The 38 Best Restaurants in Boston | Eater Boston

"Boston is bursting with seafood — lobster rolls, scallop crudo, oyster happy hours, you name it — but seafood that sidesteps familiar New England preparations? That’s a bit less common. Enter Moëca, the younger sibling to the perpetually booked-out Italian restaurant Giulia just down the street on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge. This is where you go for craggy, buttermilk-fried monkfish showered with sesame seeds and a pool of tamarind hot sauce on the side, or steamed mussels served not in a bowl but over a whopping hunk of sourdough soaked in a Basque pil pil sauce. Seafood takes unexpected, surprising forms at Moëca, and it is well worth the ride. Best for: Bringing that out-of-towner who loves to yap about how the city’s dining scene is subpar and has tasked you with convincing them otherwise." - Erika Adams