You have probably seen the restaurant over by the Lechmere mall and thought well, it can’t be that good.  Wrong.  The Helmand restaurant in Cambridge features cusine from Afghanistan and its great.  With two restaurants in the US, one in Cambridge and one in San Francisco, the Helmand is one of those unique spots you don’t want to miss.  Great atmosphere, great food, great service.  And as an added note, the owners are family with Hamid Kharzai, the President of Afghanistan!

The Helmand
143 First St
Cambridge, Ma.  02142
617-492-4646

Nice long space contemporary bar and comfort food in Union Square.  Corner of Cambridge and Brighton Ave.  Or if you fancy ethnic, go to YOMA a Burmese restaurant right around the corner.

Imagine your everyday Italian Deli nee Italian Sub shop where you enter it and then proceed to the back of the store and you then pass thru a small entry and enter into a world of cuisine and fine dining!  That is the setting for Vinnys Superette, a Sicilian restaurant in Sommerville that is quite simply some of the best Italian food you will ever eat.  It melts in your mouth.  Everything is made fresh.  The pasta, the entrees, the antipasto.  This is worth a journey, for anyone who doesn’t live nearby.  It’s a small restaurant that seems to have been grafted onto the exterior of a building and connected to the Deli.  It looks like a typical sub shop from the outside.  But don’t let that fool you.  This is amazingly good Italian Cuisine.  And everyone gets a two portion meal.  One portion to eat and one to take home.  Plus the whole notion of entering a rather typical sub shop deli and then going to the back and then entering a secret chamber of exceptional cuisine is tres cool. 

We were lucky and got in with only a 15 minute wait, so be prepared.  Its worth every minute.

Vinnys Superette
76 Broadway
Somerville, Ma.
617-628-1921

don’t confuse it with the chain of VINNY T’s restaurants

Looking for great Northern Italian cooking in an intimate candlelit setting just off the Fens?  Try Sorrentos.  Its a small intimate Italian bistro with great cuisine.  Excellent pastas, great calzones, friendly service and wonderfully delicious gourmet pizza.  A very comfortable restaurant where you can go back to over and over again.

Zagats rated Top Italian Restaurant 2005

Sorrentos
86 Peterborough St
Boston, Ma.  02215
617-424-7070

It’s foggy, you can barely see, a little chill in the air, you can hear the waves gently lapping on the piers, and up ahead in the ramshackle docks is the sign of a joint of some kind.  You enter, and the smoke filled space is as foggy as the outside.  Sailors, bikers, characters and seedy are gathered round.  You expect to see, Raymond Chandler, Peter Gunn, or Sherlock Holmes loitering.  It could be 1950, 1930, or 1850, who knows?  It could be TV or a novel you are dreaming about.  It’s not.  It’s real.  It’s Portland, Maine, circa 2007.

Portland, one of the great small cities of the world, still has waterfront dives, sans smoke these days.  Supposedly we will all live for 15 minutes longer because of the banned smoke.  And that’s OK for some, but not me.  I’ll take the danger any day.  The dives I am talking about are the PORTHOLE, and JAYS.  Two of the greatest dives of all time.  And did I mention the food is great!

Jays is a little smaller but is open all year round.  It’s an oyster bar that gives away oysters in February.  Try their lobster claw appetizer.  You will get more lobster than a lobster.  Everything is good.

The Porthole is a small distance from Jays, and has a deck on its backside where you can eat and watch the commercial fishing boats when the weather is good.  If not the inside is cozy with a woodburner by the windows.  Its an old wood interior long bar restaurant.  Simple.  Try the haddock sandwich, the mussels, or the salads.  And during the warm weather, Sunday brunch is divine.

Both restaurants are in Portlands Old Port.  Just off Commercial Avenue.