Someone wrote: >Charles D. wrote: > >>Ms. M. wrote: >>>Someone wrote: >>>> Someone wrote: >>>> >My husband will be going to Boston and Albany next week. Staying >>>> >downtown both places. On govt per diem. Any restaurant suggestions? >>>> >>>> Help us out, here: what's the government per diem, and what kind of food >>>> does your husband like? And where, specifically, will he be staying? >>> >>>Federal per diem, meals and incidental expenses: >>> >>> Massachusetts, Boston - $38.00 >>> New York, Albany - 34.00 >>> >>>Pretty low budget. >> >>Yeah, but maybe he'd be willing to kick in some of his own money. >> >>If he added ten or fifteen dollars a day, and stayed with one drink >>a day (or packed his own), he could eat pretty well. Not the top >IHe likes ethnic----Italian or Asian. Also seafood. Can add some >moeny on his own. Staying at Marriott, Long Wharf in Boston and prob. >near state offices in Albany. Can't help you with Albany, although I probably should be able to since I grew up near there. For Italian, my favorite is in the North End -- a little place called Pagliuca's on Parmenter Street between Salem and Hanover. My standard recommendation is to get the fusilli (made fresh daily) with whatever sauce you find appealing. The North End is about a fifteen to twenty minute walk from the Marriott. As for Asian food, in Chinatown you can get plenty of good Chinese (Cantonese) and Vietnamese food. My recs are Ho Yuen Ting on Hudson Street for Chinese, East Ocean City on Beach Street (also Chinese and very good, but #2 to HYT), and Ba Dat on Harrison Avenue for Vietnamese (no atmosphere, cheap, very good food). There are a lot of other good places, and you're unlikely to go far wrong in Chinatown -- bad restaurants just don't stay in business long, there's too much competition -- but those are some tried-and-true, never-failed-to-please favorites. Chinatown also contains a very respectable Japanese restaurant called Ginza, which does a fine job with sushi. They're located on Beach Street, more or less opposite Ho Yuen Ting. Specific dish recommendations would be: peking ravioli, hot and sour soup, beef ginger scallion hot pot, Chinese style lobster, or any kind of whole sea bass or flounder at Ho Yuen Ting; any seafood dish at East Ocean City; barbecued beef or chicken with lemongrass, or pho at Ba Dat; and sushi at Ginza. I would also say, stay away from the dishes you can get anywhere, like sesame beef or orange chicken or General Gau's shrimp or Colonel Bob's chicken or moo shu this or sweet and sour that. They'll be competently executed, but you can get 'em anywhere (and yeah, I know that hot and sour soup falls into the category of "dishes you can get anywhere", but this is an exception because the H&SS at Ho Yuen Ting is that much better than average). Chinatown is a couple of short subway rides from the Marriott. Take the blue line from Aquarium one stop to State Street, change to the Orange Line -- Forest Hills side -- at State, go two stops to Chinatown. When you get out, at the corner of Washington and Essex, go down Washington a short block and take a left on Beach Street. Harrison is the first cross steet on your left, and Hudson is the last cross street on your right before you get to the Chinatown gate.
Boston, MA