Canestaro Restaurant - Best Boston Italian Restaurant Near Fenway Park By Susan Vik

Part of the fun of going to a Boston Red Sox game in Fenway Park is stopping at one of the nearby restaurants or bars for a bite to eat before the game or for a celebratory dinner afterward. When you want something more that a beer and a hotdog, a great option is Canestaro Restaurant - which also happens to be one of the best Italian restaurants in Boston. As a bonus, the affordable prices mean that you can go back again and again.

Located just a couple of blocks from Fenway Park, Canestaro's is also close to Boston University, Northeastern University, the Colleges of the Fenway (Simmons, Wheelock, Emmanuel), and several of Boston's famed medical research hospitals, and draws fans from all of these areas, as well as the neighborhood.

So why is Canestaro's so popular? That's easy: everyone loves the home-style Italian classics. This is where you can get traditional favorites like Italian wedding soup, which is a tasty rich chicken broth filled with tiny mushrooms, spinach, and tiny pasta. Pair that with, perhaps, a caprese salad - ripe tomatoes layered with mozzarella and basil on top of crisp romaine - and it's more than enough for a meal, especially if you add a few grilled shrimp or grilled salmon to the salad.

The antipasto platter overflows with provolone cheese, mortadella, prosciutto, salami, roasted peppers, olives, and other good things on a bed of greens, and likewise could be a meal by itself.

But unless you become such a regular at Canestaro's that you have ample opportunity to try everything on the menu, you may want to consider some of the pastas or main course specialities. The seafood pastas are especially good - for example, lobster ravioli with a creamy "pink" tomato sauce laced with garlic and pecorino romano cheese, and shrimp scampi with tomatoes and mushrooms tossed in a lemony white wine sauce and served over linguini.

Main course dishes such as Chicken Marsala and Stuffed Shells are especially interesting because of the emphasis here on fresh vegetables, high-quality ingredients, and careful preparation. I especially love the Eggplant Parmesan with homemade marinara sauce. You'll find lots of other classics as well - Chicken Piccata, Sausage and Peppers, and Fettuccini Alfredo. In addition, Canestaro Restaurant offers lots of reasonably priced sandwiches, steaks, burgers, and fish straight off the grill, and absolutely fabulous pizza.

Desserts are worth saving room for - so plan ahead! Boston cream pie is excellent, and so are the Italian specialties - cannoli, tiramisu, and spumoni ice cream. But you'll find lots of other mouth-watering options as well - shortcake filled with vanilla custard and topped with fresh berries, a decadent triple mousse cake, and a really wonderful brownie sundae.

Combine all of these possibilities with a great wine list, plus local beers and specialty drinks, and you'll quickly see why Canestaro Restaurant is so popular with Boston Italian food lovers - whether or not the Red Sox are playing nearby.

Susan writes about favorite Boston restaurants near Fenway Park in http://www.Boston-Discovery-Guide.com/fenway-restaurant.html, where she shares additional information about http://www.boston-discovery-guide.com/canestaro-restaurant.html

Boston's Bay Village Restaurants - Top Gourmet Dining Choices Near Boston's Theatre District By Susan Vik

Bay Village may be Boston's smallest neighborhood but its location next to the Boston Theatre District means that Bay Village restaurants are top choices for before-show dinners and after-show drinks, as well as fine dining on any other occasion. You'll find one of the city's best French restaurants, a top steakhouse located in a castle, a couple of highly regarded Italian restaurants, and a couple of more casual choices tucked away in this conveniently-located neighborhood. Here are two mouth-watering options to consider.

Pigalle (75 Charles Street South, next to Radisson Hotel) is a long-time favorite with theater-goers. This award-winning French restaurant specializes in using the freshest local ingredients to prepare classic French cuisine. Chef Marc Orfaly offers an a la carte menu with daily specials, as well as several other options: a 3-course prix-fixe menu, a casual bar and patio menu featuring $1 oysters on the half shell plus many other yummy items, and special chef's tasting menus, with and without wine pairings. On Wednesdays, there's even a "kitchen vs. bar battle" that pits 3 tastes from the kitchen against 3 drinks from the bar - this may be a battle, but it's also a win-win!

What should you try here? For starters, think about the spiced carrot soup with calamari and a touch of chorizo, or the arugula salad with fried goat cheese fritters. The crabcakes, and the charcuterie platters are also wonderful. Plus Pigalle makes some of Boston's best French onion soup with fabulous 4-cheese croutons.

For main courses, consider the crispy comfit duck with herb spatzle and creamed Brussels sprouts, or the halibut baked in a flaky crust with creamed artichokes and jasmine rice. You can also get a riff on the classic French steak-frites - at Pigalle, it's a juicy flank steak with peppers, French fries, and creamed spinach.

Dessert choices at Pigalle also run to the classics - creme brulee, a pineapple tart with mascarpone pastry cream and chocolate sorbet, a cheese platter, and other tempting daily specials.

Erbaluce (69 Church Street) is the newest of the Bay Village restaurants, and Boston diners are quickly becoming addicted to Chef Charles Draghi's Piedmontese Italian cuisine. Named for an Italian grape, the restaurant features dishes that are flavored with herbs, fruit and vegetable essences, and cooking techniques such as roasting that bring out the flavor of each dish - no heavy creams or sauces here!

The menu changes a few times each week, depending on what's in season and freshest in the markets. You'll find organic meats and produce, plus dishes based on game such as wild boar that you don't usually find in restaurants. One of my favorites is the spaghetti with clams in fennel-tomato broth with bottarga, a pressed block of cure tuna or mullet roe that's shaved on top of the pasta, giving it an incredibly buttery, sort of caviar-like flavor - try this and you'll immediately start planning your next visit to Erbaluce.

With even more Bay Village restaurants to try in nearby streets, you may decide to skip the theater and just concentrate on eating. Be sure to walk around Bay Village afterwards to admire the early 19th century Federal architecture and work off all those calories!

Susan writes about other favorite Boston restaurants in http://www.Boston-Discovery-Guide.com/boston-restaurants.html, where she shares information about more mouth-watering Bay Village restaurants