BOSTON, MA, July 9, 2025 — The Boston Globe today released its Best of the Best 2025, its annual list of Boston’s best dining, shopping, and entertainment. This year’s list identifies the best Greater Boston has to offer across 28 categories, including sandwich shops, record stores, ice cream, seafood, nightlife, breweries, and more.  Here are the winners from South Boston and Seaport via Boston Globe. 

Best Bakery

Flour Bakery 

This Boston-area institution could also fairly be called “Butter,” serving up flaky, rich breakfast pastries such as a corn chili cheddar bialy, homemade Pop-Tart, or, best of all, the supremely gooey “sticky sticky bun.” With 10 locations across Boston and Cambridge, it’s easy to find an excuse to try the breakfast sandwich: custardy slabs of egg with tomato and cheese all piled on a brioche bun and slathered with dijonnaise — a creamy, punchy mixture of mustard and mayonnaise that founder Joanne Chang calls her “secret sauce.” A new location was added downtown this year.  You can learn more here!

La Saison

In both of their shops, Iranian-born pastry chef Soheil Fathi and his wife, Sarah Moridpour, bake eclairs, croissants, pain au chocolat, kouign amann (a delectable, multilayered, buttery pastry), and other French classics; American favorites such as sourdough bread and chocolate chip cookies; and barbari, a Persian flatbread. Perfection everywhere you look.

Best Doughnuts – Doughboy Doughnuts

This place isn’t about being fancy or punny. This is where you go when it’s midnight and you really, really need a doughnut (warning: It closes earlier on weekends). Doughnut-making is even geared toward night owls, starting at 5 p.m. every day. The cake doughnuts will fill you up and take some chewing. Don’t miss the glazed ones though — light and airy and best consumed as a precursor to the dawn.  Learn more here!

Best Lobster Roll

Row 34

Even if you prefer the cold lobster roll, betray your instincts and order the warm version here at Row 34’s Fort Point outpost (others are in Cambridge, Burlington, and Portsmouth, New Hampshire). Chef Jeremy Sewall has long been a big name in Boston’s seafood scene, first at the now-shuttered Island Creek Oyster Bar in Kenmore Square and now at the stylish Row 34. Heaping servings of sweet and tender meat, caught by Sewall’s lobsterman cousin, are tossed in warm butter and sprinkled with sea salt and cradled in a split-top bun. If you must go cold, opt for Ethel’s Creamy Lobster Roll, named for Sewall’s grandmother, who added a hint of zesty pickles to the mayo mix.

Yankee Lobster

A window into New England’s historic charm against a no-frills backdrop, this family-owned spot offers an authentic taste of generations-old fishing traditions. Its famous cold lobster roll, served in tender brioche buns alongside fresh fries or coleslaw, comes overflowing with claws and tails mixed with crunchy celery bits. Elevate your experience with a side of rich clam chowder and some salt and pepper for an extra kick. Don’t worry about the line outside; it moves quickly and it’s a seal of quality.

Best Brewery

Harpoon

Harpoon cofounder Dan Kenary will be the first to tell you about how rough-and-tumble the Seaport was when Harpoon began brewing there in 1986. Much has changed since then: While there are still workers packaging seafood nearby, Harpoon’s beer hall now also bustles with bartenders serving up the brewery’s eponymous IPA, as well as hazy, UFO series wheat beers. An onsite pickleball league and events such as Octoberfest draw huge crowds. While handmade pretzels and Sicilian square-cut pizza are the only regular food options here (check the schedule for periodic food truck visits), they are frankly all you need.

Trillium

The O.G.s remember lining up outside Trillium’s original, tiny Fort Point location to fill growlers with IPAs including Mettle and Congress Street. Those beers are still being made, and served at additional Trillium locations around the area — in the Fenway, outdoors on the Greenway in the summer (where food trucks visit), and more — where visitors can sip on styles ranging from stouts to wild farmhouse ales inside a modern glass-and-steel structure. Pro tip: Split one of Trillium’s special bottles. Trillium Fenway’s outdoor patio is key, as is proximity to the culinary options of Time Out Market next door.

Best Things to Do – ICA

There’s so much to love at the Institute of Contemporary Art, you need a ferry to see it all. At its main building in the Seaport, stroll the mix of contemporary works and soak in the breathtaking view from its glass overlook. The ICA Watershed (open from late May through Labor Day) across the harbor in East Boston deepens the experience. Housed in a former copper pipe factory, its seasonal, large-scale exhibits are immersive and free. A water shuttle ($20 for non-member adults, ticket includes general ICA admission) operates between the two.

Best Ice Cream – Taiyaki NYC

Taiyaki NYC offers flavors of soft serve ranging from vanilla to yuzu, but it isn’t the ice cream that’s made this spot Instagram-famous. The trendy chain with locations in the Seaport and Harvard Square specializes in cones made of taiyaki, the waffle-like Japanese treat shaped like a fish; here, it comes with ice cream spiraling out of an open mouth. Choose one filled with red bean paste or custard and top it with sprinkles or a mini unicorn horn. If you’re not in the mood for ice cream, you can also order a standalone taiyaki — always made fresh, with a golden crust and gooey center.

Best Rooftop – Envoy Hotel

Seven floors up from the mouth of Fort Point Channel, the rooftop of the Seaport’s Envoy Hotel boasts a sweeping view of Boston Harbor — from the Tea Party ships past the Custom House Tower all the way to the Tobin Bridge. Reserve a table in the casual dining section or order at the bar and find your own seating on big striped sofas under broad umbrellas. Come winter, the rooftop even has “igloo” dining.

Best cheap eats: 19 places to grab a bite for $20 or less

Sullivan’s

It’s not officially the end of winter in Boston until Sullivan’s opens on Castle Island. Enjoy a juicy burger or snappy Kayem hot dog (add chili and cheese, because why not?) while taking in the gorgeous views, all without breaking the bank. Don’t miss the hand-cut onion rings, and top off your meal with a soft-serve ice cream. The iconic food stand has been around for more than seven decades, and there’s a reason for the constant lines out the door. Find a sister location in Hanover.

Best Things to Do with Kids – The Children’s Museum

The Children’s Museum is more than a play space: It’s a three-story learning hub where fun is noble work. Explore rotating exhibits as well as permanent attractions such as the popular bubbles room, where kids can make giant soap bubbles with a variety of tools, and the towering New Balance maze. Special events featuring local experts, such as improv workshops and meet-and-greets with artists and musicians, bring the city down to earth for its youngest visitors.

Best Seafood – Legal Seafood

This locally-born restaurant empire was sold by Roger Berkowitz in 2020, but his obsession with quality and consistency remains. The menu is a greatest-hits album of New England seafood – excellent clam chowder, Maine lobster, oysters, scallops, mussels, and on and on – and the experience is a crowd pleaser. The three-level Seaport restaurant is the crown jewel, with floor-to-ceiling windows on the first two levels and topped by a hopping 225-seat roof deck with sushi, cocktails, and sweeping views of the harbor.  Learn more here! 

Best Bookstore – Porter Square Books

We miss the slightly shabby old Porter Square Books location, but the newer, shinier store on the Lesley University campus is still a delight: a menagerie of trinkets, cards, and, of course, books. You’ll find handpicked reads, new releases, and themed sections that rotate regularly. Many of the staff are writers themselves and give fantastic recommendations. Oh, and the store offers complimentary gift wrapping. (PSB also has a second location in the Seaport.)

Best Games

PKL

Since it opened in Southie in 2022, rookies and hardcore “picklers” alike have flocked to PKL Boston’s five climate-controlled indoor pickleball courts, which are ringed by plush seating, enlivened with a full bar and craft cocktail menu, and accented with splashy murals from Boston’s own Blind Fox. Join a league, learn the rules from staff eager to offer pointers, or simply nosh tuna wontons in between serves. Add in shuffleboard, cornhole, trivia nights, and live music on Saturdays, and your neighborhood park never looked so boring by comparison.

Puttshack

Come to the Seaport to find a two-floor, 26,000-square-foot pleasure dome of putting. This is Puttshack, an entertainment complex with four high-tech, 9-hole mini golf courses — one hole resembles a giant Connect 4, another an interactive trivia game — thumping music, and a party atmosphere (it turns 21-plus after 8 p.m.). The comfort food is better than it has any cause to be — think Korean barbecue, lamb skewers, empanadas, an amazing burger made with short ribs. Each golf ball is embedded with a sensor, which automatically keeps score for you on video screens. No fiddling with tiny pencils keeps your hands free for craft cocktails and selfies. Natick Mall has a Puttshack, too.

SPIN

Space is at a premium in Boston, so there aren’t many apartments with enough square footage to fit a Ping-Pong table. Enter SPIN, a table tennis restaurant and bar. You can rent a table for an hour at a time with up to nine of your friends. The decor is vibrant, the chicken sandwiches are juicy, and the staff do the hard work of chasing the balls that end up on the ground.

Best Movie Theater – Alamo Drafthouse

Boston has its own version of the cinephile-friendly chain in the Seaport, complete with a lobby teeming with archival movie ad publishing plates. (Looking at them is addictive.) Enjoy dinner — and perhaps a boozy cocktail — with your movie, right at your comfy seat and without having to sit through a hundred ads and trailers. These folks are serious about movies: Talkers and cellphone junkies get warned, then evicted. Audience engagement is welcome at movie watch parties that include themed props — on a recent schedule: Midsommar and Legally Blonde 2: Red, White, and Blonder, and more — among many other creative special events.  Learn more here.

Best Nightlife – Grace by Nia

Nia Grace brings Southern soul to the Seaport with her eponymous restaurant-meets-jazz-bar. Leather seats and intimate tables face the cabaret-style stage, giving patrons the opportunity to chat over signature cocktails and chargrilled oysters or just sit back and listen. Come with the family for brown butter beignets at brunch (or oxtail and grits at dinner) — or stop by later in the night to see guests transform the dining area into a dance floor, twinkling under the lights. (The venue is 21-plus after 10 p.m.). Learn more here. 

Best Comedy Club – Laugh Boston

At 300 seats, Laugh Boston is the biggest dedicated comedy club in Boston. It books a variety of touring and local acts, mostly stand-up but also some improv and podcast tapings, and is busy all week, but especially weekends. You can see some top local headliners, such as Will Noonan, and bigger names from further afield, like former Saturday Night Live cast member Tim Meadows and Cash Cab host Ben Bailey. It opened in the The Westin Boston Seaport District hotel in 2013.