The history of Boston dining couldn’t have been written without immigrants. Armenian-French chef M. Sanzian invented Boston cream pie at the Parker House hotel in 1856. German Jacob Wirth’s eponymous restaurant dates back to 1868. Baker Francisco Santarpio (of Santarpio’s Pizza fame) came to America from Italy in 1900. Joyce Chen, who opened her first Chinese restaurant in Cambridge in 1958, was from Beijing.
Today, Boston is a United Nations of restaurants where you can hear Japanese, Korean, Cantonese, Malay, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, Farsi, Hindi, Thai and Vietnamese. Thanks to the city’s immigrant restaurateurs and chefs, including the eight profiled here, the local melting pot bubbles deliciously. All Bostonians—wherever they were born—enjoy the gastronomic rewards.
Petit Robert Bistro owner Loic Le Garrec was a French restaurant baby. “I was born and raised in Paris,” he says. “My father was a baker and my mother owned a small brasserie, so I grew up in the profession. I dropped out of high school and went to culinary school.”
Determined to perfect his English, Le Garrec came to the United States in 1997, landing jobs at L’Orangerie in Los Angeles and the renowned Le Cirque in New York. In 2000, he moved to Boston, his then-wife’s hometown, to raise a family. After stints at Locke-Ober and Chatham Bars Inn on Cape Cod, in 2004, he became co-owner and CFO of Petit Robert Bistro, expanding to multiple locations. In 2015, he purchased the business.
“Authenticity is important,” Le Garrec says. “Today, most people are knowledgeable about French cuisine—even the funny stuff, the frogs’ legs and kidneys and brains, we like to eat. People are traveling more so they understand it better. It’s always been a great motivation to represent French culture.” Up next for Le Garrec: Frenchie, a casual wine bar opening in the South End by Thanksgiving.
Petit Robert Bistro, 480 Columbus Ave., Boston (617-867-0600) petitrobertbistro.com
Acquired Tastes
By Mat Schaffer | Photo Credit: Holly Rike | Sept. 30, 2016
The history of Boston dining couldn’t have been written without immigrants. Armenian-French chef M. Sanzian invented Boston cream pie at the Parker House hotel in 1856. German Jacob Wirth’s eponymous restaurant dates back to 1868. Baker Francisco Santarpio (of Santarpio’s Pizza fame) came to America from Italy in 1900. Joyce Chen, who opened her first Chinese restaurant in Cambridge in 1958, was from Beijing.
Today, Boston is a United Nations of restaurants where you can hear Japanese, Korean, Cantonese, Malay, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, Farsi, Hindi, Thai and Vietnamese. Thanks to the city’s immigrant restaurateurs and chefs, including the eight profiled here, the local melting pot bubbles deliciously. All Bostonians—wherever they were born—enjoy the gastronomic rewards.
Loic Le Garrec
Petit Robert Bistro owner Loic Le Garrec was a French restaurant baby. “I was born and raised in Paris,” he says. “My father was a baker and my mother owned a small brasserie, so I grew up in the profession. I dropped out of high school and went to culinary school.”
Determined to perfect his English, Le Garrec came to the United States in 1997, landing jobs at L’Orangerie in Los Angeles and the renowned Le Cirque in New York. In 2000, he moved to Boston, his then-wife’s hometown, to raise a family. After stints at Locke-Ober and Chatham Bars Inn on Cape Cod, in 2004, he became co-owner and CFO of Petit Robert Bistro, expanding to multiple locations. In 2015, he purchased the business.
“Authenticity is important,” Le Garrec says. “Today, most people are knowledgeable about French cuisine—even the funny stuff, the frogs’ legs and kidneys and brains, we like to eat. People are traveling more so they understand it better. It’s always been a great motivation to represent French culture.” Up next for Le Garrec: Frenchie, a casual wine bar opening in the South End by Thanksgiving.
Petit Robert Bistro, 480 Columbus Ave., Boston (617-867-0600) petitrobertbistro.com
By Mat Schaffer | Photo Credit: Holly Rike
Gita Kantrow
Nepalese-born chef Gita Kantrow—namesake of the new Gita at Wink & Nod—was raised in two culinary traditions. “I grew up in the Terai, a tropical area south of Kathmandu, closer to India than the city,” she says. “I came to the U.S. in 1997 when I was 9. My dad was a trekking guide, and my adoptive mom had been to Nepal many times and connected with him to go on hiking trips. My biological parents always had the dream that one of their girls would come to the U.S. and have an American education.”
Living in Lincoln, Massachusetts, Kantrow began customizing her adoptive mother’s cooking to please her own palate, using ingredients and techniques she’d learned as a child. Her fascination with the kitchen continued through college and jobs at an Oregon design firm and an online medical startup in Boston. She opened a small catering company and began private cheffing. In August, she launched her six-month pop-up at Wink & Nod.
“My cooking is very personal,” Kantrow says. “I work with Nepalese spices like cumin, turmeric and garam masala and herbs like thyme, rosemary and parsley. It’s food that reminds me of home but also what I’ve known most of my adult life in the U.S.”
Gita at Wink & Nod, 3 Appleton St., Boston (617-482-0117) winkandnod.com
By Mat Schaffer | Photo Credit: Holly Rike
Marie-Claude Mendy
Commodities trader by day, restaurateur by night Marie-Claude Mendy lived in Senegal, France and Britain before coming to the U.S. in 1996. “I have always been fascinated by the United States,” she says, “the ideals, the opportunities, the mentality of ‘Work hard and get rewarded.’ ”
A lifelong foodie—her aunt was a catering chef in Dakar, her mother a passionate cook—Mendy opened Teranga (“hospitality” in Wolof) in 2009. She wanted her adopted city to taste the cuisine of her native Senegal, a cuisine that delectably marries local and international influences with dishes like accara, black-eyed pea fritters, or thiébou djeun, herb-stuffed fish in tomato sauce with broken jasmine rice pilaf and braised vegetables—considered the national dish of Senegal.
“People come to Africa and live for a period of time—whether it’s 10 years or 50 or a century—and when they leave, their flavors stay with us,” she says. “In Senegal, the influences are European and Asian and, within the European community, Portuguese, French and Italian, Arabic and Jewish. Any person from those different backgrounds could come to a Senegalese meal and be comfortable eating it because they would recognize familiar elements. The uniquely Senegalese part comes in with the spices and the ingredients.”
Teranga, 1746 Washington St., Boston (617-266-0003) terangaboston.com
By Mat Schaffer | Photo Credit: Holly Rike
Joe Thailand
He may have been born Banjong Yuvayongdee in Bangkok, but in Boston he’s known to everyone as Joe Thailand, the affable restaurateur who’s fed classic Thai dishes like satay, pad Thai and Massaman curry to thousands of hungry diners during the past three decades at House of Siam.
Thailand came to the U.S. in 1970 to study, choosing Boston because of its reputation for educational excellence and because Thai king Bhumibol Adulyadej was born here (at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge in 1927). After graduating with a degree in Industrial Engineering from the Lowell Technological Institute, Thailand was approached by a chef friend to go into the restaurant business. It was 1985, and there were only a handful of Thai restaurants in the city. The chef left, but Thailand persisted—and prospered, opening a second location in the South End.
“I love this country and I love Boston,” says Thailand, who jokes that his friends now call him Joe USA. “It was my dream to come here, to work here, to open a business here and become a U.S. citizen. That was my dream and it worked. It worked for me.”
House of Siam, 542 Columbus Ave., Boston (617-267-1755) houseofsiamboston.com
By Mat Schaffer | Photo Credit: Holly Rike
Azita Bina-Seibel & Babak Bina
When the Iranian revolution began in 1978, Azita Bina-Seibel and her sister were students in Boston unable to return home to Tehran. They were soon joined by their younger brother Babak and mother, Aghdas.
Partnering up with Babak, Azita turned her love of cooking into a family business that began with Italian trattoria Azita in 1990, then expanded to Persian restaurant Lala Rokh in 1995, followed by Bin 26 Enoteca in 2006, jm Curley in 2011 and Bogie’s Place in 2013. Along the way, Babak Bina helped found the Taste of the South End and Taste of Beacon Hill fundraisers and created the nonprofit Bina Farm Center, in Lexington, which assists individuals with special needs.
Of all the restaurants, Lala Rokh holds a special place in the siblings’ hearts. Many recipes come from their mother. “There was no recipe book,” Bina-Seibel remembers. “I’d say, ‘OK, Ma, let’s cook this,’ and she’d start cooking, and just before she’d put an ingredient in—a handful of this, a handful of that—I’d measure how much. We had to be consistent.” Even today, when 83-year-old Aghdas Zoka-Bina visits her native Azerbaijan, she brings back ingredients for the Lala Rokh larder, like the dried lime used to season ghormeh sabzi, slow-stewed lamb and greens.
Lala Rokh, 97 MT. Vernon St., Boston (617-720-5511) lalarokh.com
By Mat Schaffer | Photo Credit: Holly Rike
Analia Verolo
How could Uruguayan architecture student Analia Verolo say no when, in 1993, an American foreign exchange student she dated in Montevideo sent her a ticket to join him in Maine? The relationship ended, but Verolo stayed on.
In 1998, she met aspiring chef Gabriel Bremer while the two were working at the Fore Street restaurant in Portland. The meeting began a personal and professional collaboration that resulted in Salts, the nationally acclaimed Cambridge eatery that opened in 2004 to rave reviews. But Salts closed after a flood in the winter of 2014; since then, the couple has been searching for a new location and enjoying baby Teo, born last October.
Later this year in Watertown, Verolo and Bremer will open La Bodega by Salts, a restaurant inspired by the foods of Juan Lacaze, Verolo’s birthplace, across the Rio de la Plata river from Buenos Aires, Argentina. “We’ll serve home-style, family food, like grandma used to make,” she says. That means empanadas, lengua a la vinagreta (tongue) and chivito sandwiches (Dagwood-like subs of tenderloin, ham, mozzarella and hardboiled egg). Salts’ much-beloved roasted, stuffed, boneless duck will also be on the menu.
La Bodega by Salts, 21 Nichols Ave., Watertown (617-876-8444)
By Mat Schaffer | Photo Credit: Holly Rike
Donato Frattaroli
Donato Frattaroli is a member of a North End restaurant dynasty that dates back decades. His father, Arturo, a miller, moved from Sulmona, Abruzzo, to East Boston in 1969; wife Lucia and their four children followed a couple of years later. Frattaroli’s two brothers had attended culinary school in Italy, so in 1974, the family scraped together the money to purchase a small Italian restaurant in Eastie. Then in 1977, they opened Lucia Ristorante on Hanover Street. During the next four decades, Lucia begat North End restaurants Filippo, Artu, Ducali, Ward 8 and seafood-focused newcomer Il Molo, which Frattaroli just opened with his own son, Donato Jr.
“Back then, there weren’t even a dozen restaurants [in the North End], and now, probably in less than a mile and a half, you have about 150 licenses,” says Frattaroli, a founder of the Taste of the North End benefit. “Back in the ’70s, the food was more Italo-American, more comfort food—dishes that people would ordinarily cook in their houses every day. Today, it’s more sophisticated. In the North End, people are trying to outdo each other and kick it up a notch with true Italian food. It’s a great place to eat.”
Il Molo, 326 Commercial St., Boston (857-277-1895) ilmoloboston.com
View All Events
Related Articles
A Final Bow
If you’ve ever had a Hoodsie Sundae Cup...
Tigers Love Pepper, They Hate Cinnamon
Artisan Approach
Building Something New in Allston...
Comfort, Enjoy
A stalwart expands to a neighborhood in transition...
28 Days Later
The evil genius behind jm Curley’s foie gras-glazed jelly donut may not seem the likeliest candidate to co-found a wellness app...
Ports to Call
Whoever loves chocolate (and who doesn’t?) needs to know about port...
Architect of a Meal
Scelfo's Designs for Alden & Harlow...
Spice Route
With bold Turkish fare, Sarma makes an impressive debut...