Boston North End: Little Italy Neighbourhood and Food Guide

The North End is Boston's oldest neighbourhood and its most intensely Italian — a compact peninsula just north of Faneuil Hall where the descendants of Italian immigrants who arrived between 1880 and 1920 have maintained a food culture, community identity, and neighbourhood character that gentrification has not erased. The narrow streets around Hanover Street and Salem Street contain the highest concentration of Italian bakeries, pastry shops, and red-sauce restaurants in New England.

The cannoli competition is the defining North End debate: Mike's Pastry or Modern Pastry? Both institutions occupy positions on Hanover Street and both have devoted partisans who will argue their case with the intensity usually reserved for sports rivalries. The answer is that both are excellent, but Modern's are filled to order (preventing sogginess) while Mike's are available in more varieties. Sample both and form your own opinions.

Beyond the pastry controversy, the North End's feast calendar is one of the most entertaining neighbourhood spectacles in America — Italian-American religious festivals honouring patron saints occur almost every weekend from July through September, with marching bands, street processions, and the pinning of dollar bills to the statue of the saint creating a scene that connects directly to 19th-century southern Italian village traditions.