Today was my final full day in Boston. I have some miscellaneous photographs from attending PAX East and exploring the city, but I have so many food pictures that I figured it would be worth doing a blog post dedicated strictly to some of what I ate while traveling.

I landed in Boston at 9:16 PM EDT, and by the time I had made it to my hotel and got unpacked and washed up after my flight, it was already really late. I didn’t want to walk in the cold, so I checked some food delivery apps and found Lucky’s Lounge open late. I ordered salmon with roasted potatoes, as­par­a­gus, and salad. The salmon was underwhelming, the salad was way too sour, and the vegetables were passable.

My friends arrived in Boston the following night, and funny enough, the restaurant they picked to meet up… was Lucky’s Lounge again. This time I went in-person.

My dine-in order was a triple smash burger. It was strange, because smash burgers are usually supposed to be wide and thin, but this one was ag­gres­sive­ly tall. The burger lacked juiciness and tenderness and was overall underwhelming. The French fries were passable.

For one of the meals I had delivered to my hotel room after one of the convention days, I ordered a sashimi bowl and a sushi roll from Tora Japanese Res­tau­rant. It was pricey, but the fish variety and quality made it worth it. This was also the best shrimp head I’ve ever had.

Prior to my friends Dan and Jay’s first panel at PAX East, we went to Gyu-Kaku. Gyu-Kaku is a chain and has been a hit-or-miss in the Southern Cali­for­nia area, but this one near Boston was great. We all got the premium all-you-can-eat option and were very satisfied.

Beef tongue is one of my favorite cuts of meat at grill-your-own BBQ restaurants. Gyu-Kaku limits the number of orders of beef tongue you can put in because they label it as an extra premium dish, but luckily for me, none of my three friends I went with were a fan of beef tongue, so I got eat everyone’s portion on my own.

I got matcha ice cream for my dessert. This was the greenest and roundest scoop of green tea ice cream I’d ever seen.

Here is a takeout order of fish and chips from Stubbys that I got as a late night snack after one of the convention days.

After Dan and Jay’s second panel at PAX East, they had a meet-and-greet; while they were occupied, my friend Aidan (who runs the Skip the Tutorial You­Tube channel) and I left to get some lunch. I didn’t notice this until after I ordered, but coincidentally, the restaurant that Aidan picked was the same one from which I had ordered sushi a few nights prior—Tora.

I got a salmon bowl with three variants of salmon—regular, belly, and minced. The quality of the fish was fantastic. Considering that salmon belly is my second favorite type of sushi, I enjoyed it a lot.

Aidan is not a big fan of fish, so he got one pork and one beef dish.

I wasn’t too hungry so I didn’t get any dessert, but Aidan got some green tea ice cream.

For another one of my late night snacks near the end of my trip, I ordered a lengua burrito bowl from Chilacates Mexican Street Food. The portion size of meat was extremely small, which detracted from the overall flavor balance of the dish.

And for my final meal of Boston, and upon recommendation of one of my foodie friends, I ordered braised beef noodle soup, signature pork soup dump­lings, crispy-bottom pork buns, and iced soy milk from Nan Xiang Express. This tasted great, and eating it gave me a warm, cozy, homey feel.

When people online found out I was going to PAX East, I got a lot of recommendations of places to try out. Unfortunately, my breadth of exposure to res­tau­rants ended up being fairly limited, not only because I did not rent a vehicle, but also because it was very cold outside and it sapped away a lot of my motivation for going out.

I heard that PAX East 2025 is going to take place during the summer, so I’m guessing I’m going to end up checking out a lot more restaurants next year.

I just arrived in Boston, Massachusetts for PAX East.

This is my first time in Boston since before the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, the last time I was in Boston was basically immediately before the pan­dem­ic—I attended PAX East 2020 as a panelist, and during the convention, news was breaking about the coronavirus having moved from China to the United States. We know a lot about COVID-19 now, but back then, the virus was new and information about it was scarce. In response, I basically didn’t do anything in Boston except for show up to speak at my panel, then immediately left the convention center to limit my exposure to other people.

Now that it’s been a couple years since a majority of the world has deemed the COVID-19 pandemic to no longer be a threat, I figured 2024 would be a good year to head back to PAX East to enjoy a convention pre-pandemic-style. A few of my friends are panelists this year, and I’m also looking forward to checking out other parts of Boston.

On my way to Boston, I flew JetBlue flight 188 from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) to Boston Logan International Airport (BOS). I decided to fly out of Los Angeles instead of my home airport in Las Vegas because flights out of LAX were cheaper, and it was easy for me to coordinate some other things to take care of in LA to fall shortly prior to my departure.

There was a wom­an seated across the aisle from me with a baby that cried for about a fifth of the duration of the flight, but otherwise, everything else went fairly smooth­ly and uneventfully.

Meal service started with a welcome pastry. I’m not sure what exactly they were, but they tasted like a combination of very nutty cookies and crackers.

My first entrée was shrimp atop broasted fennel in saffron broth and topped with potato crumble. It was mediocre, but was still my favorite dish of the meal.

Next was roasted chicken with almond romesco topped with rosemary breadcrumbs. The chicken was extremely dry and the sauce tasted a bit in­com­plete, as if it was missing an aspect of richness to it.

Finally, the last dish was lasagna with fonduta, wild mushrooms, and fontina. It was extremely cheesy, even after scraping off the excess cheese topping. It sort of tasted like I was eating a little block of cheese, and couldn’t really tell if it even had any pasta sheets inside of it.

The three small plates came with a side of bread and extra virgin olive oil.

For my beverage, I ordered a non-alcoholic Mint Condition made from seltzer, ginger, lime, cucumber, and mint. It was clean and refreshing.

For dessert, I was served vanilla gelato topped with strawberry jam and sprinkled with devil’s food cake crumble. It was an interesting combination of fla­vors, and I liked the texture better after I mixed it up to a smoother ice cream consistency.

After about five hours, we began our descent and approach to Boston.

We touched down in Boston to a nice and chilly 40°F, or just over 4°C—quite the difference from a Los Angeles departing temperature of 68°F, or 20°C.

Like usual, I like to travel with an extra buffer day so I have an opportunity to recover before heading into the convention and socializing with friends. PAX East is taking place from the 21st until the 24th, then I’ll be headed back to Los Angeles on the 26th.

After seeing how tragically poor of an experience I had at Donna’s, one of my foodie friends tried to make me not lose all hope in Italian restaurants by taking me to Bestia in Los Angeles, California last week, a spot that she had been to in the past and liked.

For our first appetizer, we ordered beef tartare crostino with dry aged beef, tonnato, egg yolk jam, dill, cured peppercorns, and radish. (The slices of toasted bread are not pic­tured.) This was a well-rounded beef tartare with flavor that was strong, but not gamey. The tonnato sauce added a nice u­nique­ness to the beef tartare, but was prepared mildly enough that it did not compete with the umami of the beef.

Our second appetizer was roasted bone marrow with spinach gnocchetti and smoked breadcrumbs, tossed in aged balsamic. This was my favorite dish of the night.

The bone marrow was exactly what you’d expect from high-quality bone marrow, but the gnocchetti was what truly made the dish—the texture was un­like pasta I’ve ever had, in that it had the perfect amount of push-back against every chew without at all being firm or hard. I usually don’t prefer vin­ai­grette because I don’t like the sourness of it, but this balsamic had the perfect intensity such that it wasn’t sour, but it also had enough kick to pierce through the deep richness of the bone marrow.

Our third and final appetizer was mussels with spicy ‘nduja, garlic, lemon, tomato, and fennel pollen with a side of grilled bread. My friend wanted to take this photo, but it turned out blurry because my camera decided to troll her and focus on the menu under the plate instead.

I’m usually not the biggest fan of ordering mussels or other seafood at Italian restaurants because it usually comes out drenched in ma­ri­na­ra sauce and I don’t think seafood really goes that well with marinara sauce. So, when these mussels came out, I was very pleased that the sauce wasn’t just straight ma­ri­na­ra, but rather, a house-made mixture that wasn’t tomatoey or acidic. We ran out of bread at the end, but the ‘nduja was good enough that I was just scooping and eating straight sauce to clean up the dish.

Our first entrée was spinach ravioli with venison osso bucco, celery root purée, apple balsamic, gorgonzola, and grana.

This tasted great and had a well-balanced flavor profile of meaty, earthy, and cheesy. I usually don’t like strong cheeses, but the cheese on this ravioli was very unique—you could distinctly smell the cheese if you held a piece of ravioli up to your nose, but while I was eating it, I couldn’t really detect any of the moldy flavor that usually makes me averse to cheese.

Our second entrée was cavatelli alla Norcina with ricotta dumplings, black truffles, pork sausage, and fresh thyme.

Although it was still delicious, this was my least favorite dish of the night. Out of all the dishes, this one tasted the most “normal” (while all the other ones had a more premium feel to it). The sausage was a bit high on salt, and they went a little overboard with the truffle such that I think even just a quar­ter of the truffle would’ve sufficed for a well-rounded pasta dish.

For dessert, we had crème fraîche panna cotta with winter citrus, topped with wildflower honey and blood orange syrup and a side of Meyer lemon cook­ies. The sweetness was very subtle and it was clear that it came from the fruits instead of from excessive added sugar. This was a nice, clean dessert to round out the rich, umami meal.

The table on the right shows how much we paid.

I feel like I need to give a disclaimer first. The person I went with, who picked this restaurant, also picked all the dishes. She and I have very similar taste, so in essence, this meal was curated and catered spe­cif­i­cal­ly to my liking. As a result, the positive things I say about this restaurant may have a degree of bi­as in it.

With that being said, on the basis of the dishes I tried, I think this is my favorite Italian restaurant I’ve ever been to. Italian restaurants are a big hit-or-miss for me because Italian cuisine tends to just be egre­gious­ly excessive in salt and fat, but Bestia focused more on ingredients rather than seasonings. Just to be clear, there are many other restaurants in general that I like better, but specifically for Italian food, Bestia was fantastic.

If you know me, you know that I hate hidden fees and charges. There have been times in the past when I would not recommend a restaurant on the sole basis of them charging an undisclosed fee. Bestia had a service charge, but theirs was more transparently presented, and it was also optional and could be o­mit­ted from the bill. The service charge was described as a means for the restaurant to “ensure com­pet­i­tive industry compensation [and] health and medical benefits for all our valued full-time team mem­bers.”

Our reservation was after 9 PM and it was already getting really late by the time we were done, so I didn’t want to spend more time waiting for the serv­ice fee to be removed from the bill and instead accommodated by tipping less. If you are a restaurant owner and are reading this, I highly discourage you from adding in extra fees like this. There is no problem with just increasing the price of your menu items. The only people who are going to fall for the service charge are ones who are not paying attention, and if they find out about it later, it will just make them feel bad. Those who are paying at­ten­tion will just tip less.

Overall, I had a good time at Bestia and would recommend it for anyone looking for a nice Italian restaurant.