Boston: Oysters, Lattes, and Cannolis in North End

April was a pretty crazy month since right after I got back from Philly, I took a red eye flight the next night from LAX to Boston.  Needless to say, 4 transcontinental flight, with two of them being red eye, took its toll.  Might even be worse than the time I flew to NYC right after I got back from Taiwan.

Me completely dead at 7am at the Boston Logan Airport haha (from Diana's Instagram @deltalove).  

To be honest, we didn't do much sightseeing since both Jadson and Diana weren't too into US History (sad face), so I focused all my energy into finding something to eat.  That's something I'm good at anyways.  In fact, I started off the first day in Boston with two breakfasts :P  

Saw a Potbelly Sandwich Shop located inside Boston Logan!  Decided to try it since there's none in LA.

Decided to get a Bacon, Egg, and Cheddar Breakfast Sandwich.  Got it with some hot peppers!

DEFINITELY get it with the hot peppers.  Bomb.

After we got off the Silver Line that took us from the airport to the city, we had to walk through Chinatown.  As always, there's a gate.  Much cleaner than Philly's Chinatown, that's for sure.

While walking through Chinatown, I noticed this bakery, 101 Bakery, sells milk tea!  Yelped a bit and found out that it is a Taiwanese bakery so decided to get a morning drink.

Came out with a milk green tea and a bun.  Milk tea... was actually not bad at all.  Way better than the TapEx or the JJ Bakery near where I live.

Chocolate bun.  A little dry, but very soft!  I'd probably come here a lot if I lived in Boston haha.

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After checking in and freshening up at the hotel, we decided to head to the North End, Boston's famous Italian neighborhood.  We didn't really have a place in mind for lunch, but we knew we wanted to munch on some cannolis and Boston's also small enough that we can walk to where we want to go from the North End.

Right when we got off the T, the first place that we see is the historic Union Oyster House, the oldest continually operated restaurant in the US!  We weren't planning to eat here since I heard the wait can be long but when we peeked in around 11am, there were actually 3 spots open at the infamous oyster bar, so we sat ourselves down.


Union Oyster House
41 Union St Boston
MA 02108
unionoysterhouse.com

Union Oyster House!  Probably the most historical thing we visited that whole weekend.

Established 1826.  Crazy.

Built in 1717 and designated as a historic landmark. Since Boston's such an old city, a lot of buildings are actually under the National Park Service and you will see park rangers at various spots.

The famous oyster bar! They shuck anywhere from 3,000-5,000 oysters a day.  Dayum.

Part of the menu.

I started off with some clam chowder.

Creamy chowda.

Jadson's Sam Adams Red Brick Irish Ale.  Of course, in Boston, must get Sam Adams.

Our Seafood Platter, with oysters, cherrystone clams, and cocktail shrimp.  Forgot to ask where the oysters came from, but they do have 3-4 farms they source it from.

Cocktail sauce and their bombtastic horseradish.

I am not a huge oyster fan so this was the only one I ate, with a little Tabasco and horseradish.  

However, I do like cherrystone clams, so we ordered half a dozen more!

I just find I enjoy the texture of clams so much more than oysters.

The guys have fun when they work too. This guy took a lobster, made it grab on to a fork and napkin.  This dude's pretty awesome. 

The old school beer elevator.  Since the oyster bar is also where the draft line is at, they transport the beer upstairs dining room this way!

I actually enjoyed my time at Union Oyster House a lot, and I think a big part of it was being able to sit at the oyster bar (seen on TV so many times) and watch the guys just shucking away.  Quality-wise, I'm sure there's better shellfish or food elsewhere, but I can now say that I've dined at the oldest restaurant in the US!

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After Union Oyster House, we wanted our dessert, which meant cannoli!  We were debating between Mike's or Modern Pastry, both famous for the cannoli.  Mike's is more well-known but we just didn't want to wait in the long line so we chose Modern Pastry.  Before that, the red eye flight was starting to get to us and we needed a caffeine fix first.


Thinking Cup
236 Hanover St
Between Richmond St & Board Aly
North End
Boston, MA 02113
thinkingcup.com

Hanover Street, North End.

Thinking Cup!  A pretty hipster cafe with two locations in Boston.

Big Thinking Cup sign right when you walk in.

Their grinder & espresso machine.  Espresso here served as ristretto double shot.

Hazelnut latte and regular latte.  Thinking Cup's baristas has also won awards for latte art, and yea, they are pretty damn good :P

Jadson's single origin pour over.  Forgot where it was from, but very fruity!

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As for the cannoli, Modern Pastry Shop may not be as famous as Mike's but it was also featured on Food Network, and the line was pretty long too.  A friend of mine told me that some preferred Mike's because it is bigger, but locals dig Modern Pastry Shop more?  I'm a cannoli noob so I just wanted a good cannoli.

Modern Pastry Shop

257 Hanover St 

Between Richmond St & Board Aly

North End

Boston, MA 02113
modernpastry.com

Modern Pastry, located on Hanover Street.

The neon sign would probably look really cool at night when lit.

Line at Modern Pastry Shop.  Very warm in there too.

Menu.

I decided to get a Chocolate-dipped Pizzelli and a Chocolate-dipped Cannoli with Fresh Ricotta.

I did not know one of the ingredients for Italian pizzelli is anise seeds so I was pretty surprised when I took my first bite.  Chocolate and anise was a little bit weird, sorta like Chinese medicine to me.


The cannoli, however, definitely lived up to its hype!  The crispy cannoli shell is great and the chocolate only made it better.

They fresh make the cannolis to order, so they don't pump it with the filling of your choice until you order it.  Very glad I got it with the fresh ricotta.  I was expecting it to be heavy but it was the opposite!  Very light and delicate.

Jadson ordered the same cannoli, except filled with vanilla custard.  Much much heavier and sweeter than the traditional ricotta.  I didn't like it as much haha.

After cannolis, it was off to the New England Aquarium to see some penguins since we had time to kill before our Boston Red Sox game at Fenway.  Here's a picture of the penguins!  Too bad the penguin exhibit was under construction so you can only view them through a small glass window in their feeding area.

Penguins all day every day.

Vancouver: Granville Island Public Market

Sorry for the lack of updates!  Been busy lately and I really wanted to make sure I had free time for this post since I had a ton of fun exploring Granville Island.  I'm a sucker for these sort of public market or farmer's market.  Usually you can find a lot of interesting and unique things that you can't find anywhere else, so I always try to make an effort to visit a local farmer's market if I can when visiting a new place, even if it is one as touristy as the Granville Island Public Market.

Granville Island Public Market

1661 Duranleau St

Granville Island/False Creek

Vancouver, BC V6H 3S3

granvilleisland.com/public-market

Since the market opens fairly early and we were short on time, we woke up around 8am, checked out, took the cab to Granville Island, and started to explore the place.  It wasn't packed but plenty of people already.  Of course another gloomy morning.

It reminds me of a smaller Pike Place Market in Seattle.  Lots of local and organic fresh produce.  Not cheap at all O_o.

Seafood.  Again, not cheap, but the quality of the fish here does look amazing!

This particular vendor had lots fishes that Asians love haha.  

Starting to get crowded around 9am.  Lots of tourists, but plenty of locals as well shopping for the holidays.

One of the butcher shops.  There carry different wild games you don't really see in the States.  I remember seeing a pound of rib eye steak for over $20CAD!  By this point, I have decided that you must be fairly well-off to be buying your grocery here..

Stuart's, one of the first place we stopped by, cause we could actually afford it :P  

Variety of pastries and cookies!

Since the three of us didn't have breakfast yet, we decided to each get something.

I went with my usual Chocolate Croissant.  Chocolate-y, but not as flaky as I'd thought.

Alice's fruit pastry.  I actually like this better than the chocolate croissant. 

Strawberries on the other end!

Calvin's cinnamon roll.  Big!  Probably amazing if it was fresh out of the oven.

The chocolate croissant wasn't enough and as soon as I saw a donut shop, I had to get something.  Gotta eat donuts in every city!

Asian owned!  They had all these Asian flavored donuts.  Very interesting.

Breakfast round two.

I decided to go with the mango filled and the melon cake!  Wasn't a fan of the melon cake donut since the melon flavor was really light.

Mango-filled donut was awesome though!  Just like your normal jelly donut, except this has a mango custard/cream!  Tastes just like your Asian mango candy haha.  

Variety of fresh raviolis!  If we stayed longer and the hotel had a kitchen, definitely all over this.

Crazy packed vendor selling charcuterie.

They have all these crazy house-smoked items!  Wanted to buy a few slices just to try but the line was ridiculous.  I guess many were buying it as gifts to families and for Christmas dinners.

Cheese vendor.

Cheeses.  Some imported, some local.

Of course, gotta have a florist at a market.

After devouring the two donuts, I needed a drink.  Decided to get something from Petit Ami.

Fair trade, organic, estate grown coffee!  Went for the latte.

Latte.  Nothing too fancy. 

The whole time we were in Canada, we were searching for maple flavored gummy bears.  Didn't really know if it existed but we figured there was a very good chance that they do sell it somewhere.  Finally found it at the market!

Calvin super happy with his maple-flavored gummies!  Tasted odd though :P

Fresh wasabi!  $22/100g meant that is is roughly $110/lb of the spicy stuff o_O

Shot of the back of the market.

Want to buy stock to bring home so you can lie to your family and friends about how you spent hours making the soup?  Stock Market is your best friend then!

Before we left, I stopped by Granville Island Tea Company to buy some loose-leaf tea as gifts.  Learned a bit about all the different type of teas.

Decided on the organic Assam and the Formosa Oolong as gifts.  Granville Island Tea Company also sell chai tea, in addition to the loose leaf and the guy helping me out said that the organic Assam was the type of tea they use as base!  As for the oolong tea, Formosa oolong tea is quite common, and my family gets a lot from Taiwan, but I gotta say, the quality from Granville Island Tea Company's pretty good!  Even my mom was impressed.

In the back of the market, in addition to more food vendors, there were a lot of vendors selling paintings, crafts, soap, jewelry, and anything that people hand make.  You can also get a great view of Vancouver so we spent a bit of time outdoors taking pictures.  Since we were short on time and wanted to grab ramen in Vancouver, we did a quick walk and window-shopped through the rest of Granville, then took a cab back to downtown area for lunch.