busy.
Organizer of the Post-PAX Party. You should come!
Satellite Theater for life!
Typhoon
725 BOYLSTON STREET
BOSTON'S BACK BAY
MASSACHUSETTS 02116
This place has pretty decent sushi and Maki rolls. Also an assortment of other Asian (inspired) dishes. Notable because during the day its a fairly casual place, but at night becomes a cub of sorts. Also...They fucking deliver. Right off Copley Station
Dick's Last Resort
Faneuil Hall
Are you a dick? Do you enjoy heckling and being heckled? Can you deal with meh food to have a good time with beer and friends? Then this is the place for you! Food is served is pails ( some of it anyway )! The wait staff is encouraged to belittle and insult you at every opportunity, so please dont go for steller service.
Clio / Uni
Back Bay
370 Commonwealth Ave
Boston, MA 02215
Up scale and pricy. Clio is the main resturant, with Uni inside. Uni is a tiny spot with crazy good ( and expensive ) sushi and sashimi, no maki rolls. Realistical a tad overpriced, but the food is great. Clio is great. Not much else to say..hard to do a write up on upscale food that maybe 6 people will try
Muqueca
Inman Square
1093 Cambridge St
Cambridge, MA 02139
My wife is from Curitiba, Brazil and swears by this place. I dont think it gets a better review. Try the Tripe Stew imho ( Latin food )
Fine Dining
No 9 Park
L'Espalier
Eastern Standard
Hungry Mother
Mistral
Steakhouse/Fine Dining:
KO Prime
Ruth's Chris
Mooo
Abe & Louies
Mortons
Japanese
O Ya
Oishii
--- these two are in their own class
Fugakyu
Ginza (in chinatown they are open til 3:30am on weekends)
Bluefin (cheap but still pretty good)
Seafood
Oceanaire
Clio
Turner Fisheries
Thai
Thaitation (aka the old Brown Sugar in Fenway)
Brown Sugar
Mexican:
Tu Y Yo (real mexican, very good)
Casa Romero (again, no so tex-mexy)
Tapas:
Toro
Tasca
Quick Stuff
Spikes Junkyard Dogs
Anna's
Boca Grande
Chinatown has plenty of good vietnamese/chinese/etc places to eat. it's hard to go wrong by just picking one.
North End has plenty of good italian places to eat. it's hard to go wrong by just picking one.
If you like beer -
Sunset Bar + Grill is the mecca for beer drinkers in the Boston area.
Boston Beerworks is a decent local brewery/has ok food.
Red B/Gold Professor
[15:53] <+juju-work> ArsonIsFun is one of the best people I know.
Cheap food ideas are a good thought -
Chinatown - $4.75 lunch from New Jumbo Seafood or a $3 vietnamese sandwich or protein + rice/noodles from New Saigon/163
Downtown Crossing - Al Capone's, home of the 20in sandwich. $8 gets you two meals.
Red B/Gold Professor
[15:53] <+juju-work> ArsonIsFun is one of the best people I know.
Pepperocini Italian Cafe
Betty's Wok and Noodle
Quiznos
Burger King
Unos Bar and Grill
Boston House of Pizza
Conor Lorkin's Grill and Tap
Boloco
Wendy's
Au Bon Pain
Qdoba
University House of Pizza
(Bit of a dry spell going through Wentworth and Mass Art campuses)
Il Mondo - IF you like pizza, go here. It's about ten minutes on the T from the convention center, and it is the best slice you will ever have. Don't know what Buffalo chicken pizza tastes like? Think you know what it's supposed to taste like? You don't know, you haven't eaten Il Mondo.
After that in Bringham circle, there's about ten other restaraunts spanning pizza, indian, chinese, and traditional Mexican (the real stuff) not to mention JP Licks and a Stop and Shop right there too.
Bringham circle, the last place here, is five stops away from the Prudential on the E line. Access to the T is in the building by the east Huntington Ave entrance, and if you grab a Charlie card you can get there and back for $2.40 and about 20 minutes round trip (add on however long you spend on actually getting food.) Also, you can walk. Green line stops aren't that far apart.
You don't actually expect us to swallow this tripe?!
A: "What do you want from me?!?!?"
Stay outta Legal Seafoods. Despite Gloucester supplying loads of fresh fish to everyone here, Legal insists on bringing theirs in from California.
I'm personally fond of Spike's Junkyard Dogs, Trident Booksellers and Café, the Pour House, and Super 88 (which is a smidgen further away but has some of the best Asian food you will ever, ever, ever, ever find in this hemisphere). If you pick a street nearby and walk down it for more than three blocks, you're basically guaranteed to find a decent/interesting place to eat.
EDIT: Oh, and if anybody finds their way up to Harvard Square, if you can't find a good place to eat, you're not looking hard enough. The Garage has a substantial food court with a pizza kitchen, a taqueria, a Vietnamese restaurant, and a burger joint, among others. I've tried the last three on that list, and I've found them all excellent. There's also Veggie Planet, an underground vegetarian place next to a music club, and Berryline, phenomenal frozen yogurt shop. Bartley's is one of those "best burger in the country"-type places, it's not bad, but terribly expensive.
The entire purpose of the post was to get some feedback from locals about good places to eat that are within a few blocks of the convention center. It may not make sense to everyone, but I'm fairly certain that there will be hundred, if not thousands like me that need to be able to go directly to somewhere to quickly eat because they are busy. In Seattle, I was busy from 8am through around 2am daily between the convention and various industry events thrown by a number of companies. Because of this, and my complete lack of ignorance of various food solutions nearby, I ended up relying mostly on small portions of appetizers at these functions. Avoiding that would be nice
In any case, all the suggestions have been greatly appreciated and I hope they continue to flow. Yelp is proving to be useful as well, which was suggested in here.
There's a noodle place nearby on Hereford called Men Tei - freakishly small (like, hole-in-the-wall small), but I'm told the food is good and the service is quick. Alternately, I went to Anime Boston this past fall, and although the nearby food court was crowded, it certainly wasn't unmanageable. That said, I think Anime Boston was a smidgen on the smaller side.
good post, but ... Huntington stretch is west/southwest of the pru
also, Curry Student Center food court @ Northeastern is open to the public ... they have the only Taco Bell in boston proper.
Red B/Gold Professor
[15:53] <+juju-work> ArsonIsFun is one of the best people I know.
It's decent, but when Summer Shack, Oceanaire, and Turner Fisheries are all close by, why bother?
Red B/Gold Professor
[15:53] <+juju-work> ArsonIsFun is one of the best people I know.
I need to know where the best place to go for breakfast is, considering I'm staying past pax.
Preferably someplace downtown.