Boston’s top restaurants of 2022 🍔🍷🍽️

Happy Friday, Boston!

🧀 Heads up: We’ll be back in your inbox on Tuesday with a shorter version of the newsletter for the week, because let’s be real, you’re going to be filled with cheese and not know what day it is anyway.

👀 What’s on tap today:

• The state of the storm

• Pour one out for Darwin’s

• Six words of gratitude

Up first…

FOOD & DRINK

Boston’s top restaurants of 2022

Boston-area restaurants crushed it this year, cracking several national ‘best of’ lists and giving the local food scene some much deserved attention. From marbled steaks to mozzarella sticks, here are the spots that were turning heads in 2022:

🍷 Dear Annie, a cozy, natural wine bar in Cambridge, landed on The New York Times’ list of the 50 best places in America they’re excited about and Bon Appetit’s list of the 50 best new restaurants in America. It’s first come, first served with communal setting. Take a peek at their menu.

Must try dishes:

• House pickled mussels (really, any of their house-preserved fish)

• Grilled cheese with poblano and corn jam

• Seafood sausage with roasted tomato remoulade and mustard greens

🤌 Faccia a Faccia, formerly known as Faccia Brutta, came in at No. 1 on Resy’s list of the 10 restaurants that defined Boston in 2022. Founded by the same chefs behind Toro and Little Donkey, this coastal Italian spot on Newbury Street is just as delicious as it is Instagrammable — a rare feat. Book your reservation here.

Must try dishes:

• Grandma bread

• Pasta with gulf shrimp, crab, and saffron tomato sauce

• Mozzarella sticks with caviar

🥩 Abe and Louie’s, the beloved Back Bay steakhouse, has been in business for over 50 years and clearly still knows what it’s doing. The restaurant landed on OpenTable’s list of top 100 restaurants this year. Book your reservation here.

Must try dishes:

• Steak tartare

• Steak and eggs

• A classic filet mignon

🐟 Atlantic Fish Company, a seafood institution in the Back Bay, also made OpenTable’s best of list. A reviewer had this to say: “Absolutely wonderful food, service, and atmosphere. We recommend the stuffed lobster and sea bass.” Book your reservation here.

Must try dishes:

• New England clam chowder

• Fried oysters with cajun remoulade

• George's bank scallops

CITY

Quick & Dirty Headlines

🌧️ The storm we’ve been talking about all week is finally here. And it’s no joke. Dozens of flights out of Logan have been delayed and canceled; there’s a high wind warning for most of eastern Mass. (with potential gusts up to 65 mph); and one to two inches of rainfall are expected. If you still have power, make sure your devices are charged up, just in case. And with a 30-degree temperature swing on deck for tomorrow, pay extra attention to any icy spots. It’s going to be a cold Christmas.

❤️ As Tufts bomb threats continue, this Tufts employee is clapping back. Kevin Mullen was appalled by the threats targeting Tufts’ diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice programming over the past week, so he wanted to condemn the threats through action. He started a GoFundMe to raise money for the Boston Schools Fund, a fund that awards grants to schools around the city to advance equity in education. He’s raised about $800 of his $1,000 goal. The threats against Tufts began on Dec. 14 and authorities have not found bombs or suspicious objects.

☕ Local coffee shop closes for good. Darwin’s Ltd., a Cambridge-based chain of coffee shops, poured its last cup of joe yesterday after closing its last three locations. The owners announced the closure of just the Mt. Auburn location earlier this year, which was met by protests from unionized employees. A few weeks later, the owners announced they would close the other three locations. While the owners have been tight-lipped about why they closed, one shared with the Globe that the protests accelerated their decision to close the remaining locations.

THINGS TO DO

Stay in and stream

🧅 Figure out whodunnit in ‘Glass Onion: a Knives Out Mystery.’ The new sequel to the 2019 hit starts streaming on Netflix today.

🇺🇸 Watch Season 2 of ‘Little America,’ an anthology about immigrants in the United States from Cambridge native and Academy Award-winning director Siân Heder. Stream on Apple TV+.

👩‍❤️‍💋‍👨 Cheesy rom-com time: Watch ‘About Fate,’ a new romance set in Mass. and filmed around the Commonwealth. Watch on Prime Video.

🎄 In the mood for a (controversial) Christmas classic? ‘Die Hard’ is streaming on Starz, The Roku Channel, Amazon Prime Video, and Philo.

🥐 Ooh la la, you can binge season three of ‘Emily in Paris,’ which was released on Netflix on Wednesday.

ONE LAST THING

Six words of gratitude

We asked our Instagram followers to share their holiday gratitude in six words (or less), and they came up with some funny and wonderful things to be grateful for. Here are three responses that stuck out to us:

One Instagram user is grateful for “The orange line re-opening!” Another is feeling thankful for “Health, happiness, and good red wine.” Same. And a third is grateful for “Setting my out of office reply” (can relate).

The B-Side team is thankful that you’ve joined us this year. Happy Holidays!

🎄 Thanks for reading! Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a slab of brie and a bottle of prosecco that’s calling my name. Merry Christmas!

💃 Keep up with other B-Side tomfoolery on IG, TikTok, and Twitter @BostonBSide. Send comments and suggestions to [email protected].