Hub Hall

What can be better than spending a day eating your way through Boston and beyond? Welcome to the Phantom Gourmet. I'm Dan Andelman.

I'm Dave Andelman. And we're at Hub Hall right next to TD Garden. If you want to try a dozen of Boston's top dining destinations you can do it here all under one roof.

This kind of upscale food hall is sweeping the nation. And this is Boston's crown jewel and there are just so many good things to eat.

This is not a mall food court featuring Sarku Japan and Sbarro. These are locally curated fantastic diverse restaurants.

18 different food outlets, beer outlets, drink outlets, bars, we really have something for everyone. And so instead of kind of going to different parts of the city, you can really get a taste of everything here.

Now Boston isn't exactly known for its barbecue but that is starting to change. Thanks to this place the Smoke Shop. Chef/owner Andy Husbands has been an award winning pitmaster throughout the country for over 20 years. And the Smoke Shop is where he shows his craft.

I'm a chicken wing freak. These are some of my favorites. They're both smoked and fried resulting in tremendous flavor and texture.

They're made with a blend of agave and some pit spices, you have the sweetness you have the savoriness, salt, pepper, juicy chicken, absolutely flawlessly executed wings.

A lot of people go here before the Celtics or Bruins games. This is a perfect item for a sports fan: The pulled pork sandwich. It is tasty. It is hearty. You can eat it in one hand and drink a beer in the other.

Of course, you have to have a good place to grab a slice. And they do. It's called our Apizza. This is the pizza concept from Chef Douglas Williams, who also has a high end Italian restaurant named Mida. And he has not just one but two of the best styles of pizza in Boston.

This one the only places I know that offers New Haven style pizza and Roman style pizza. New Haven is a thinner round pie with the charred edges. Roman is a much thicker square piece of pizza.

I actually like the Roman style pizza here. It's substantive. It's big. It's hearty. And I like to load it up with lots of stuff.

I like New Haven style. I like the New England roots. I liked that it's thinner, that it's circular, which is really the nature of a pizza so you get the right amount of crust on every slice. And I love that New Haven char.

And by the way, this is a freaking huge pizza. It's 20 inches across. That's a lot of pizza!

Now let's talk about one of the Boston area's most famous foods: the roast beef sandwich.

The roast beef sandwich was invented at Kelly's Roast Beef about seven miles north of here. And that led to roast beef places opening all up and down the North Shore of Boston.

At Hub Hall, the place to go for a roast beef sandwich is called Cusser's. Cusser's was started by chef owner Carolyn Johnson and this is her tribute to what's known as the North Shore style roast beef sandwich. The signature sandwich is known as the Three Way in this case the three refers to sauce, cheese and mayo.

The beef is the star of this sandwich and this is very tender on the rare side roast beef just the way I like it. And it's all encased in an onion roll, which I firmly believe is the most underutilized roll in food today. In Philly, you get cheesesteaks. In Boston, you get a roast beef sandwich.

So what's the most popular stand here at Hub Hall? Without a doubt it's a place called Mike's Pastry.

Mike's originally from the nearby North End is famous for their pastry, cookies, cannoli, all your favorite Italian dessert specialties. This cannoli is absolutely famous. You must try it if you go to Mike's. One of the only places that makes their own filling makes their own shell puts the two together at the last minute so the inside remains creamy and the outside remains crispy. Cannoli is their trademark number one item but I actually prefer the lobster tail.

When you hear the phrase lobster tail, you're probably thinking of this. No, this is a dessert lobster tail, a traditional Italian dessert. And Mike's does it just about as well as anybody in the country.

It's a huge pastry it takes two hands to hold it up. It is super crispy or crocante as they would say an Italian. And when you open up a lobster tail, there is no more beautiful sight on Earth.

This just this just a big fun place. I mean, it's got Japanese and Greek and Italian and burgers, just everything that you would want to eat, and lots of bars and tons of people just having a great time.

I think that you really have the opportunity to come in and experience a lot of Boston in one spot. We have lots of big community tables where everybody can get together and you can really try, you get a chance to taste everything with a big group of people and get offerings from all of them.

So if you really want to experience a lot of Boston's best food, this place is like your cheat code because you can do it all here at one time under one roof at Hub Hall.