Boston baked beans are navy beans slow-cooked overnight with salt pork, molasses, brown sugar, mustard and onion. The dish that gave Boston the Beantown nickname and ran the Saturday-night Puritan table since the 1600s.
Where to eat it: 2 restaurants across 1 city.
Boston baked beans evolved from Puritan New England's Sabbath cooking restrictions, which banned work from sundown Saturday to sundown Sunday. Wives prepared a slow-baked pot of beans Saturday morning, served it for Saturday supper, and ate the leftovers cold on Sunday. Molasses, abundant via the Caribbean rum trade through Boston Harbor, sweetened the dish and gave the city the nickname Beantown by the 1880s. Durgin-Park, founded 1827 and closed 2019, served the dish at long communal tables on Faneuil Hall's basement floor through the 1990s. Union Oyster House and Legal Sea Foods still offer the classic preparation. The bean of choice is small white navy beans, not large kidney or pintos.
Common allergens: Soy
Tip from the editors. A traditional ceramic bean pot retains heat better than a Dutch oven; the longer the cook, the deeper the flavour.
Union Oyster House on Union Street has shucked oysters in Boston since 1826, the oldest continuously operating restaurant in the United States.
Signature: Oysters on the half shell, Clam chowder
Order: A dozen Wellfleets at the U-shaped bar and a cup of clam chowder.
Tip: Skip the dining-room tables and sit at the historic raw bar. The bar is the original 1826 plank.
Legal Sea Foods on Long Wharf, near the New England Aquarium in Boston, has anchored the chain's flagship since 1968. Kitchen leans seafood.
Signature: New England clam chowder, Lobster pie
Order: A cup of clam chowder, the recipe served at five presidential inaugurations.
Tip: Lunch with a harbor-side window is the best seat. The raw bar runs daily until 22:00.
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