Mayor Tom Menino loved Boston, and he also loved food. A lot.
Food critic Corby Kummer joined Boston Public Radio to discuss what it was like to eat lunch with Mayor Menino and the positive impact he had on the eating habits of Bostonians.
Menino was a man who was ceaselessly loyal to his favorite pastry shop, Modern Pastry—“I would constantly bring boxes of cookies from Maria’s to him, but he was loyal to Modern,” Kummer laughed—and held court in coffee shops all along Hanover Street.
“He was really the king of the North End while he was there,” Kummer said.
Kummer dined frequently with the Mayor, which solved one of the biggest problems faced by any food critic entering a restaurant: being recognized by the staff.
“If I’m ever worried about being recognized, it didn’t matter if the Mayor was there!” he said. “I vanished into the woodwork. It was a great strategy.”
One of their meals, a lunch visit to Esperia Grill in Brighton, was caught on tape by Boston University. Take a look:
But Menino’s love for food went beyond personal tastes. He was also trailblazer when it came to increasing accessibility to healthy, fresh food. During his tenure, he promoted urban gardens and opened 25 supermarkets around Boston, even before the term “food desert” was common parlance.
Those actions, Kummer explained, were inspired by the Mayor’s deep-seated commitment to improving public health. “It was concern about low-income people, it was concern about access to fresh food, it was concern about equality,” he said.
“The idea was that everybody should be able to have fresh food,” Kummer said.
For more from food critic Corby Kummer, tune in to his full interview on Boston Public Radio, above. Read more about Menino’s legacy on food and public health here.
