Pól Ó Conghaile: Lobster rolls and a lens into local life on a Boston food tour

It seems like a pretty basic question with which to start a food tour. Yes, of course we have. But not like these.

Sitting in the Beantown Pub on Tremont Street, a Bites of Boston food tour begins with a small serving of “the oldest recipe on the tour today”.

The little navy beans are slathered in a dark, molasses-sweet sauce and served with sticky brown bread from a can. They were eaten by Native Americans, we learn, and Puritans cooked them “low and slow” in clay pots on Saturdays so they could enjoy a meal without having to work on the Sabbath.

I love food tours as a way of getting my bearings in a city. As well as a roving three-hour lunch, you get a lens into local flavours, landscapes, culture and people. You meet like-minded souls and note places to return to in a neighbourhood — in this case, Downtown Boston ($95+tax).

“We’re on the Freedom Trail today, but mostly it’s about food,” says guide Katie Barrett. “So it’s, erm, a ‘Food-om Trail’.”

After our beans and a glass of Cold Snap, a seasonal spring beer by Sam Adams, we step out to follow a portion of the two-and-a-half-mile trail (freedomtrail.org), marked by a line of red bricks in the pavement.

Across the road is the Granary Burying Ground, where residents include folk hero Paul Revere, Benjamin Franklin’s parents, and Sam Adams — the Beantown Pub likes to say it’s “the only place where you can drink a cold Sam Adams while viewing a cold Sam Adams”.

Next on the menu is clam chowder, surprisingly dished up at Irish pub Ned Devine’s.

Clams are the only seafood in the bowl, swaddled in cream and “very thick, but not so thick that you could stand the spoon up,” Katie says. It’s hearty, sweet and full of nibbly little clam bits — a recipe that has won the local Chowderfest several times. Tip? A little tickle of Tabasco spices things up nicely.

Ned Devine’s is in Quincy Market, a touristy strip near Faneuil Hall, but one crammed with cut and thrust — visitors squeeze along a thin corridor as venders hustle and hawk their chowdas, noodles, pizza bagels and cream pies. I liked its raucous energy much more than the slightly produced air to Time Out Boston, or the well-meaning, if a little worthy, artisanal Boston Public Market nearby.

Along our route, we pass the State House, dip into Pi Alley, once a newspaper and printing hub, and hear about historic eateries like the Union Oyster House.

Half-lobster rolls are served at Bell in Hand Tavern, a busy red-brick pub founded in 1795 by town crier Jimmy Wilson (“He reported on everything from the Boston Tea Party to the birth of the nation,” it says).

Bostonians were bemused when lobster rolls on brioche buns were “repopularised” in the 1990s, Katie tells us. “We’d been eating them forever!”

Our final dish is a disc of Boston cream pie at Omni Parker House, the 19th-century hotel claiming to have first served the classic. It’s a sponge cake, stuffed with vanilla cream and topped with a crisp chocolate icing that cracks nicely under the fork.

For an inside tip, let me spill a final Boston bean. Book Table 40 at its restaurant... it’s where JFK is said to have proposed to Jackie.

Pól was a guest of Meet Boston and Bites of Boston. bitesofbostonfoodtours.com; meetboston.com