Boston

Boston's dining record begins with the harbor. The Union Oyster House has served in a Blackstone Block building completed around 1716 and has operated as a restaurant since 1826, recognized as the oldest continuously operating restaurant in the United States and designated a National Historic Landmark in 2003. Durgin-Park followed in 1827, moving to its Faneuil Hall site in 1877 and closing in 2019 after nearly two centuries of plain New England cooking.

The nineteenth-century hotel dining room shaped the city's canon. Parker's Restaurant at the Parker House, opened in 1855, is credited with the 1856 creation of Boston cream pie — now the Massachusetts state dessert — and with the Parker House roll introduced in the 1870s; the hotel also housed the Saturday Club, whose members included Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow and Holmes. Locke-Ober, opened in 1875, served Brahmin and political Boston for 137 years before closing in 2012.

Brewing is the city's oldest beverage trade: Samuel Adams, the patriot for whom the beer is named, worked as a maltster in the family's King Street business. Jim Koch's Boston Beer Company introduced Samuel Adams Boston Lager in 1984, and its Jamaica Plain brewery remains the brand's original home.