-- Boston's Hidden Restaurants --

Alumni Cafe

708 Hancock Street, Quincy, MA 02170
(617) 472-0555 Find location!

Photo of Alumni Cafe, Quincy, MA The Boston area has a good number of watering holes and old-school restaurants that serve excellent bar pizza. Now you may be asking, exactly what is bar pizza? Well, generally, it is a small (10-inch diameter, typically) pan pizza that bars often serve to customers who want a tasty snack with their beer or ale. The crust is usually firm and cracker-like, and the top is greasy with a good amount of cheese.

Now that we have gotten today's pizza lesson out of the way, it is time to talk about a place that serves some of the best bar pizza in the Boston area. The Alumni Cafe, a classic working-class bar in the Wollaston section of Quincy, is one of those places that looks a bit scary from the outside, but is actually a friendly little place where salt-of-the-Earth types drink beer and eat pizza around the bar while watching the Sox or Pats on TV. And what pizza they have at the Alumni Cafe; greasy, gooey, delicious bar pizza that will set you back around $5.00 or $6.00, depending on toppings.

The Alumni Cafe actually has two rooms; the bar area, and a small dining room with comfortable booths and more televisions. This writer prefers the dining room, not because the bar scene is rowdy, but because there is something about eating pizza and drinking beer in an old vinyl booth. Perhaps it is the Boston blood in me, but a place like the Alumni Cafe tends to stick in my memory a bit more than a more generic restaurant that tries to be trendy or all things to all people.

If you like bar pizza, the Alumni Cafe is up there with the cream of the crop; it compares favorably with bar pizza from Woody's in the Fens of Boston, Doyle's in Jamaica Plain, Monte's in Lynn, and the Lynwood Cafe in Randolph, though the Lynwood may get the slight nod over the Alumni. But even comparing the Alumni Cafe to the Lynwood shows how good the pizza is at the Alumni Cafe really is. Don't miss this true hidden gem of a place in Quincy.