Downtown Crossing to get another burger place, but, of course, in the City that Always Sleeps, it has to close by midnight
The Boston Licensing Board yesterday gave Tasty Burger a license to start slinging burgers and chicken on buns at 48 Winter St., near Tremont, but deferred action on its request for a separate beer and wine license, which would have set it up for a high-end burger war with the beer-selling Mooyah around the corner.
The board also set a closing time of midnight for the Tasty Burger. The local chain had originally requested a closing time of 2 a.m., but agreed to pull back on that after the Midtown-Park Plaza Neighborhood Association, which represents downtown's growing residential population, decided that the heart of a supposed world-class city is no place for late-night hamburgers now that people actually live there.
People who do need something to eat early in the morning will have to continue to trek down Tremont Street to New York Pizza or Chinatown or to the South Station area for the South Street Diner.
At a hearing on Wednesday, Tasty attorney Dennis Quilty said the outlet would bring "an attractive and safe place" to get something to eat at an end of Winter that has long been "a little dicey."
The mayor's office and the office of Councilor Ed Flynn supported Tasty's request, along with the midnight closing time.
Ad:
Comments
They have the best shakes
Glad to see Tasty Burger expanding.
I wasn't sure which storefront this was, so I looked and found that Angus Young is already waiting outside for them to open.
https://goo.gl/maps/RFe9eLj3KRimtKct5
Yep, where there used to be
a mini food court with Falafel King, among others.
I miss that place!
There was a take-out Chinese place just inside the door to the right, unbelievably cheap and tasty. I'm not sure they even had a name, but I loved that place when I worked across the street.
On the other hand, the cellphone repair guy attracted a pretty sketchy clientele.
The best quick Chinese
The best quick Chinese takeout in the neighborhood! Now you need to settle for the mall food in the Corner, or trek all the way to Chinatown.
According to the big sign
According to the big sign that's still up outside, it was called 68 Chinese.
The sign also says there was a spot in there called Excellent Subs, which I regrettably never tried.
Excellent subs was pretty good.
Not a lot of toppings, but what they had was worth getting.
Name that neighborhood!
I'm curious about this Midtown-Park Plaza Neighborhood Association. Didn't find a website for that organization, and I'm wondering what territory they represent. Park Plaza is certainly a landmark, but I would tend to align it with Bay Village or Back Bay in terms of neighborhoods. Is "Midtown" really a thing in Boston? Regardless, Tremont/Winter would be Downtown, no?
It dates back to a time when ...
Somebody (the city, maybe?) tried to establish a Midtown Cultural District, back before many people actually lived downtown and "the Theater District" wasn't cutting it and the name stuck, at least for the neighborhood association, which gradually came to subsume Downtown Crossing when people actually started living there in sizeable numbers.
Naturally, it does not extend anywhere near the Midtown Hotel, and one can easily get confused by real estate listings that basically say downtown is midtown, which maybe, maybe makes sense in a town that doesn't have an uptown for a midtown to separate from its downtown, I don't know, it just makes my head hurt.
Thanks for the history!
One of these days, maybe we'll have an Uptown, too. Then we'd *really* be world class!
come and gone
Perhaps we should be glad it's not the "ladder district" any more?
Not a cheeseburger at 1:30 AM!
That would be OUTRAGEOUS! This isn't some big city like Cleveland or Omaha where you can wander around getting sandwiches while bars are still open!
THINK. OF. THE. CHILDREN.
If the association had its way...
...the bars wouldn't be open then either.
Some History of That Location
It's completely forgotten now, but in the early 1970s that location in that beautiful art deco building on Winter Street was a head shop called Miles. It had a most unusual layout in the fact that the head shop was upstairs on the second floor and downstairs in the basement but the ground floor was a women's shoe store. The downstairs had rolling papers and other "paraphernalia", hippie jewelry, incense, etc and the upstairs had posters and bootleg albums as well as alternative publications. The walls of the stairways featured large poster-like images of rock stars of the day such as Dylan, Hendrix, etc, but they weren't posters they were wallpaper of some sort. It was a magical place for an adolescent like me. In the 80s it became the more remembered Stairway to Heaven which followed a similar layout, but was not nearly as cool as Miles had been. Years later as a food court with falafel and Chinese fast food stalls I noticed how filthy and shabby looking this once legendary place had become. But the entire street has become that way.
They're competing with Shake
They're competing with Shake Shack at Washington and Milk now as well!
shake shack and...
and mooyah and 5 guys . (and wendys and mcfood and BK)
It would be anarchy!
I mean, seriously, if someone could go out at 1:00 AM and get an overpriced hamburger in the middle of the downtown of a major American city how could society function? There are only so many pearls we have to clutch!
If however one were to walk a few blocks away they could take Amtrak to a real major American city. I vaguely remember years ago in that city I left a concert at MSG at midnight, got a pizza with friends and went to a bar. Yes, we had to order pitchers at 4:00 AM since they had to stop selling alcohol until 7:00 AM but we got by and didn't have to leave. Their breakfast sandwiches were tremendous. A toothless old man with a wet rag would wipe the tables while telling dirty stories every 30 minutes. Sometime in the morning we stumbled out into bright sunshine with businessmen walking by in expensive suits on their way to work as we made our way to Penn Station and got the hell out of town. There is no way such decadence should be permitted. It was like Gomorrah!
I recall when I lived in LA
I recall when I lived in LA about 20 years ago there were some clubs that would be open pretty much from Thursday afternoon to Monday morning- could stay open- but couldn't serve between 2-6 AM- heard there were similar places in SF
Here I come to save the day....
" attorney Dennis Quilty said the outlet would bring "an attractive and safe place" to get something to eat at an end of Winter that has long been "a little dicey.""
Wow - one new eatery will save the day and rescue Winter street. (and I didn't realize Winter needed saving - more of those two blocks of Tremont where homeless and kids spend their day)