 Restaurants & Shopping Wednesday Wednesday, July 29, 2026 |
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Weather ⛈️ 75° / 63° Showers and thunderstorms likely all day at 72%, climbing to near-certain after dark — take the umbrella and plan indoors · full forecast → | The T Right Now ● RL ● OL ● GL ● BL Red: shuttles Alewife–Park St through Thursday · Green: Symphony closed (E), Summit Ave (C) bypassed · Orange and Blue clear · live status → | Roads Planned lane closures and paving are posted on the state’s live map — worth a check before any longer drive in the wet. |
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The number: 220 — tables booked at Trattoria Il Panino in the North End on Monday alone, the highest same-day count of any restaurant in Greater Boston this week. see the full ten → |
⚾️ Athletics 4, Sox 3 — Boston dropped a one-run game in Sacramento last night. The Sox are back there tonight at 9:40 and wrap the series Thursday, then open at the Dodgers on Friday — the same day the trade deadline lands · full scoreboard → |
🍽️ Restaurants & Shopping Wednesday Booked solid: the three hardest tables in Boston Not our picks — the city’s. These are the dining rooms Bostonians reserved hardest, ranked by the public same-day booking counts OpenTable posts on every restaurant. Week of July 24. | 1 | Trattoria Il Panino · North End 220 booked Monday. The Hanover Street mainstay takes the top spot from Union Oyster House — and leads a week in which three of the city’s ten busiest rooms were North End Italian. | | 2 | Saltie Girl · Back Bay 211 booked Monday. The biggest move on the list: the tinned-fish and lobster-roll specialist was nowhere in last week’s ten and arrives straight at No. 2. | | 3 | Grill 23 & Bar · Back Bay 200 booked Monday. The Berkeley Street steakhouse is the constant on this list — expense accounts and anniversaries, week in and week out. |
Hardest table of all: Contessa — the only restaurant showing on both OpenTable’s and Resy’s demand signals this week, with nothing available before 9 PM on a Monday. 🛍️ And where to shop when it pours Boston’s retail lives on streets, not in malls — which is a problem on a day of thunderstorms. Three districts that hold up in the rain: Antiques row: a dozen small dealers, home-goods shops and galleries inside a few gas-lit blocks. The browse-slowly district — you can duck between doorways. | The city’s department-store corner since the 1880s, now a pedestrian zone. The Brattle Book Shop is a block away — though its famous outdoor dollar carts stay in on days like this. | The dry option: the Prudential Center and Copley Place connect by skybridge, one block off Newbury Street — so you can shop the whole way without going outside. |
Worth knowing: Massachusetts charges 6.25% sales tax, but ordinary clothing is exempt up to $175 per item — only the amount above $175 is taxed. Shoes and a raincoat ring up tax-free. |
| WED 7/29 | Tonight, 8pm: the Chilean star plays the Shubert — and it is indoors, which tonight is the whole point. | | THU 7/30 | Gates at 4pm: three headliners on one Fenway bill — the biggest night of the week at the ballpark. | | FRI 7/31 | From 6pm: a movie on the Esplanade, free, no ticket — the week’s first properly dry evening by the river. | | SUN 8/2 | 10am to 6pm: eight blocks of Newbury close to cars and the shops spill onto the street. The shopping day of the summer — put it in the calendar now. |
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Via NBC Boston The governor unveiled a set of pilot programs aimed at lowering the cost of riding, and extended the Commuter Rail savings that were due to lapse. Details on who qualifies are still coming. Via NBC Boston City leaders advanced a proposal to put body cameras on Somerville officers, after several years of debate over cost, footage retention and who gets to review the recordings. Via Cambridge Day The Cambridge workshop that started as a single class has become a global network of community fabrication labs. Twenty-five years on, its founders are taking stock of what it spawned. Business The Boston-born burrito chain, once more than a dozen storefronts across the city, will shut its final Downtown outlet on September 25 — closing a run that began here in the late 1990s. |
Know before you go — every morning. |
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