Parker’s Restaurant, the dining room inside the Omni Parker House at 60 School Street in downtown Boston, is where the city’s official dessert was born. If you want to taste Boston cream pie, a warm Parker House roll and baked Boston scrod in the building that gave each one its name, this is the place. Here is what the menu costs, when it is open and what to expect before you book a table at Parker’s Restaurant Boston.
A downtown Boston dining room with 170 years of history
Harvey D. Parker opened the Parker House Hotel on October 8, 1855, at the corner of School and Tremont streets, a short walk from the Massachusetts State House. The building that stands there now dates to 1927, and the hotel is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and belongs to Historic Hotels of America.
The hotel’s dining rooms have a long literary record. The Saturday Club, whose members included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., met there each month. Charles Dickens lived at the Parker House for five months in 1867 and 1868 and first read “A Christmas Carol” to the club there. The hotel also helped popularize the “European Plan” in America, charging for rooms and meals separately so guests could eat whenever they chose instead of at set hours.
Today the restaurant sits on the Freedom Trail, steps from King’s Chapel and Old City Hall, so it works as a sit-down stop between historic sites. It joins a short list of Boston dining rooms where the history is part of the meal, alongside the Warren Tavern in Charlestown, a pub dating to 1780.
Three Boston classics invented at the Parker House
The hotel is credited with three dishes that still define Boston food. The first is Boston cream pie, two layers of sponge cake filled with custard and topped with chocolate. Food historians most often credit French chef Augustine François Anezin with creating it at the hotel in the 1850s, and early menus called it “chocolate cream pie.” Massachusetts named Boston cream pie its official state dessert on December 12, 1996. On the current lunch menu it costs $12 and is billed as “a parker house original.” The version shown in a 2017 photo on Wikimedia Commons is a small round cake coated in toasted nuts and set on a plate of chocolate sauce.
The second is the Parker House roll, a soft, buttery milk roll folded over into its familiar dented shape. It was created at the hotel in the 1870s and appeared in Fannie Farmer’s 1896 Boston Cooking-School Cook Book. The restaurant sells the rolls to take home at $4.50 for a half dozen and $9 for a dozen.
The third is scrod, a word the hotel is credited with putting on Boston menus for the youngest, freshest white fish of the day, usually cod or haddock. Parker’s says its baked Boston scrod has been “a parker house tradition since 1906.”
Menu highlights and prices at Parker’s Restaurant
The lunch menu posted by Omni Hotels leans on New England comfort food. Entrées include baked Boston scrod with cracker crumbs, white wine, jasmine rice and lemon beurre blanc for $32; seared sea scallops with pearl couscous for $34; Atlantic salmon with saffron butter for $36; and fish and chips for $27. The New England lobster roll, chilled Maine lobster salad on a griddled brioche roll with fries, is $37.
Lighter options include a cup of New England clam chowder for $12 or a bowl for $15, French onion soup for $12, a Cobb salad for $25 and a Caesar salad made with Parker House roll croutons for $18. The sirloin burger ($20) and turkey burger ($18) both come on a Parker House roll. If chowder is the main reason for your trip, compare it with the bowls in our guide to the best clam chowder in Boston.
At night the action moves to Parker’s Bar, a wood-paneled lounge modeled on the building’s original 19th-century library, with stained glass and a fireplace. Its dinner menu, as listed on OpenTable, includes clam chowder, French onion soup, a $26 shrimp cocktail with Parker House cocktail sauce and a $22 tuna poke crisp, along with cocktails and wine. OpenTable puts the typical check at $31 to $50 per person.
Atmosphere: hotel elegance without the stuffiness
Expect white tablecloths, dark wood and the polished feel of a grand hotel, but the room is built for breakfast meetings, a quick lunch between Freedom Trail stops as much as for special occasions. OpenTable lists the dress code as business casual and the dining style as “casual elegant.” The restaurant offers vegetarian and gluten-friendly choices, and gluten-friendly bread is available on request.
The Parker House also runs holiday events. Its 2026 Thanksgiving Day buffet on Thursday, November 26, is priced at $125 for adults and $35 for children 12 and under, with reservations required.
For another classic Beacon Hill and downtown stop, see our look at Cheers on Beacon Street.
Hours, reservations and getting there
- Address: Omni Parker House, 60 School Street, Boston, MA 02108 (downtown, at School and Tremont streets).
- Phone: (617) 725-1600 for the restaurant; the hotel’s main line is (617) 227-8600.
- Hours: Omni’s official page lists breakfast daily from 7 to 11 a.m. and lunch from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. OpenTable lists weekday breakfast starting at 6:30 a.m. and dinner at Parker’s Bar Tuesday through Sunday from 2 to 10 p.m. Listings differ, so call ahead or check the hotel’s site before you go.
- Price range: lunch entrées run about $27 to $37; most sandwiches are $18 to $26.
- Reservations: taken through OpenTable. A service charge of 18 percent is added for parties of six or more.
- Getting there: the Park Street and Government Center MBTA stations are both a few minutes’ walk away. Valet parking is available at the hotel.
For a meal that doubles as a Boston history lesson, Parker’s Restaurant is hard to beat. Order the scrod, take a dozen rolls home and finish with a slice of the cake that became the state dessert, in the room where it began.
Featured image: Boston cream pie served at the Parker House Hotel, via Wikimedia Commons (CC0 public domain dedication).
Sources
- Omni Hotels: Parker’s Restaurant, Omni Parker House
- Omni Parker House: Parker’s Restaurant lunch menu
- OpenTable: Parker’s Restaurant & Bar, Omni Parker House
- Wikipedia: Omni Parker House
- Wikipedia: Boston cream pie
- Wikipedia: Parker House roll
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