Leisure

Lawn Games

Your Boston Picnic Guide Will See You Now

The picnic basket. An invention so sublime that certain animated bears spend their entire lives pining after them. But all you have to do is call up any of these upstanding establishments to receive a lawn-ready vessel full of edibles. Don’t feed the animated bears.

FOR FEASTING ON THE COMMON

Artisan Bistro at the Ritz-Carlton

The Basket: Lunch for two with sandwiches, salads, sides and dessert. Bonus: they’ll also pack a dog-approved side basket with a frisbee, a water bowl and a hamburger-shaped treat. Everything’s better in hamburger shape.
The Rendezvous Point: The adjacent Boston Common. Or anywhere else accepting of sandwiches and maybe dogs.

FOR ALFRESCO STEAK-FRITES-ING

Beacon Hill Bistro

The Basket: Includes a blanket and any of their normal lunch or dinner offerings. Which happen to involve things like steak frites and scallops with brown butter.
The Rendezvous Point: The Public Garden. Eating steaks in the back of a swan boat: perfectly acceptable. Different, but perfectly acceptable.

FOR THE FINDERS AND THE KEEPERS

Artú

The Basket: A vintage number filled with silverware, beets, pancetta and ricotta cookies. Damn right we said beets.
The Rendezvous Point: Wherever you want. They’ll give you the basket, and you have 20 hours to do what you like before returning it. With great picnic power comes great picnic responsibility.

FOR THE OPEN-CONTAINER CAVALIER

Central Bottle

The Basket: A two-person bounty of cheese, chocolate, salami and bread. Oh, and your choice of beer or wine. That last sentence seems like it might be the whole point.
The Rendezvous Point: Sunset on the banks of the Charles River. Taunting local liquor ordinances never felt so scenic.

FOR SUNNY-AFTERNOON BURGERY

Tasty Burger Cambridge

The Basket: ... is actually a tote. Which is okay, because it’s filled with a cheeseburger and a frisbee. Everything should be filled with a cheeseburger and a frisbee.
The Rendezvous Point: Any area that lends itself to both burger consumption and ultimate frisbee. Let’s just go with “outside.”