One autumn evening in 2020, the late poet Louise Glück walked into the snug dining room of the Somerville Peruvian restaurant Celeste. Glück found her usual table — the one between the two air conditioning vents — and greeted her usual server, Gonzalo, who waited on her every time she stopped in for ceviche de pescado and an IPA. But this evening was different from the others.

Glück had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature the day before and, amid a wave of public attention, craved the normalcy of enjoying a meal at one of her favorite restaurants. Ahead of Glück’s standing reservation, Celeste’s founders Maria Rondeau and chef JuanMa Calderon had filled the dining room with friends to ensure the new Nobel Laureate could dine in peace. A tabletop bouquet was the only memento marking her achievement.

“All she wanted was to be at Celeste and not think about anything else,” said Rondeau. “At the same time, we were nervous. We’d waited on the same lady every day, but now she was something else. It was a moment of joyous togetherness.”

Glück’s connection to Celeste is uniquely intense — so intense, in fact, that Rondeau and Calderon’s new restaurant opening in Back Bay, Rosa y Marigold, shares a name with Glück’s last published work. It’s also a particularly profound example of how Boston writers have long found comfort, camaraderie and sometimes safety in the city’s bars, cafes and restaurants.

From the bygone Harvard Square Spanish spot Irunåa where Robert Lowell hosted post-workshop office hours to the old Ground Round off Soldiers Field Road where reporters for The Boston Globe, Boston Magazine and the Boston Phoenix grabbed drinks after media-league softball games, local eateries have literally and figuratively fueled generations of Boston academics, journalists, novelists and poets. So, we asked some of these writers to tell us where they typically go for a coffee, a meal, a conversation, or a moment of peace.

Zarlasht Niaz, novelist

Zarlasht Niaz recently came to Boston from Minneapolis to begin her tenure as the Boston Public Library’s 2025-26 writer-in-residence. The Afghan American writer is managing an online literary journal that centers writing from and about Afghanistan while working on her debut novel-in-verse. Despite her newcomer status, she has already found some gastronomic staples.

Niaz regularly stops into BPL’s Newsfeed Café for arepas from the Somerville-based Venezuelan catering company Carolicious; lattes from a talented, unnamed barista — “When that person’s working, I get really excited,” said Niaz — and live public radio programming from the other NPR affiliate in town.

Advertisement

She also frequents Anoush’ella’s South Boston location, whose Eastern Mediterranean flavors call to mind home food. “They have these salads with a lot of different herbs and they remind me of the salads I grew up eating,” said Niaz. Turmeric House in Braintree hits similarly. “A perfect cup of chai. A perfect kebab. Yeah, I can’t wait to go back.”

---

Stephen Greenblatt, literary historian

Having devoted decades to unpacking the work of Renaissance writers, particularly William Shakespeare, it’s no wonder that the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning literary historian Stephen Greenblatt gravitates toward cuisine that could’ve conceivably appeared in “Julius Caesar.”

The Cambridge Italian staple Giulia is his undisputed go-to. “I know Italian food quite well, because we spend quite a lot of time in Rome,” said Greenblatt. “Guilia is unusually creative.” He often orders the pappardelle with wild boar topped with black trumpet mushrooms and parmigiano.

“The chef, Michael Pagliarini, is extremely talented and alert to what really good Italian food is like,” he said.

Advertisement

Greenblatt also ventures to the eastern edges of the Mediterranean basin when visiting Oleana (which recently received a Michelin Guide recommendation), but his dessert of choice there is decidedly American. “I like Oleana quite a lot, particularly for the wonderful baked Alaska, which is, I think, one of the great desserts that one can get,” said Greenblatt.

---

Golden, poet and photographer

Golden moved to Boston in 2018 following a celebrated poetry slam guest performance at Haley House in Roxbury and quickly became a fixture within the local literary scene. In the time since, the Black, gender-nonconforming trans writer and photographer has turned out two collections of poetry and images, served as Boston’s 2020-21 artist in residence, and earned a handful of high-profile fellowships. Golden is now relocating to their home state of Virginia to pursue an MFA, but they depart with close community ties, including connections to a couple of keystone Jamaica Plain restaurants.

“When I first moved to Boston, I lived on Centre Street by Jackson Square and we would always go to Galway House,” said Golden. “They have affordable, consistent food and a lot of community members I know love going there.”

The Haven, one of the Boston area’s only Scottish spots, is another JP essential for Golden. “I love the Haven Burger — it’s one of my favorites. And I love a good French fry and you can’t go wrong with that there,” Golden said. “I love filling food and food that you can enjoy with friends. That’s where my brain goes when I’m deciding where to eat.”

Advertisement

---

Laura Zigman, novelist

The fiction of Laura Zigman often hinges on the heightened emotionalism that comes with navigating life’s highs and lows, beginning with her debut 1997 novel “Animal Husbandry,” which was optioned and became the basis for a romantic comedy starring Ashley Judd and a young Hugh Jackman. But when it comes to going out for a drink or something to eat, Zigman looks to avoid drama at all costs.

Bar Enza, located in the Charles Hotel near Harvard Square, is her ideal venue for meeting friends. “They have really nice wine and cocktails, even though I really don’t drink anymore,” Zigman said. “When you come in for a drink, they’ll give you a velvet banquette that’s beautiful where you can talk and actually hear each other and I just love it.”

For coffee, Zigman prefers George Howell Coffee nestled inside the nearby Lovestruck Books. The location itself is freighted with Cambridge cafe history, standing not far from where Howell’s original Coffee Connection once operated between 1975 and 1996 before Starbucks acquired and rebranded it and its 18 local sister stores.

“Coffee Connection was one of those places that I just lived in when I was a teenager,” said Zigman. “They had French roast, French presses, and big barrels of coffee beans with burlap covers. The new George Howell inside Lovestruck is great — it’s cozy, smells like coffee, and it’s pink and red inside.”

Advertisement

---

Paul Tremblay, novelist

Brookline Booksmith near Coolidge Corner is a key location for the multi-time Bram Stoker Award-winning horror novelist Paul Tremblay. He visited the shop for the first time early in his writing career to attend a Stewart O’Nan reading and, in the years since, has gone back numerous times to do readings of his own and participate in author events.

Virtually every trip Tremblay makes to Brookline Booksmith goes hand-in-hand with a stop at Hamilton Restaurant and Bar, whose distinctive red awning with a silhouette of its namesake Founding Father casts a shadow on Beacon Street less than a block away.

“Invariably, before the event starts, usually at 7 p.m., all the writers involved and sometimes their family too will meet at Hamilton,” said Tremblay. “It’s such a relaxed vibe — a pub-style place with friendly staff, good food and drink, and, when the weather is warm, a nice outdoor space.”

When Tremblay is nearer to home in the Greater Boston suburbs, he regularly visits Northern Spy, a Canton-based restaurant from the owners of Loyal Nine that serves New England cuisine and operates out of Paul Revere’s historic Rolling Copper Mill.

Advertisement

“It’s a newer restaurant and it’s got a beautiful interior,” he said. “For people who dare trek outside of Boston and want to meet, it’s a go-to place.”

---

Megan Marshall, biographer

Megan Marshall arrived in the Boston area in 1973 and has since seen slews of writer-saturated restaurants come and go. She remembers meeting the eminent editor Justin Kaplan at the long-defunct Harvard Square fondue place, Swiss Alps, to get guidance on her biography of Elizabeth, Mary and Sophia Peabody, which eventually earned her the Pulitzer Prize. And she recalls grabbing coffee and cinnamon toast from a drugstore with an old-fashioned soda fountain that once stood on Boylston Street in between research sessions at the Massachusetts Historical Society.

These days, Marshall often finds herself at the Cambridge French patisserie Praliné. “They’re such lovely people there and they speak French, which makes me feel cosmopolitan and their croissants are, I think, the best in the Boston area,” said Marshall.

She also enjoys Praliné’s imported French loose-leaf tea, Mariage Frères. “I get little boxes of it to give as presents. People I know who have spent time in Paris say, ‘Oh, you must be just back from Paris,’ because there’s this impression that you can only get Mariage Frères there,” she said. “But you can get it at Praliné and impress anybody you know who’s Parisian.”

Advertisement