-- Boston's Hidden Restaurants --

Emma's Pub and Pizza

1420 Pleasant Street (Route 104), Bridgewater, MA 02324
(508) 697-8815 Find location!

Photo of Emma's Pub and Pizza, Bridgewater, MA For some reason, a number of the dining spots featured on the Boston's Hidden Restaurants site tend to be a bit offbeat, if not flat-out odd. And Emma's Pub and Pizza is surely one of these places. What can you say about a restaurant that features a magician on some nights, has a delivery van with a huge hot dog on top, displays huge pictures all over the dining room, is owned by someone who seems like a true eccentric (Ron Emma), and has extremely heavy-duty hand dryers in the bathrooms that seem better suited for elephants than people? All of this makes for a rather unusual dining experience, but it should also be noted that this Bridgewater dining spot and watering hole also happens to have some great food, including some of the best bar pizza south of Boston.

The menu at Emma's is chock full of tasty (albeit mostly unhealthy) items, including baked chili, hamburgers (including the one-pound maverick burger), buffalo chicken wraps, a half-pound lobster roll, BBQ ribs, and for dessert, an obscenely big hot fudge sundae. But it is perhaps the bar pie that really shines at Emma's, as it is a mouthwatering mix of charred, crackerlike crust, hearty sauce, and chewy, browned cheese on top. And if you order the pepperoni pizza, the slices of pepperoni are extra crisp and slightly burned and curled on the edges, which is not often the case with bar pizzas found in other Boston restaurants and watering holes.

Emma's has gotten some good press (and its wacky ad campaign has definitely attracted the attention of more than a few diners), but few Bostonians know much about this place, including where exactly it is located. Well, Emma's is actually easy to get to, being only a few hundred yards off of Route 24, and on a day free of traffic, you could drive from downtown Boston to Emma's in about a half hour. It ain't fine dining, and it is certainly not a place to visit if you're a health food nut, but for the rest of us, Emma's is a must for lovers of oddball dining spots--and especially those that serve outstanding bar pizza.