Regina Pizzeria - Boston - Review
What do you do when you're in Boston an hour before your reservation at the fancy Italian restaurant in the North End? Of course, you go get pizza as an appetizer...
There's something beautifully stubborn about Regina Pizzeria on Thacher Street. While the rest of Boston's North End slowly evolves into a kind of Italian-themed amusement park, Regina's remains defiantly, gloriously frozen in time - not because it's trying to be, but because it never saw any reason to change.
The paper plates and plastic forks aren't a compromise - they're a declaration of priorities. When your pizza arrives slightly hanging over the edges of that pan, with a waxy cup of soda beside it, it's a reminder that you're here for one thing only: the pizza. No pretense, no garnish, and no fancy presentation is needed when you've been doing it right since 1926.
This place is a living diorama of Boston history. Christmas lights drape year-round across pressed tin ceilings, their glow catching the smoke patina of nearly a century's worth of brick oven pizzas. The walls are a chaotic archive - police patches, USCG shields, and chronological photos from Saint Anthony's Feast dating back decades. Each tells a story of the community, of cops and firefighters, of neighborhood families who've been coming here since their grandparents were young.
The pizza itself is a masterclass in the power of simplicity. That brick oven - an ancient beast that's been burning since the Coolidge administration - doesn't just cook pizzas; it infuses them with history. The crust emerges thin but structural, straight as a board, charred in all the right places with those distinctive leopard spots that only come from decades of seasoning and hellish heat. The sauce strikes that perfect balance between sweet and acidic, bright enough to cut through the richness without trying to steal the show. That perfect, real, low-moisture mozzarella - browns and bubbles in a way that no pre-shredded bag of corporate cheese ever could.
The dining room feels like your Italian grandmother's basement crossed with a police precinct break room. Red vinyl booths worn smooth by generations, bar stools that have heard every Boston tale worth telling, and that unmistakable aroma of brick oven pizza that hits you like a welcome home. While other spots in the North End invest in fancy plates and cloth napkins to justify their prices, Regina's puts their money where it matters. That perfectly seasoned oven, quality ingredients, and the muscle memory of pizzaiolos who know their craft.
What makes Regina's special isn't innovation - it's consistency. In an era where "historic" restaurants often coast on reputation while secretly cutting corners, Regina's stubbornly maintains its standards. The pizza coming out of that oven today is the same gritty flour-bottomed pizza they served when the North End was still a working-class Italian neighborhood, when the Red Sox were still cursed.
It's not just a pizzeria - it's a cultural touchstone and a reminder that sometimes the best things in life come on paper plates, in dim-lit rooms, with a side of history. While the rest of the North End increasingly caters to tourists seeking a sanitized version of Italian-American culture, Regina's remains real - not because it's trying to be authentic, but because it never stopped being authentic in the first place.
In a world of constant change and "improvement," Regina Pizzeria stands as a monument to getting it right and staying right. The pizza isn't just good - it's important. It matters. It's a direct line to a version of Boston that's increasingly hard to find, served one perfect slice at a time, on a paper plate that tells you everything about what matters here: the pizza, the history, and nothing else.
