Fenway Restaurant Recommendations

 Fenway dining - from casual to festive

Most Fenway restaurant choices cluster near the neighborhood's biggest visitor attractions: Fenway Park, Boston University, Symphony Hall, and the Museum of Fine Arts.

Fenway restaurant options focus on casual rather than formal, ranging from super-casual Tasty Burger to the polished but relaxed Eastern Standard, which makes sense in a neighborhood where sports and universities dominate.  Even the white tablecloths and attentive service at Petit Robert Bistro come across as comfortable rather than stiffly formal.

Enjoy the photo gallery - and then check out my hand-picked, much-tried recommendations for a variety of occasions.  Enjoy!

Photo gallery of favorite Fenway restaurants

Fenway Restaurant Guide

Petit Robert Bistro   French

468 Commonwealth Ave; Green Line/Kenmore; also in South End;

Traditional French bistro cuisine near Fenway Park features perfectly cooked classics, plus an excellent wine list. 

Lunch features casual items - quiche, crepes, and croque monsieurs.  For dinner, look for steak-frites, pot-au-feu, duck comfit with sausage.  Keep an eye out for the cheese and chocolate fondue occasionally offered at the bar.

Almost as appealing as the food is the light-filled dining room overlooking Comm Ave and the gracious service.  Close your eyes, and for a moment, you'll imagine you're really in a Paris bistro.  One of my long-time favorite restaurants near Fenway Park.

El Pelon    Mexican

92 Peterborough (in Restaurant Row, between Kilmarnock and Jersey Streets); 617-

After burning down 3 long years ago, El Pelon is back and the lines stretching out the door are packed with starving Bostonians craving fish tacos (my personal favorite), burritos carnitas, enchiladas, and basically everything else on the menu. 

Eastern Standard Kitchen and Drinks    French

528 Commonwealth Avenue; Green Line/Kenmore; 617-262-9090

Elegant but casual bar and dining close to Fenway Park, plus outdoor sidewalk tables during warm months - just like the brasseries located in every Paris neighborhood.  Order a whole meal if you're hungry - or just a sandwich or appetizer if you're not.

Favorites include bouillabaisse, frisée aux lardons, and steak-frites.  The chef uses local ingredients in everything - well, maybe not the escargots - so you get distinctive Boston/New England flavors along with French panache.  Eastern Standard may not be specifically a seafood restaurant, but its seafood dishes rival the best of them!

Island Creek Oyster Bar    Seafood - fresh and local!

500 Commonwealth Ave (at Hotel Commonwealth); Green Line/Kenmore;

Island Creek oysters from Duxbury Massachusetts take center stage in the glass-enclosed raw bar.  Burgers, all types of seafood dishes, and steaks round out the menu - and don't miss the fried oyster slider on brioche with chili aioli.  

Enjoy a casual meal at the bar, or go for a more formal experience in the dining room.  Island Creek Oyster Bar is generating a lot of excitement in the Fenway restaurant scene right now, and for good reason.  If you like fresh seafood, you'll find a lot to love here.

Sweet Caroline's Restaurant and Bar    Burgers and bar food

1260 Boylston Street; Green Line/Kenmore; 617-424-1260

Come for appetizers and a burger on Game Day, or steak tips and sweet potato fries anytime.  Plenty of big screens, and lots on draft.

Canestaro Restaurant and Pizzeria    Southern Italian

16 Peterborough Street; Green Line/Kenmore; 617-226-8997

This casual restaurant with outdoor seating is in a quiet residential neighborhood just a few blocks from Fenway Park, Museum of Fine Arts, and Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.  And if you're looking for restaurant convenient to Harvard Medical School, it's a great choice.

Canestaro's southern Italian cuisine rivals the North End Italian restaurants.  The menu offers a wide range of choices - pizza, sandwiches, grilled burgers and steaks, and traditional Italian pastas and main dishes - all well-prepared with high-quality ingredients and homemade sauces.  I'm addicted to the eggplant parmesan subs.

La Verdad    Mexican

1 Lansdowne Street; Green Line/Kenmore; 617-421-9595

A Ken Oringer (Clio, Uni, Toro, KO Prime) restaurant, modeled after a Mexican taqueria.  Everything from tacos and burritos to comfit duck with fig marmelade and lamb enchiladas with a dark mole sauce and hazelnuts.  Next to Fenway Park.

Baseball Tavern    New England casual favorites

1270 Boylston Street; Green Line/Kenmore; 617-867-6527

Make no mistake - all the big screens, pool tables, and video games definitely position Baseball Tavern as a sports bar, and on Red Sox game days, fans pack in, order beers, and scream about the action on the ball field, only 1 block away.

But at less-frenzied times, the awesome seasonal roof deck (sort of a small-scale replica of Fenway Park) and menu chock full of New England favorites make it meal-worthy. Look for burgers, steaks, fish and chips, chowder, clam rolls, hot dogs, sausage and peppers, shrimp, chili. Reasonable prices, huge portions.

Betty's Wok and Noodle Diner     Asian-Cuban Fusion

250 Huntington Ave; Green Line E/Symphony; 617-424-1950

Asian/Cuban fusion menu featuring noodles, rice, veggies, and meats, combined in any possible way you can imagine.  Or create your own dish, combining sauces, ingredients, and seasonings.  Lots of vegetarian choices.

Low-key and mellow during the day - perfect for a small afternoon snack after a trip to the nearby Museum of Fine Arts - and then much livelier at night, especially before and after performances at nearby Jordan Hall, Symphony Hall, and Huntington Theatre.  Reservations are often a must in the evening due to pre- and post-show crowds.

Sweet Cheeks    BBQ

1381 Boylston Street; Green Line/Kenmore; 617-266-1300

Come here when you want some flavors of the South.  Choose from meats - BBQ ribs, brisket, pulled pork, pork belly.  Then add a couple of sides - mac & cheese, baked beans, fried okra, slaw, broccoli casserole.  Somehow, though, you need to save room for the killer bisquits and sweet butter.

Elephant Walk  Cambodian and French

900 Beacon Street (another location in Cambridge at 2067 Mass Ave); Green Line C/St. Mary's Station

The Elephant Walk brings together 2 stellar cuisines - French and Cambodian.  Note - this is not fusion cooking - it's two very different types of food cooked and served in the same restaurant, reflecting the chefs/owners' heritages.  You can mix and match from the different parts of the menu, and can even choose from traditional vs contemporary Cambodian.  There are even gluten-free selections. 

Trattoria Toscana   Northern Italian

130 Jersey Street (between Queensbury and Park); Green Line E/Museum of Fine Arts; 617-247-9508

Dine in this tiny (about 30 seats) Fenway restaurant when you want authentic Tuscan food.

You can enjoy everything from gnocchi in creamy gorgonzola sauce with toasted walnuts to oven-roasted lamb shanks, along with a few dishes that you don't usually see in Boston restaurants, such as pasta with wild boar in red wine sauce, chicken liver pate with sautéed portobello mushrooms crostini, and Florentine-style beef tripe. 

One of the best restaurants near the Museum of Fine Arts - especially if you love Northern Italian cuisine and enjoy food that's different from the ordinary.

Taberna de Haro   Spanish

999 Brookline Ave (corner of St Mary's Street); Green Line C/St Mary's; 617-277-8272

Technically in Brookline but literally just across the street from Fenway and too good to not mention.

The chef/owner of this small (38 seats) restaurant with seasonal patio seating lived in Spain for 8 years and serves up food that you might find in Madrid, using local and organic products whenever possible and of course lots of high-quality olive oil.  Enjoy an assortment of tapas, or a main course.  Look for the shrimp with garlic and olive oil, stuffed squid, or imported Spanish ham. 

At first glance, this looks like a small neighborhood spot convenient to Boston University - and it is - but its popularity and small size make reservations a must.

Restaurant Row Updates (most recent entry at top)

1/14/12 - Finally . . . the empty spaces are refilling, with Thornton's Fenway Grill, El Pelon Taqueria, and newcomer Swish Shabu now open and drawing huge crowds of old and new fans.

Thornton's now serves draft beer, El Pelon's fish tacos taste as addictively good as ever, and Swish Shabu serves up Japanese hot pots.  Life is good!

6/6/11 - Hmm...rumors about a June re-opening may not be true...take a look at the photo below, which I took this morning.  Careful investigation (i.e., snooping around) revealed lots of work left to be done.  Unless a miracle occurs, I'd bet on August, at the earliest.

5/14/11 - Next month is rumored to be the long-awaiting re-opening of Restaurant Row - expect a celebration as the 7 eateries seat their first guests!  The line-up will include 3 original businesses - Thornton's Fenway Grille, Rod Dee Thai, El Pelon Taquiera - plus 4 newcomers: Swish Shabu, Fenway Phoenix Cafe, Speed's Hotdogs, and a New York pizzaria.

1/1/11 - Rumors suggest that a long-awaited reopening may be happening this May or June, with many of the original Peterborough Street restaurants returning plus a newcomer or two - so stay tuned!

September 28, 2009 - Fenway neighborhood residents, Red Sox fans, and other customers of the popular Restaurant Row eateries still eagerly await their return.  Restaurant owners report that they don't know when reconstruction work (delayed by insurance) will be finished and they can reopen.

Talented students from McKinley Prep High School across the street worked for months along with their teacher and 3 artists to create vibrant murals based on each restaurant's cuisine on the boarded-up eatery fronts - a special gift to the neighborhood

January 6, 2009 - Tragically, a fast-moving fire gutted Umi, Thornton's Fenway Grill, Sorento's Italian Gourmet, Greek Isles, Rod Dee Thai Cuisine, and El Pelon Taquiera on Peterborough Street, known locally as "Restaurant Row."  We wish them speedy rebuilding.  In the meantime, they will be greatly missed.

Basho Japanese Brasserie   Japanese

1338 Boylston Street; Green Line/Kenmore; 617-262-1338

Sushi, sashimi, and designer rolls dominate the offerings in this spacious Japanese brasserie located only about a block from Fenway Park, but you should consider trying a couple of specialties that you may not see at other Japanese restaurants in Boston: the flavored sushi and sashimi, which pair unexpected tastes and textures for a lot of wallop, and the robatayaki, little skewers of meat, chicken, fish, and/or veggies cooked over a grill.

Saki fans will enjoy the large selection; plenty of cocktail choices also - plus beer for Red Sox fans spilling over from Fenway.

Tasty Burger   Cheap Eats

1301 Boylston Street; Green Line/Kenmore; 617-425-4444

Burgers (singles or doubles) and hotdogs with all the fixin's, shakes (gotta love the "Green Monster"), hand-cut fries, onion rings, slushies - plus wine and beer in this deliberately down-scale Fenway eaterie that can seem, at first glance, just one small step away from being a classic dive bar. 

But taste the food, and you'll realize you've discovered a gem, a throwback to the time when a burger was just a burger. If you've ever bemoaned the high price of tiny designer sliders in Boston's upscale restaurants and long for the "real" thing - a slightly greasy burger that doesn't pretend to be more than what it is, you'll rejoice at what you'll find here.  Personally, I'm unable to resist the mocha shakes, even though they mean an extra hour in the gym.

Order at the outside service window and find a table on the small patio, or go inside for the retro-meets-Pulp Fiction decor featuring Samuel L. "That is a tasty burger" Jackson on one wall, free pool, and a jukebox.   See the photo gallery above for more photos

Are reservations needed at Fenway restaurants?

Yes, always make a reservation if possible everywhere except at the most casual places. 

Boston's Fenway neighborhood sports one of the liveliest cultural and social mixes in the city due to its many colleges and universities, medical centers, museums, performance venues, and of course, Fenway Park.  All of this, plus the neighborhood's many residents, produces numerous potential customers for Fenway restaurants.

Keep in mind that whenever the Red Sox play in Fenway Park, all of the nearby restaurants are likely to be crowded and much noisier than usual - so if you're coming for a pre-game meal, arrive early.  If you're planning to dine on a game night but want to avoid the crowds, arrive after the game starts and depart before it ends and you'll be fine. 

Other choices include Fenway bars and clubs - but they're even more crowded than the restaurants on game days. 

If you can't get a Fenway restaurant reservation, try Back Bay restaurants, especially those at the western end of the neighborhood.

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Can't get reservations?  Other choices to consider . . .

Back Bay Restaurants	Fenway Bars and Clubs	Fenway Area Guide