🏓😋 Boston’s food scene is in a pickle

It’s Wednesday, Boston.

🚲 A special hump day deal just for you: To celebrate its 25 millionth ride-iversary, Bluebikes are offering FREE $25 ride credits today only, courtesy of Blue Cross Blue Shield with code BLUECROSS25 in the app and $25 off an annual membership with code BLUECROSS25AM through the end of the year.

👀 What’s on tap today:

• Shipping up to Boston is … on pause

• Back Bay’s pot problem

• Just how big was the Big E?

Up first…

RESTAURANTS

The new bites on the block

It’s a new month, B-Siders. And as you know by now, here at The B-Side, a new month always means new restaurant openings, courtesy of this guide from Boston.com.

Here are the new spots worth a res:

🍖 Pig Beach, South Boston. We certainly didn't guess that not one, but two of this month’s new food offerings would be pickleball-related, but we don’t hate it. First up is Pig Beach, the NYC-based BBQ spot that’s coming to Southie pickleball parlor PKL. Expect award-winning ribs (which won the 2023 Memphis World Championship BBQ contest, NBD), plus other barbeque staples and smashburgers. In true Southie fashion, there will also be a brand-new brunch menu with a BBQ flare (think: cornbread and chicken and waffles), that’ll be available on weekends.

Things to try:

• Baby back ribs with brown sugar and sticky honey glaze

• Pig Beach burger 

• Pig Beach benedict with griddled cornbread, pulled pork and poached eggs

🍪 Chip City Cookies, Harvard Square and Back Bay. Step aside, Crumbl, there’s another gourmet cookie in town. Chip City is known for its uniquely flavored, decadent cookies, with weekly special flavors (this week’s offerings include a galaxy brownie cookie and a cocoa crunch). Now, it’s expanding its Greater Boston footprint to include Harvard Square and Newbury Street. So between the now-four Boston-area locales, you’ll be able to get your hands on all of Chip City’s other offerings, like ice cream, crookies (that’s a croissant with a cookie inside), and thin chips. 

Things to try:

• Peanut butter and jelly cookie

• Nutella sea salt cookie

• Cookie butter with Biscoff cookie

🥗 Margeaux Supper Parlor, Porter Square. Margeaux is the Porter Square Hotel’s new restaurant from first-time restaurateur Rebekah Barr. The menu is deeply rooted in Barr’s experiences growing up in New Hampshire and going to school in Memphis, and the quirky menu format is meant to showcase flavors from both. Entrees and desserts will be available in smaller, tasting-size portions that can come in pre-set (or design-your-own) sets of threes, called “collections,” that have corresponding wine pairings. Check out the menu here.

Things to try:

• Housemade focaccia 

• Comfort collection (lobster gnocchi, pumpkin ravioli, and fried chicken)

• Fork and knife collection (beef wellington, steak tips, and rib eye)

🏓 Bosse Enoteca, Natick. We’ve arrived at our second pickleball-adjacent opening: Bosse Enoteca. The spot is one of four restaurants in the Natick Mall’s soon-to-open massive “indoor pickleball experience,” and is helmed by the same man who brought us Deuxave, Boston Chops, and dbar. Of the four, Bosse Enoteca is the most “elevated” concept, according to Boston.com, offering Italian classics like homemade pasta, woodfired pizza, along with some Mediterranean dishes (although the full menu details are still under wraps).

POP QUIZ

🎪 *About* how many total attendees attended The Big E this year? 

TOGETHER WITH BURYING POINT PRODUCTIONS 

It’s (not) just a bunch of hocus pocus

🧙‍♀️ 🔮 Want to learn to cast spells like a real Sanderson sister? Join a modern-day practicing witch in Salem’s only interactive spellcasting ritual at Burying Point Production’s new black-box theater. This hands-on crash course in witchcraft will teach you all the steps and practices of a ritual casting circle — complete with a real cauldron, spell ingredients, and (of course) lots of candles. Channel your inner magic wielder now through Nov. 3. Tickets are available now.

CITY

Quick & dirty headlines

🚢 Shipping up to Boston is currently on pause. On Tuesday, about 45,000 dock workers across the U.S. began striking over wages and automation, including at Boston’s Conley Container Terminal. Why is this a big deal? Many of the tons of goods that pass through these ports daily, from food to clothing to cars, will have to sit offshore until the strike ends. Meaning, the effects could range from inconvenient if the strike lasts for a few days, to spiking prices and causing product shortages if it lasts for a while. 

🤖 Can robots make Boston biking safer? A group of UMass Amherst researchers are trying to better understand the crash risks between cars and bikes after a cyclist was struck and killed on Cambridge’s Memorial Drive last week. The group is using drones to capture footage of bike and car behavior on a stretch of Beacon Street, which will then be sent to a Swiss company that uses AI to identify potential areas for improvement in bicycle traffic. And if all goes well, that info will be in our hands by year’s end. 

🚌 MBTA bus drivers’ lives are about to get easier. If you see your bus operator using a GPS for directions, don’t panic. The agency is implementing a new NextGen Bus Navigation Pilot that’s meant to help drivers navigate their bus routes in the face of not-so-straightforward detours (IYKYK). The new GPS systems will give drivers turn-by-turn directions, and, crucially, can share directions in real time in response to detours and changes. The new gadgets will be in about 100 buses by the end of the year.

🥦 Back Bay bigwigs aren’t hot on more pot. The latest drama on Newbury Street: Boston’s zoning board unanimously approved plans for a new marijuana shop less than a half-mile from Rooted In, Newbury’s resident dispensary, bringing the grand total of pot shops in that area to four. And Back Bay officials are peeved. Some folks are pressed that the saturated market will hurt the success of currently existing shops. But others are more worried that the shops may change the “character of the neighborhood” … Riiiight. 

ONE LAST THING

The Big E lived up to its name

If you’ve been wondering just how big The Big E is … the answer is 1.63 million visitors, big. 

The fair’s numbers this year broke some serious records, including its all-time attendance record set in 2019 (by about 4,000 people), and not one, not two, but seven daily attendance records over its 17 days. The most crowded day, Sept. 21, brought in a whopping 178,608 attendees.

If you need a little help picturing it: That first stat is roughly the same size as one out of every four people who live in Mass., which, we still think is low.

— Written by Gia Orsino and Emily Schario

🎪 Thanks for reading! Now I need to know how many cream puffs they sold per person. 

💜 Special shoutout to today’s sponsor, Burying Point Productions, for supporting local journalism and making this spooky season extra magical. 

🪧 The results are in: 53% of B-Siders think that the new rules at local schools about student protest are overstepping and infringing on free expression. One reader said: “Needing permission to protest is a little counterintuitive, no?”

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