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Boston: Kosher Restaurants & Travel Recommendations

Boston, MA happens to be an extremely underrated city to visit 6-8 months out of the year (i.e. whenever the ground isn’t covered in snow). It’s a beautiful city, with unique architecture, and more American history than practically all others in the country.

 

This past Independence Day weekend I took my family on a relatively short road trip from NYC to Boston for a few days. For anyone driving before a holiday weekend, you’re already familiar with how congested the roads are and how much longer any planned trip will actually take. A trip that I’ve done in the past in 3.5-4 hours took over 7 hours (including numerous pit stops).

 

Two navigation apps I rely on when traveling, especially during high traffic periods, are Google Maps & Waze (an Israeli app also owned by Google). Waze is probably the best at navigating you around highway traffic jams through the back roads of any state. It definitely took me on some interesting paths on my way up through New England, but we avoided a lot of the standstill traffic on the major interstate highways.

 

When doing this road trip, especially with family in tow, it’s important to think about potential meal stops along the way should you get hungry. There are two main places (although likely a couple more) that are both on the way between New York & Boston, and kosher.

 

On the more direct route (but more likely to hit traffic) is Claire’s Corner Copia in New Haven, CT. CCC is a vegetarian / dairy (including vegan and gluten-free options) restaurant that has been around for 4 decades and is certified kosher by Rabbi Avigdor and Rabbi Hyman of the Vaad of Fairfield County. We stopped here for dinner on our way home and were pleasantly delighted. The restaurant is very family friendly, supplying kids books, paper and crayons to kids. The menu is massive, making it difficult for me to choose since it all looked delicious. Here’s a sample dish from that meal:

Everything we tried, from the entrees to the custom lavender lemonade, and desserts were delicious. I highly recommend stopping there on your way to Boston, or anywhere else in New England.

 

Another on-the-way option is Kosher World (Pizza & Grocery) in Waterbury, CT. Kosher World is both a kosher market and pizza shop in a town where nearly all the Orthodox Jews are associated with the Yeshiva of Waterbury. We attempted to grab some pizza there on our way up to Boston, but traffic prevented us from getting there before they closed (which was significantly earlier than their website stated). Ironically, we were able to grab dinner hours later upon arriving in Boston.

 

NOTE: Unless otherwise noted, all kosher restaurants in the Boston area mentioned in this article are under the KVH (the local Boston Vaad). 

 

After arriving hungry and exhausted in Boston well after 9pm, we headed straight to Rami’s in Brookline, a kosher institution for the local community, around for nearly 25 years. They serve a very Israeli style menu filled with shwarma, falafel, grilled chicken, kabobs, schnitzel, hummus, etc. It’s open Sun-Thu 10am-10pm and Friday until 2pm. Not open Motzei Shabbat. Rami’s also delivers to a wide area around Brookline including most of the major Boston suburbs where Jews live or go to school. [Delivery Map] –– Rami’s also operates a food truck all over the Boston area. Find their whereabouts here.

 

Next door to Rami’s is Pure Cold Press, a new Salad/Sandwich/Juice bar that will definitely appeal to the more health conscience kosher (and not kosher) consumers in Brookline that opened within the last 2 months, and is owned by Rami. We went a few days later and my wife and I each took a salad to go. Their salad bar is interesting in that you pay per scoop and a full 6-scoop salad costs about $12. While I like salads, I definitely don’t go seeking salads as a meal. Having said that, their salads were both beautifully prepared and delicious. I combined 3 different salads for my meal and was thoroughly impressed:

 

Pure Cold Press also offers vegetarian sandwiches (which they didn’t offer when we were there since we arrived before lunchtime) as well as a full fridge of juices.

 


For breakfast, one of the area’s mainstays is Kupel’s Bakery in Brookline (pronounced “couples”). I had fond memories of food from Kupel’s from a trip to Boston numerous years ago. On this trip we went here twice for breakfast and it was just OK. My discerning tastes prefer NY style bagels and pastries to those from Boston, although it’s been named to numerous “best bagels in the US” lists, including this one. In the Brookline area, we didn’t really find any other kosher breakfast alternatives.

 

One newly kosher restaurant (chain) that does serve breakfast options is Clover Food Lab, a Cambridge, MA-based natural food restaurant chain in the Boston region, with numerous locations (and food trucks) mainly in Cambridge, with one in Brookline. We got to try an all-vegetarian lunch at Clover HUB (the main restaurant & factory, where all the food is processed in-house). What’s interesting about Clover is that they don’t have freezes at any of their locations, ensuring you are always eating fresh, natural food with no preservatives.

Since becoming kosher last month, Clover has been polarizing in the Jewish community due to their hashgacha not being from the local Boston Vaad (KVH) but rather from an Orthodox rav (Rabbi Dolinger) in Providence, RI and the restaurant’s approach to genivat akum. Click here to read Rabbi Dolinger’s response to the criticism.

 

Got to explore Clover Food Lab HUB in #Cambridge. Totally #vegetarian & newly #kosher. Quite tasty & affordable.

A post shared by Dani Klein ? Yeah Thats Kosher (@yeahthatskosher) on

 

Clover is very kid-friendly, offering sheets of paper & crayons, as well as tape to paste the drawings to the wall. All of the food we tried was very tasty, including the Rosemary French Fries and the homemade sodas & lemonades.

 

Rosemary Fries from my lunch yesterday at Clover. So good! So good!

A post shared by Dani Klein ? Yeah Thats Kosher (@yeahthatskosher) on

 

 

We have a map here of all of Clover’s locations and approximate food truck regions.
For a fun summer snack, one should not miss J.P. Licks, a chain of Boston-area kosher ice cream shops that makes some pretty amazing flavors. I’m a sucker for Cookies & Cream concoctions, and they probably had the 2 best C&C combos I could think of: Peanut Butter Cookies & Cream and Mint Cookies & Cream. So I got a cone with both, and it was glorious. J.P. Licks has 13 locations, all within 15 miles of the original one. Here’s a list of all the locations.

 

I'm officially in love with the #icecream at JP Licks! This is a cone topped w/PB Cookies & Cream (bottom) & Mint Cookies & Cream (top)

A post shared by Dani Klein ? Yeah Thats Kosher (@yeahthatskosher) on

 

 

Whilst soaking in some of downtown Boston’s historic sites & waterfront, we happened to have passed a food truck I know is kosher: The Chubby Chickpea, a Middle Eastern falafel & shwarma serving truck that roams the Boston area. The Chubby Chickpea had a physical location in Canton, MA, but now only runs a food truck. Follow them on Twitter for location updates: @TheChubbyChickpea.

 

Randomly found the #Boston #kosherfoodtruck @ChubbyFoodTruck on our way to #Harborfest

A post shared by Dani Klein ? Yeah Thats Kosher (@yeahthatskosher) on


The above restaurants were the ones we visited or spotted on our recent trip to Boston over the July 4th weekend. They are certainly not the only kosher restaurants in the Boston area. Here are a few we missed on this trip:

  • Milk Street Cafe – located in downtown Boston near the city’s financial district, MSC is one of the only kosher restaurants in the world with both a dairy & glatt kosher meat kitchen (+ a pareve kitchen with sushi), serving customers all types of kosher fare during the work week. I’ve visited MSC numerous times over the last 15 years in both Boston and at their short-lived NYC Wall Street location, and their food never disappointed. (Unfortunately, they were closed for the long holiday weekend when we were in town). The original Milke Street Cafe Boston location has been around since 1981 and has recently undergone renovations to beautify and expand the eatery. Milk Street Cafe is under the hashgacha of the Orthodox Rabbinical Council of Greater Boston under Rabbi Nochum Cywiak.
  • Rubin’s – Boston’s quintessential kosher deli located in Brookline has a lot of the old school deli feel and food you’d come to expect from a kosher deli.
  • Other options include Jerusalem Pita & Grill, Cafe Eilat, and Taam China (under the Supervision of Rabbi Aaron Hamaoui) – all located near each other on Harvard Ave. in Brookline, MA
  • The KVH also certifies kosher dining hall / Hillel options at Harvard University, MIT, Northeastern University, Tufts University, BU, and Hebrew College.

A few years ago, one of our writers had written a great post detailing things to do and explore around Boston, so instead of recreating that, you can have a read here: Things to do in Boston. One location not covered in that article that we were recommended to visit was Castle Island Park in South East Boston. Not only can you visit a historic landmark fortress, but you can go swimming in a waveless lagoon (safe for the family) and get amazing waterfront views of all the ships leaving Boston Harbor and the planes landing at Boston’s Logan Airport. Recommended stop for both adults and kids.

 

Featured image by @ronnie0057 on Instagram.

About the author

Dani Klein

Dani Klein founded YeahThatsKosher in 2008 as a global kosher restaurant & travel resource for the Jewish community.

He is passionate about traveling the world, good kosher food / restaurants, social media & the web, technology, hiking, strategy games, and spending time with his friends & family.

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