Faneuil Hall Marketplace: Caught in Fisherman’s Net

The first day I said to myself, as I do every year, “Spring is coming but don’t get too excited yet,” was last Saturday, March 11, 2006. It was sunny, mildly warm, and there was a slight breeze around me. It was pretty much the perfect March day.

My sister was celebrating the tail end of her spring break at home with my family and her roommate from college and best friend from high school. They were all spending the day shopping in Boston with my mom.

I met up with them at Quincy Market, but not until after I had a snack first.
The two of us were hungry and had been running errands all day long. We had only an hour to meet with my family and were starving.

The Faneuil Hall Marketplace was the obvious choice but was incredibly crowded because of the great weather, which brought out Bostonians in droves. The sun shined and the air smelled of seawater and spring, with a hint of clams, crabs and shrimp.

I have a personal tradition that I follow religiously: every time I am in the Quincy market area I will get clam chowda (as my father, not I would say) in a bread bowl and a crab or lobster roll. But not just any crab roll will do. It has to be fresh crabmeat, none of that “Krab” with a K, which just plain scares me.

And that’s exactly what I got. I chose Fisherman’s Net because the line wasn’t as long as its adjacent seafood neighbor, but the food looked great, smelled amazing and wasn’t too expensive.

The crab salad roll was exactly what I had envisioned, tasty fresh crabmeat salad with the perfect amount of salt and pepper and a hint of mayonnaise (because too much mayo can make or break any salad). The bread was crusty and delicious.

As for the bread bowl of chowder.
I had a problem with the chowder. It wasn’t as good as I expected, especially after sampling the amazing crab roll (be sure to say crab salad roll because they got confused when I first ordered). The taste of clams seemed to be missing, the potatoes were not as cooked as I would’ve liked and the soup was a little watery. It still wasn’t bad, just not as good as my past experiences. Maybe it was just a bad batch.

The crab roll completely made up for the soup, but the bread surrounding the soup was fantastic. Soft on the inside and crusty on the outside, it was perfect for dipping.

Along with a bottle of water, the total came out to $14.70, and this light lunch for two was delicious, healthy and gave me the taste of summer I needed.

After getting our food we decided to skip the crowded “mess hall” style eatery with tables and chairs and sit in the middle of the colonnade along with other brilliant people. Huge round boulder-like structures made perfect chairs and tables, and sharing this lunch in the middle of the afternoon on a sunny day in March was a glimpse into food heaven.

Here is a chowder recipes including everything from Classic New England Clam Chowder to Corn Chowder to Manhattan Clam Chowder.

And by the way, MIT’s Laverde’s Market” has some incredible Corn Chowder on select days. See the M-I-T post for more information on Laverde’s.