The South End has become a bastion of creativity and artistic expression. Walking down Washington Street you’ll see where the inspiration comes from in the well-preserved architecture.
Home to an eclectic mix of design boutiques, Natalie van Dijk Carpenter’s Lekker, which opened here five years ago, stands out. Lekker the Dutch word for alluring, enticing, great, attractive and tempting is fitting for Carpenter’s European concept store.
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This great find is located on a charming, tree-lined block in the increasingly desirable South End. Encore Bed and Breakfast (from $180) is quite eclectic mixing 21st century sleek Italian furniture into a traditional 19th century brick-walled townhouse.
We recommend, that of the 3 guest quarters (each has a private bathroom with shower, cable TV/DVD, and a queen-sized bed), you opt for the top-floor Albee Room and enjoy skyline views from the private terrace.
Encoure Bed and Breakfast is within easy walking distance of the Hynes Convention Center, Copley Square, Symphony Gall, the Theatre District, Black Bay, as well as the best in dining, galleries, and shopping in the South End.
Encore Bed & Breakfast  · 116 West Newton Street  · Boston, MA 02118
617-247-3425  · info@encorebandb.com
Four Seasons
200 Boylston Street; 617-338-4400; www.fourseasons.com/boston. Perhaps the grandest of Boston’s hotels is the Four Seasons. You can’t beat it for service and it’s just a few streets from the South End. Weekend rates start at $325 a night.
The South End Open Market
540 Harrison Avenue, 617-481-2257
www.southendopenmarket.com
The South End Open Market takes place every Sunday through October from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. (except on holiday weekends, like this one).
This is Boston’s version of London’s Portobello market, with vintage clothes sellers and young fashion and jewelry designers rubbing elbows with artists and cheesemakers and antiques dealers.
What’s exciting about this market is that it changes each week. So, some Sundays you’ll discover a local artist who is there only that day. Everyone sells from tables beneath white tents.
South End Buttery
314 Shawmut Avenue, 617-482-1015
The Buttery is an organic bakery where the cupcakes are named after two local Labrador retrievers. Madison, the yellow Lab, is honored by the vanilla with vanilla frosting, and Simon, the chocolate Lab, by the chocolate cupcake with chocolate frosting .
28 Degrees
1 Appleton Street, 617-728-0728
www.28degrees-boston.com
28 Degrees is a bar that shimmers with flashy cocktails, a flashy circular bar and an even flashier party going on inside. There are Bellinis, pomegranate cosmos and Herradura tequila and Cointreau margaritas to be downed with a mixed crowd of Euro-students, chic-beyond-belief adults and neighborhood regulars. This bar alone fills Boston’s glamour quotient.
Toro
1704 Washington Street, 617-536-4300
Toro is a Barcelona-inspired tapas restaurant that is hopping. The interior is simple and modern with whitewashed brick walls and large mirrors. The high bar stools at the communal table are the best seats to take in the action as you drink sassafras mojitos and caipirinhas with caramelized limes.
Or pick a Spanish Rioja from the four-page wine list — the wine is served in giant tumblers.
Order the Pincho sampler (a chef’s selection of small bites) that the chef, Ken Oringer, a former winner of a James Beard Award, prepares using a flaming brick oven.
Everything at Toro tastes smoky, including the pan con tomate, a Spanish dish of grilled bread rubbed with tomato, garlic, olive oil and salt; and don’t pass up the foie gras with rhubarb and strawberries.
SoWa, a strip of blocks south of Washington Street, is where you’ll find Boston’s emerging artists. Try both the 450 Harrison Building and the artists’ studios at 500 Harrison Avenue, which is open to the public on the first Friday of each month all summer. (Check for times at www.sowaartwalk.com.)
The city’s art scene has shifted to Harrison from Newbury Street, says Bernard Toale, whose Toale Gallery has been at 450 Harrison since 1992 (617-482-2477; www.bernardtoalegallery.com).
“The art and the clientele in the South End is younger and funkier,” he says. “First Fridays are big happening scenes, with a younger, urban, new South End crowd. I’ve been around a long time, but I’d say the South End is made up of a lot of younger galleries showing newer artists, and not just local artists.”
The Butcher Shop
552 Tremont Street, 617-423-4800
www.thebutchershopboston.com
You can buy meat and racks of lamb from small local producers, artisanal cheeses and a range of handmade sausages. Don’t leave without ordering the magnificent Hot Dog à la Maison: a bratwurst made downstairs, cooked with Gruyère and served with rosemary potato chips. The Butcher Shop opened two years ago but still feels like a local secret.
It’s open every day, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. or midnight.
Pet Shop Girls
12 Union Park Street, 617-262-7387
www.thepetshopgirls.com
Passing by Pet Shop Girls, you’re likely to see two neighborhood Great Danes outside the window lunging at Pedro Bandito, the cat who sits inside taunting the dogs of Union Park.
The shop itself is a bakery that makes dog birthday cakes from carob and yogurt. If your four-footed companion is being especially well behaved, you might treat him to a doggie garlic bagel for 99 cents.