🍕 The best PIZZA in Boston

It’s Thursday, Boston.

🤑 And we’ve got some fun deals for ya: Amazon just announced its annual Prime Day event will be July 11 and 12, so here’s a list of some of the best early Bezos day deals. Plus, JetBlue’s flash sale offering up to $500 off flight and hotel (or cruise) combos ends today. You’re welcome.

👀 What’s on tap today:

• Record high rent

• Student loan restart

• Blind date with a drink

Up first...

FOOD

Boston’s Pizza Fest is back

“I don’t even know if I could trust you if you don’t like pizza.” Those were the wise words of Giancarlo Natale, a North End native and co-founder of the Boston Pizza Festival. The two-day event is making its grand return to City Hall Plaza for the first time since 2019 this weekend.

So if you’re planning to go, here’s what to know:

🍕 Over thirty different pizzerias will be there. Many are local favorites like DaCoopa’s in Eastie and da LaPosta in Newton, and there will also be pies flown in all the way from Detroit, Michigan, and even Italy. “We want to accommodate everybody … vegan, vegetarian, Detroit-style, extra cheese,” Natale said. Plus, there will be gluten-free options.

🤑 Admission is free. Unlike previous years where you’d pay a one-time fee for entrance and samples, this year it won’t cost a dime to get through the door. If you want to try a slice, you can buy a pack of “pizza tokens,” the currency of the festival. A three-pack starts at $10.99 and goes up to a 10-pack for about $30. You can buy the tokens now to skip the lines. Natale said the average attendee eats about six slices.

🏆 They’ll be awarding the People’s Choice award for the best pizza. Florina Pizzeria on Beacon Hill has been the defending champ for the last two festivals (which after tasting some of their pies earlier this week, I understand why). And in true Man vs. Food fashion, they’ll also be hosting a competition to see who can eat a whole pizza the fastest.

🍷 If you’re somehow not a pizza fan, there will be plenty of other food and drink: Arancini from Eat Cini’s in North Station, Richie’s Italian Slush, plus coffee, dessert, fresh lemonade, beer, seltzer, and an espresso bar. Brands will be giving away flatbreads, sodas, and alcohol samples, too. Did we mention the official wine of the festival is Snoop Dogg’s 19 Crimes?

🤔 But the real question is: Why does Boston need a pizza festival? Especially given the pizza slander our neighbors like to dole out. “If I could take every person in New York and Connecticut, and have them follow me for a pizza tour, we would get so much more respect in the pizza world,” Natale said. “We don’t have the spotlight that we deserve.”

🤐 While he won’t publicly say who his favorites are, Natale is excited about one newcomer: Fine Line in Revere. “They have awesome, different flavors that normal places don’t offer,” he said. Plus, they use the Marra Foni, the Rolls-Royce of pizza ovens.

👀 The festival will be held at City Hall Plaza this Saturday and Sunday. You can learn more here.

QUICK QUESTION!

🍕 What’s your favorite pizza in Boston?

TOGETHER WITH LEVITATE MUSIC FESTIVAL

Giveaway alert!

🎤 We’re giving away two, 3-day VIP passes to Levitate Music Festival on July 7-9. To be eligible, refer a friend below and have them accept your invite between June 16 and 29. If you have already referred a friend to B-Side (and they’ve accepted), you're eligible! Full details below*

CITY

Quick & dirty headlines

🏡 Home, condo, and rental prices just hit an all-time high in the Boston area. You might want to sit down for this: The median price for a single-family home hit $900,000 in May, up 2.9% from a year ago. Condos also joined the party, with the median selling price jumping from $717K to $726K from a year ago. And as of June 1, the average rent for a Boston apartment clocked in at $3,047, up nearly 14% from last year. And it’s all thanks to the usual suspects: lack of inventory, a competitive housing market, and a v low vacancy rate.

🍔 Order food online? You’re not gonna like this. Toast, the popular restaurant payment software, started tacking a new 99-cent fee on orders over $10 at a small portion of restaurants this week, with plans to add the fee nationwide on July 10. And if you’re ordering, you may not even realize you’re being charged more, as it’s just thrown into the “taxes and fees” line item. Toast said the fee is necessary to help pay for new features to help restaurants support their business, but some are outraged.

😭 You’re gonna have to start paying those student loans again. Even though the Education Department told borrowers they’d have to pay again — only to have the deadline bumped — this time, they mean it. The department recently posted on its website that student loan interest will resume Sept. 1, and payments will be due starting in October. You can cross your fingers that the Supreme Court upholds Biden’s student debt cancellation plan by the end of the month, but based on the current outlook, you might want to cross your toes, too.

🍸 You can soon go on a blind date … with a drink. Urban Hearth’s “Blind date with a cocktail” program launches July 1. For $14, you can put your libation’s future in the hands of Urban Hearth’s bar team, which will craft a cocktail made at random. The drink will then be covered with a brown bag before being revealed tableside (you can still just order a normal cocktail if you’re not into surprises). The Cambridge restaurant also has a few other summer weekday programming options like Wednesday’s “Yap-eritvo Hour,” where you can bring your pup to their patios for spritz-themed treats (for humans and dogs).

ONE LAST THING

TikTok ice cream hunt

Who makes the best ice cream in Mass.? One guy and his buddies are on a mission to find out. And they’re documenting it all on TikTok.

Earlier this year, Cohen Thompson stumbled on an article from Food & Wine listing the highest-rated ice creams from each state. So he and his friends started driving around the country to find what they believe to be the best ice cream shops in every state.

Their rules are pretty simple: At each spot, they’ll try some of the shop’s most famous desserts along with a scoop of vanilla, and rank the shop on a scale of one to 10.

So when they found themselves in Mass., they landed on visiting The Juice Bar on Nantucket. They were particularly wowed by the flavors, but the real star of the show was the fresh waffle cone that was kept warm until served. Oh, and the juice at said juice bar was also amazing.

It scored a 9.3 out of 10 and currently holds their No. 3 spot. You can watch their full ice cream taste-testing series on TikTok here.

😢 Thanks for reading! If you want to enjoy ice cream that doesn’t require a ferry to try, here’s a list of 10 of the best ice cream treats around Boston.

🏘️ The results are in: About 40% of respondents to yesterday’s poll think that Somerville isn’t what it used to be. One reader said, “I’m a native of Somerville and have seen how gentrification has changed the city drastically over the past 15+ years.”

💃 Keep up with us @BostonBSide on IG, TikTok, and Twitter. Send comments and suggestions to [email protected].