😋🚇 The ultimate T ride for foodies

It’s Thursday, Boston.

🛍️ Bargain hunters, listen up! The newly renovated H&M on Newbury Street reopens at noon today. If you’re one of the first 100 people in line, they’ll give you a gift card worth up to $250 to celebrate. Good luck!

👀What’s on tap today:

• Rats: 1,000. Boston: 1.

• Dine Out Boston is BACK

• Jaylen Brown’s bachelor pad

Up first…

MBTA FOOD CRAWL

No Blue Line blues here

The Red Line may be a mess, but the Blue Line is slow zone free. Which means the only proper way to celebrate is to bring back our MBTA food crawl series. We spent an afternoon riding the — now very speedy — Blue Line to sample some of our readers’ favorite Eastie flavors.

Here’s what’s worth a Charlie Card tap:

ORIENT HEIGHTS

🥪 Grab an Italian sub from Milano’s Deli. Monica’s in the North End may suck the air out of the local Italian sub debate, but Milano’s is no stranger to the cured meats and cheese game. This Eastie establishment is just a short walk from the Orient Heights T stop and has been serving Italian classics for over 35 years, dishing up everything from chicken parmesan dinners to imported prosciutto subs. 

👀 Our rec? First-timers gotta go with the Italian cold cut sub, layered with sweet capicola, salami, mortadella, and provolone. What really sets this sub apart? They put the toppings (think: pickles, onions, lettuce, tomato, hot pepper spread, etc.) inside the meat so the bread doesn’t turn into a mushy nightmare. Hot take: Milano’s > Monica’s. 

WOOD ISLAND

🍨 Cool off with a minuta from Frio Rico. Let us take your favorite ice cream cone on a summer day and raise you one minuta. It’s essentially a snow cone topped with fruit syrup, fruit, and sweetened condensed milk, and you can grab one at Frio Rico, a small family-owned store selling traditional Peruvian groceries just a seven-minute walk from the Wood Island T stop.

👀 Our rec? We’re the kind of people who get two kinds of ice cream flavors, so we ordered a half-strawberry half-mango minuta drizzled with sweetened condensed milk, topped with chunks of fresh strawberries and mango. 

🌮 Chow down on Boston’s best birria tacos at Taqueria Jalisco. This no frills, hole-in-the-wall Day Square restaurant is considered one of the best Mexican spots around town, dishing out staples like pozole and tamales. But the main course is obviously tacos.

👀 Our rec? Birria tacos. Birria tacos. Birria tacos. An order gets your three golden tacos loaded with beef birria, gooey cheese, a glorious consommé for dipping, all accompanied with a side of pickled onions, cilantro, and lime. 

MAVERICK SQUARE

🍔Sink your teeth into a whiskey-marinated burger at The Quiet Few. Just a five-minute walk from the Maverick T stop is The Quiet Few, a cozy neighborhood bar whose juicy patties have been popping up on tons of local best-of lists. 

👀 Our rec? The “Hell Yeah” burger, topped with smoked onions, special sauce, and Grillo’s pickles, is what a Big Mac aspires to be. As one of the waiters said, you should only have these once in a while, so you might as well have it as your first. 

📱 Eat with your eyes? Here’s a look at EVERYTHING we ate along the way in this video on IG. 

TOGETHER WITH DANA-FARBER CANCER INSTITUTE AND THE JIMMY FUND 

Golfing “fore!” a good cause

⛳ Hitting the links anytime soon? Turn your next round into more than a game by joining Jimmy Fund Golf presented by Mohegan Sun, one of the nation’s largest and oldest charity golf programs. Organize a golf event in your community, play in an existing tournament, or showcase your brand through sponsorship to support lifesaving care and research at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Find out how you can do your part by playing the sport you love. 

CITY

Quick & dirty headlines

🐀 Rats: 1,000. Boston: 1. On Wednesday, the city unveiled its new “Boston Rat Action Plan,” a long-awaited roadmap based on a commissioned report by rodent expert Bobby Corrigan (who literally has a PhD in rats). The plan lays out an inter-departmental “preventative” approach to rat management, focusing on moving toward alternative — a.k.a. non-poisonous — strategies with an emphasis on (literally) cleaning up our trash management efforts to “starve them out.” Most further steps are still TBD, so watch this space. Take that, rats!

⚾ It’s a GREAT week to be a Sox fan. See: This tie-breaking two-run homer that earned center fielder Jarren Duran MVP honors at Tuesday’s All-Star Game (you gotta watch it). The moment was the latest evidence that the Sox, currently third in the AL East, are defying the low expectations set for this season with about halfway left to go. And in some more good news: Red Sox legend David Ortiz’s son, D’Angelo, was just drafted in the 19th round to join the team.

😋It’s time to Dine Out, Boston. Dine Out Boston, the city’s two-week dining deal extravaganza, is officially set to return from August 4 to 17, offering prix fixe lunch and dinner menus (ranging from $22 to $36 for lunch and $36 to $55 for dinner). Participating restaurants range from local haunts like dbar to truly bougie options like The Capital Grille. And if you’re not sure where to start, at least a few of our fave picks from last time are slated to return. 

🎶 It’s courtyard concert season at the MFA. The museum’s popular summertime outdoor concert series is making its grand return tonight. Tropical Afro-Latin band QUITAPENAS will kick off the series’ seven-show run, but through August 29, the concerts will span countries and genres, from pop pan-African group Mokoomba from Zimbabwe, to “soul-appella” American artist Madison McFerrin. Tickets to the shows are $30 or $24 for MFA members. Check out the whole lineup here.

QUICK QUESTION

🐀 What’s the rattiest neighborhood in Boston?

MEDIA SPONSORSHIP

Calling all young Scorseses! 

B-Side is a proud sponsor of the first-ever ‘Emerging Filmmaker Contest’ as part of the 10th Annual GlobeDocs Film Festival! Through August 15, filmmakers between the ages of 18 and 25 are invited to submit their short film for the chance to be featured in the "Local Shorts" program during the festival and receive a $1,000 prize. On top of all that, the winner’s film will be included in the FULL festival lineup and they will join in conversation with other local filmmakers and a Globe reporter. Enter here today! 

ONE LAST THING

Jaylen Brown’s bachelor pad

If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to live like an NBA MVP, here’s a look. 

Celtics star and NBA Finals MVP Jaylen Brown just put his Seaport loft on the market for a cool $4,750,000, and, more importantly, offered us a peek inside via new listing photos. And may we just say, it’s kind of screaming “bachelor pad.” 

We know that the apartment was staged for the pics, but between the industrial loft vibes, pool table in the living space, the Pac-Man machines flanking the TV, framed jerseys everywhere you look, and this … interesting artwork for his company, 7uice, this place is definitely inhabited by a 20-something guy. 

Check them all out here.

— Written by Gia Orsino and Emily Schario

🏀 Thanks for reading! He might not be a bachelor for long though … just saying!

💜 Special shoutout to today’s sponsor,Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Jimmy Fund, for supporting local journalism and fighting the good fight against cancer.

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