Boston Part 2: B & G Oysters and SoWa Open Market

A definite food must on the East Coast is seafood. Especially when you live in Switzerland, which is pretty far from any ocean's coast. The only thing going for the terrible hostel we stayed at was the proximity to Tremont Street where there are a bunch of restaurants to get your seafood fix. After reading good reviews, we chose to go to B & G Oysters on Friday night without having a reservation. We ended up getting seats at the bar, the only drawback of which was the jacked up air conditioning blowing down our necks. 

B & G Oyster's specialty, as their name implies, are their selection of fresh oysters, but I just can't get myself to slurp down a slippery glob of potentially food-borne-illness-laden saltiness. My friend ordered one and quite enjoyed it. I feasted on the bread and olive oil instead. For my main I had the American red snapper with baby carrots, fennel and yogurt puree, and pickled fresno chili. It was very good and fresh. My friend went with a Maine lobster roll with fries and bread and butter pickles. I had a bite of the roll and it was really delicious. Nothing like the mayonnaise dripping one she had tried at Faneuil Hall Marketplace earlier that day. And the fries, a seldom food I treat myself to since they often just aren't good enough to waste your calories on, were very tasty due to some herbs mixed into them.

Afterwards we had a drink just down the street at The Beehive, a fun place to hang out with a bar upstairs, and a bar and stage for performances downstairs. 

One of my favorite places in Boston was the SoWa Open Market on Sunday. There's everything from farm produce, to T-shirts with moustache themes (what's with the moustache craze in the US???), to food trucks (still a big trend in the US). We first checked out the farmer's market, then moved on to the shops in the buildings between the farmer's market and the food trucks and arts and crafts. We stumbled upon a bead shop called Bead + Fiber where I ended up buying some strands of stone beads to make new jewelry. Then we moved on to the arts and crafts and food trucks. We bought jewelry at the lovely stand of Freebird Designs. Stern Design Works also had some pretty cool jewelry including see-through pendants with miniature animals trapped inside. Unfortunately we were still full from our breakfast at Flour Bakery and Café so that we didn't get a chance to try food at any of the food trucks, but I did squeeze in a drink at Bon Me (a play on banh mi, the Vietnamese term for bread). The cool thing is you can cut the line if you're just ordering drinks and no food. I chose the Thai basil lemonade. It was really refreshing.