When I was at MIT in the 1960s, my go-to places to eat were the F&T Diner, where I sometimes had dinner at six in the morning, and Jennie’s in Boston’s North End, where on Wednesday nights we could get all the spaghetti we could eat for around five bucks.
For a night out, though, there was a different choice: Ida’s on Mechanic Street. Calling it a street was generous. It was really an alley overlooking the entrance to the Sumner Tunnel.
Ida’s was the place you went when you wanted dinner to feel like an occasion. There were tablecloths, an endless pitcher of Chianti and those little glasses that at least made an effort to slow you down. The main course was likely to be chicken Marsala or veal scallopini. Hanging over the restaurant’s eight tables was a giant blow-up of a newspaper article about Arthur Fiedler, the legendary conductor of the Boston Pops. Ida’s, apparently, was his favorite restaurant too.
One night my wife Barbara — at that time my girlfriend — and a nurse friend couldn’t get into Ida’s. They wandered around the corner to a little bakery across from Paul Revere’s house and asked the woman behind the counter if she knew somewhere nearby where they might get a table.
She told them to sit down while she made a phone call.
A few minutes later she sent them around the block to 135 Richmond Street, where they found Armida’s, a small family-owned restaurant on the corner. Barbara was instructed to go into the ladies’ room and wait until a waitress came for her. Somehow this little bit of North End choreography allowed them to bypass the line, and within minutes they were sitting at a table.