What Massachusetts actually orders
Boston's food identity centers on New England clam chowder, lobster rolls served either warm with butter or cold with mayonnaise depending on the shop, and roast beef sandwiches at south shore stands like Kelly's in Revere. North End Italian restaurants along Hanover Street run family recipes from Sicilian and Neapolitan immigrants, while Chinatown supports dim sum houses and Vietnamese pho shops that anchor a dense downtown food corridor. Fall River and New Bedford, both Portuguese fishing towns, serve linguica, kale soup, and malassadas that rarely appear on menus outside southeastern Massachusetts. College towns like Amherst and Cambridge support cheap late-night pizza and burrito counters tied directly to student schedules. Western Massachusetts, around the Berkshires, leans toward farm-to-table restaurants supplied by Hampshire and Berkshire county dairy and produce farms. Cape Cod restaurants run almost entirely on fried clam plates and lobster shacks priced for summer tourists rather than year-round residents. Lobster prices track Gulf of Maine and Massachusetts Bay harvest volume directly, and a tight summer harvest forces shack owners to raise a market-price lobster roll mid-season, disrupting printed menu pricing right when tourist traffic peaks.
