Visit
The front of Ristorante Saraceno at dusk on Hanover Street — a red awning lettered RISTORANTE SARACENO under a painted CUCINA NAPOLETANA board, warm light in the windows and a street lamp beside the door.

Hanover Street · Boston’s North End

Napoli’s best, on Hanover Street.

A Napoletana kitchen at 286 Hanover Street, in the middle of the North End. Lobster fra diavolo, baby octopus in red sauce, clams both ways, and a seafood antipasto meant for the whole table. Private rooms, a fireplace and a full bar. Open every day from 11:30.

Find usWhat to order
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A stone-arched cellar dining room lit warmly, with white-clothed tables, dark chairs and greenery trained across the vaulting.
A server carrying a large white platter of baked stuffed clams, stuffed mushrooms, escargots in the shell, mussels in red sauce and fried calamari through a dark dining room.
A table photographed from above, crowded with a bowl of octopus in red sauce, a calamari salad, rigatoni in tomato sauce, sliced bread, olive oil and a dish of crushed red pepper.
Two hands touching glasses together over a table — a spritz and a tall citrus cocktail — in a warm, dark, stone-walled room.

An evening here

  1. 01

    Down the stairs, into the stone

    The room you are shown to is not the one you walked into. There is a cellar of stone arches under the dining room, a second floor above it, private rooms for large tables, and a fireplace going in the winter. Ask for the one you want when you book.

  2. 02

    The antipasti come out first

    Baked clams under their signature stuffing, mushrooms stuffed with sweet sausage, escargots, mussels poached red or white, calamari fried light. Nobody orders one. They arrive on the same plate and the table sorts it out.

  3. 03

    Then there is no room left

    Octopus in red sauce, a plate of calamari salad, rigatoni, bread, oil, a bowl of crushed red pepper somebody keeps reaching for. This is a menu built to be ordered across — sixty-odd dishes, and the seafood half of it is the half to read twice.

  4. 04

    Salute

    A full bar, a wine list the owners say the whole place was built out of a love for, and a room dark enough that a Tuesday feels like an occasion. Then out onto Hanover Street, which is the reason people come to this neighbourhood in the first place.

What to order

Order the sea

There is a full Italian-American menu here — eight chicken dishes, nine veal, a Fiorentina for the table. Order it if you like. But the kitchen came back from Napoli with the seafood, and that is the half of the menu worth reading twice.

  • A long white plate of calamari rings and octopus over lettuce with black olives, beside a bread basket and a cruet of olive oil.

    Antipasto di Mare della Casa

    Calamari and octopus, dressed in imported olive oil and balsamic with kalamata olives. The house antipasto, and the right way to start: it lands in the middle and everyone picks at it while the rest is ordered.

    $24.99

  • A wide white bowl of baby octopus in red sauce with black olives and cherry tomatoes, beside a basket of sliced bread and a dish of crushed red pepper.

    Polpetielli Affogati

    Baby octopus drowned — that is what affogati means — and simmered down with capers, olives and cherry tomatoes until the sauce is worth the bread it takes to finish it. The most Napoletana thing on the menu.

    $26.99

  • A lobster in spicy red sauce over linguine on a white plate, claws and tail shell in the sauce, with a bread basket and a glass of rosé alongside.

    Aragosta Fra’ Diavolo

    A whole lobster taken apart, cooked down with onions and cherry tomatoes in a sauce with a temper on it, and put over linguine. The dish the room is loudest about, and the one that makes the bill.

    $46.00

  • A cannolo on a square white plate, both ends packed with chocolate chips, with whipped cream and chocolate sauce beside it.

    Cannoli

    Shell filled to order, both ends in chocolate chips, cream on the plate and chocolate over the top. It is not a subtle dessert and it is not trying to be.

A table laid with a white cloth, folded navy napkins and wine glasses beside a leaded window, with exposed brick and a wooden floor.
Laid and waiting, an hour before the street outside fills up.

The kitchen

They went to Italy
and came back with Napoli.

Ristorante Saraceno tells its own story simply enough: the owners travelled the Italian regions, ate their way through them, and decided the one to bring home was Napoli’s. Frank Pezzano has run it on 286 Hanover Street ever since, and the hardest part, by their own account, was never the cooking — it was finding ingredients good enough for it.

What that means on the plate is that the seafood is the serious half. Clams baked under a signature stuffing or thrown into spaghetti red or white, mussels poached both ways, baby octopus drowned in red sauce, a cioppino with lobster in it, and a fra diavolo with a genuine temper. Around it sits the full Italian-American canon — marsala, piccata, francese, saltimbocca, parmigiana, a hand-cut Fiorentina — cooked properly rather than reinvented.

The room is four rooms. A dining room off Hanover Street, a cellar of stone arches below it, more seating above, and private rooms for the parties that take over a whole floor. There is a fireplace for the winter and a table outside for the six weeks a year Boston allows it. It is the North End’s busiest street, and this is the quiet way to be on it.

  • 4Rooms — street level, the stone cellar, upstairs, and private
  • 7Days a week, open from 11:30 straight through
  • 3hParking validated — and valet outside the door

The rooms

Four rooms and a table outside

White-clothed tables set with wine glasses and folded napkins, seen through a brick archway under a chandelier.
An outdoor table laid with plates of salad, calamari and pasta, a bottle of sparkling water and a candle, against a stone wall with terracotta pots of geraniums.
Rigatoni with broccoli in a light sauce in a white bowl, shot from above on marble with bread, two cocktails and plates of chips around it.

Visit

286 Hanover Street,
Hanover Street

286 Hanover Street
Boston, MA 02113

Hanover Street is the North End’s main run, and Saraceno is in the middle of it — Haymarket, Aquarium and North Station are each about half a mile off. Parking is validated for up to three hours and there is valet outside the door, which on this street is worth more than it sounds. Reservations are taken and are a good idea at the weekend. There are gluten-free options across the menu, and private rooms for large parties — ask for those on (617) 227-5888.

Call (617) 227‑5353Get directions

Open

Monday – Sunday
11:30 AM – 10 PM

Open seven days, 11:30 to close, with no afternoon break — which on this street makes it one of the few places you can sit down at three o’clock.