“My grandmother was Italian, and she would sit and talk to me for hours about food,” Mr. White recalled. “She had a huge garden, and everything was always fresh. When I was going to spend the weekend with my granny, I would usually talk to her on Wednesday or Thursday, and we’d plan the menu for the weekend. She was my inspiration.”
Mr. White, whose Restaurant Jasper expanded Boston’s idea of elegant dining in the 1980s, and whose Summer Shack was just as memorable, if much more casual, in the past quarter century, has died.
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Two of his close friends — Lydia Shire and Gordon Hamersley, both well-known chefs themselves — confirmed his death to the Globe. Additional information, including the age of Mr. White, who was born in 1954, was not immediately available.
“My real love for food is eating,” he told the Globe in 1997.
Generations of diners, meanwhile, loved going to his signature restaurants.
“I was part of a group of chefs that, in the early ‘80s, nationwide, started the American cuisine movement,” he said in 1997. “Prior to that, American chefs received very little respect from the American press.”
Restaurant critics praised his work and organizations conferred honors, including the James Beard Foundation, which named him the best chef in the Northeast region in 1991, when he was running his namesake Boston restaurant that became known simply as Jasper’s.
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He also was a Beard Award nominee for best chef in 1994, and in 2001, the foundation named Summer Shack a best new restaurant nominee.
Writing in The New York Times that year, Nina Simonds noted that Mr. White was “considered the dean of American fish cookery by many.”
Before opening Restaurant Jasper in autumn 1983, Mr. White made the rounds of banks and lenders to secure financing. Then he renovated a space on Commercial Street in the North End.
With room for some 75 patrons, Jasper’s became so popular so quickly that weekends were soon booked a month in advance.
“If Jasper White, owner-chef of this restaurant, isn’t careful, Restaurant Jasper could end up among the best New England restaurants serving American haute cuisine,” Globe food critic Anthony Spinazzola wrote in a four-star review not long after opening night. “He’s certainly started out on the right foot.”
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A decade later, Boston magazine anointed Jasper’s Boston’s best seafood restaurant in 1993, saying that “the quality is unbeatable and no one prepares it better than Jasper White.”
“Until Jasper’s, it was hard to find an elegant, fish-centric restaurant in town,” Hamersley told the Globe in 2018. “Jasper White’s food was very simple and very elegant, and I tried to cook this way when I opened my restaurant.”
In the 1989 Globe interview, Mr. White said he had broadened New England cooking “by not sticking to strictly Yankee cooking.”
“It’s certainly a part of New England, but besides the Yankees, there are the Portuguese, Greeks, Italians, Irish, Chinese, and Eastern Europeans,” he added, interviewed inside his North End dining room. “In addition, there are the migrations of people from Southeast Asia and Central America who are now bringing their native products into local markets.”
A son of Irish and Italian parents, Mr. White had little problem mixing cultures and cuisines.
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He passed along his knowledge in the books he wrote, which include “Jasper White’s Cooking from New England,” “Lobster at Home,” “Fifty Chowders,” and “The Summer Shack Cookbook — The Complete Guide to Shore Food.”
A throwback photo of chefs Lydia Shire and Mr. White, hung in the window of the restaurant Towne at Boston’s Hynes Convention Center in 2010. The two were at Seasons in the Bostonian hotel in 1982.Wendy Maeda/Globe Staff/The Boston Globe
In the late 1990s, he took a hiatus from running restaurants and was a consultant to Legal Sea Foods.
“He certainly enhanced our culinary operation — without a doubt,” Roger Berkowitz, former chief executive of Legal Sea Foods, said Saturday night. Mr. White encouraged Berkowitz to place chefs in every one of the chain’s restaurants, “as opposed to kitchen managers.”
Opening Summer Shack at the beginning of the 2000s, Mr. White created a different dining experience than his North End restaurant — launching first at a Cambridge location, a short walk from the MBTA’s Alewife Red Line Station. It was a hit that lent itself to expansion.
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“Jasper White opened Summer Shack at Alewife in 2000 and expanded to the Back Bay and Mohegan Sun. Now there’s a Shack pop-up in Harvard Square outside the Charles Hotel,” Sheryl Julian, the Globe’s former food editor, wrote in 2021.
Summer Shack, the Globe’s Kara Baskin wrote in 2019, was a “family-friendly cavern, and his culinary celebrity helped to lure curious urbanites, older locals, and relieved suburban parents, delighted that there was finally a place — in Cambridge! Run by a real chef! — where children could romp among the lobster tanks and picnic tables while they ate a better-than-decent meal with their hands.”
Such a setting wasn’t entirely surprising, coming from a chef who developed his tastes in family settings.
“I wouldn’t call myself a traditional cook,” he said in 1989, “but I find myself going back to classic dishes and classic food combinations.”
Mr. White grew up in New Jersey, where en route to becoming a rock star restaurateur he crossed paths with a more straightforward rock star. He and Bruce Springsteen, a few years apart in age, both attended Freehold High School.
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After graduating from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., Mr. White set off on a restaurant odyssey, telling the Globe that he cooked in nine states over the course 11 years.
In the roughly 48 months between his arrival in Boston and when he opened Restaurant Jasper, his chef duties included Cafe Plaza in the Copley Plaza Hotel, the Parker House, and Seasons in the Bostonian hotel, and his colleagues included Shire.
“Chefs such as Todd English, Gordon Hamersley, Barbara Lynch, Lydia Shire, and Jasper White created plenty of Boston buzz as they rose to renown,” Globe restaurant critic and food writer Devra First noted in 2018.
While he was at the Bostonian, he met Julia Child through Shire, and they became friends. “I was pleasantly surprised at the way she received us and how supportive she was,” he wrote in a 2011 essay posted on WickedLocal. And when he opened Jasper’s, “Julia and her husband, Paul, became regular customers, when they were staying in town.”
Jasper’s put him on the map locally, regionally, and nationally.
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“Restaurateur Jasper White’s cuisine is daring in its simplicity,” Julian wrote in 1989 as she praised “Jasper White’s Cooking from New England,” which he published that year.
“Thankfully, White never suffered from the young chefs’ syndrome of having to prove all they know in each dish by presenting too many flavors,” she added. “Rather, he always understates his point, allowing the quality of each ingredient to shine, not interfering too much with foods that are splendid on their own.”
Mr. White closed Jasper’s in 1995, knowing that his restaurant would be trying to attract customers in the shadow of Big Dig construction. He also stepped away to spend more time with his family — his children in particular.
“I had overheard my 4-year-old daughter refer to me as ‘that guy’ as I was leaving the house one morning,” he said in 1997. “It was a slap in the face I think I needed.”
A complete list of Mr. White’s survivors and information about a memorial gathering were not available.
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After closing Jasper’s, writing cookbooks, and serving as a consultant, Mr. White conceived of Summer Shack, which like so much else in his life harkened back to his own beginnings.
“I did fine dining for 25 years, appealing to a really limited audience,” he told the Globe in 1997, a few years before launching Summer Shack. “There’s a part of me, because I’m from a working-class family, that wanted to start cooking for other types of people and for children.”
At his Summer Shack in 2000, Mr. White peered from a window made from barn wood.RYAN, David L Globe Staff
Bryan Marquard can be reached at bryan.marquard@globe.com.
Indiana Pacers (15-17, eighth in the Eastern Conference) vs. Boston Celtics (23-8, second in the Eastern Conference)
Boston; Sunday, 6 p.m. EST
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BOTTOM LINE: Boston takes on the Indiana Pacers after Jaylen Brown scored 44 points in the Boston Celtics’ 142-105 victory over the Indiana Pacers.
The Celtics are 21-6 in conference matchups. Boston has a 3-2 record in one-possession games.
The Pacers are 8-13 against Eastern Conference opponents. Indiana gives up 116.8 points to opponents while being outscored by 2.4 points per game.
The Celtics are shooting 45.8% from the field this season, 1.8 percentage points lower than the 47.6% the Pacers allow to opponents. The Pacers average 12.8 made 3-pointers per game this season, the same that the Celtics give up.
TOP PERFORMERS: Jayson Tatum is averaging 28.7 points, 9.6 rebounds and 5.6 assists for the Celtics.
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Pascal Siakam is scoring 19.9 points per game and averaging 7.2 rebounds for the Pacers.
LAST 10 GAMES: Celtics: 6-4, averaging 118.8 points, 49.0 rebounds, 25.9 assists, 7.8 steals and 5.6 blocks per game while shooting 45.5% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 109.5 points per game.
Pacers: 6-4, averaging 114.3 points, 42.8 rebounds, 29.1 assists, 7.2 steals and 6.1 blocks per game while shooting 49.3% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 111.9 points.
INJURIES: Celtics: Jrue Holiday: day to day (shoulder), Kristaps Porzingis: day to day (ankle).
Pacers: Aaron Nesmith: out (ankle), Isaiah Jackson: out for season (calf), Andrew Nembhard: day to day (knee), James Wiseman: out for season (calf), Obi Toppin: day to day (ankle).
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___
The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar.
The Bruins will kickstart a home-and-home series with the Columbus Blue Jackets on Friday, with the first leg coming at Nationwide Arena.
Boston will keep its lineup from before Christmas.
Charlie Coyle will remain on the same line as Elias Lindholm and Brad Marchand, while Morgan Geekie, Pavel Zacha and David Pastrnak will remain together. Cole Koepke is expected to remain in the lineup in place of Marc McLaughlin, though Bruins interim head coach Joe Sacco hadn’t made a final decision following morning skate.
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“The start is going to be important for us tonight,” Sacco said, per team-provided video. “I would imagine they’re going to come out with some pace tonight in their game and we have to be ready to respond to that.”
Joonas Korpisalo will get the start over Jeremy Swayman.
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Boston and Columbus are set to drop the puck at 7 p.m. ET, following an hour of pregame coverage on NESN.
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We have the projected lines and defensive pairings for both sides:
BOSTON BRUINS (19-13-4) Brad Marchand — Elias Lindholm — Charlie Coyle Morgan Geekie — Pavel Zacha — David Pastrnak Justin Brazeau — Trent Frederic — Oliver Wahlstrom John Beecher — Mark Kastelic — Cole Koepke
Nikita Zadorov — Charlie McAvoy Jordan Oesterle — Brandon Carlo Mason Lohrei — Andrew Peeke
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Joonas Korpisalo
COLUMBUS BLUE JACKETS (14-15-6) Dmitri Voronkov — Sean Monahan — Kirill Marchenko James van Riemsdyk — Adam Fantilli — Zach Aston-Reese Kent Johnson — Cole Sillinger — Mathieu Olivier Mikael Pyyhtia — Sean Kuraly — Jack Johnson
A restaurant ruckus. A topless march. A Market Basket brouhaha. These were among the weirdest developments of the year, readers say — but they weren’t the only ones.
The Tom Brady roast, a topless protest, Tom Holland and Zendaya visits, Ayo Edebiri’s favorite dessert, Jen Royle’s reservation ruckus, Dave Portnoy’s misadventures, and the Joro spider all got way too much attention in 2024. Design by Kelly Chan/Boston.com. Photos by: Adam Rose/Netflix; Joseph Prezioso/AFP; Emma McIntyre/Getty Images; Boston Globe file photo; Boston Globe file photo; Kayla Bartkowski for the Boston Globe; @drdavecoyle, Clemson University
There’s news that makes you go “Hmmm…” And then there’s news that makes you go “Whaaa?” These are the second kind.
We asked Boston.com readers which weird, wacky, and offbeat Boston-area stories garnered their attention most during 2024, and they didn’t hold back. We received about 400 responses mentioning any number of local developments that you’d be tempted to think somebody made up, if you didn’t know they were true.
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Below we count down the top five, along with some others readers found worthy of note. And meanwhile, who knows: 2025 might be even weirder.
5. The great North End dining reservation battle (9%)
Restaurateurs everywhere must wish they had the faccia tostaof Jen Royle, the Boston restaurant owner who doesn’t take guff from anybody — especially customers who try to get out of their reservations. When a tourist (from New York!) did an end-run around Royle’s reservation policy at her North End TABLE restaurant in February, using his credit card insurance to avoid paying a $250 cancellation fee, she allegedly tracked him down on social media and let him have it. “I just wanted to personally thank you for screwing over my restaurant and my staff when you disputed your cancellation fee,” she wrote in a message that the man screen-shotted and shared on social media, where it was viewed by tens of millions. “Pathetic,” Royle added, for good measure.
Tracking down would-be customers to give them a flogging may not be the best business decision, but anybody who’s ever dealt with a tough customer in their line of work has got to appreciate Royle’s gumption. “Heroine archetype that you ultimately cannot help but root for,” wrote Mink S. from Dorchester, citing both Royle and a certain other 2024 standout you’ll see mentioned in No. 1, below. “Flawed but fascinating!” We concur, Mink.
4. Dave Portnoy, in general (10%)
Is it just us, or is Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy suddenly, well, everywhere? The man gets within whiffing distance of a pizza place and the entire world stops turning as people await his latest “One Bite” review. (Even if he doesn’t always get them right, once the New York Times has dubbed you a “pizza influencer” you can basically say whatever you want.)
As if that weren’t enough, back in July he had to go and get himself stranded at sea off the coast of Nantucket when his boat’s engine and breakers died, necessitating a Coast Guard rescue. He chronicled the whole ordeal (where else?) on TikTok, declaring that “Captain Dave lives to tell another tale.” Not everybody is a fan — “Only follow the Portnoy stories to see what moronic thing he’s said lately,” wrote Mark M. from Danvers — but there’s no denying that the lucky owner of a new $42 million Nantucket mansion is riding pretty high.
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3. The Boston topless protest (11%)
“It’s not about the top; it’s about oppression,” Katrina Brees, the co-organizer of a topless protest in Boston last August, told Boston.com. And now that we’ve cleared that up you can all get your minds out of the gutter, the 11% of you who mentioned this as your favorite off-beat story of the year. We know you’re mostly men, because a subsequent survey we did showed that men overwhelmingly wanted women to be able to take their shirts off in public. Women, on the other hand, tended to be more in favor of men keeping their own shirts ON, because they’ve been to a beach and have seen things. Enough said.
And in case you were wondering, about six women wound up going topless at the protest, and about 100 people showed up to ogle them. We’re not sure if that’s progress, but we do know that it proved a challenge for news photographers.
2. The Tom Brady Roast (20%)
Tom Brady may have long since moved on from the Patriots to greener pastures — i.e. a Super Bowl win with Tampa Bay and a zillion-dollar contract with Fox Sports — but that didn’t stop Bostonites from lapping up every minute of Netlfix’s roast of the quarterback last May. (And there were a lot of minutes — the thing actually hit the three-hour mark.)
“I’m still aghast at the Brady roast,” wrote Bob from Stoughton, but just because people were aghast (or perhaps even agog), that didn’t mean they could turn away. This outlet alone did close to a dozen stories on it, and you just kept reading them! Never let it be said we don’t give the people what they want.
For Brady’s part, it became increasingly obvious over the course of the evening that he may not have really understood what a roast was — that’s one of those things you might miss if you spend every waking moment of your life for two decades studying play calls and eating kale. And he said afterwards he wouldn’t do it again, mainly so his kids wouldn’t have to hear people quoting Nikki Glaser lines back to them. That’s not good for anybody.
Madison Murray in her natural habitat, Saugus. – Courtesy Photo
The world has a new folk hero, and no, we don’t mean Luigi Mangione. We’re talking about Madison Murray: When her spoof of the Market Basket logo to promote her erotic art and poetry book prompted a cease-and-desist from the beloved local supermarket, she wound up ceasing-and-desisting her way right into our hearts.
“Madison Murray is an amazing artist doing hilarious, wonderful niche work of representing us working class kids on the North Shore,” wrote Desiree D. of Medford, echoing dozens of other readers singing Murray’s praises. “Her feud with Market Basket will be one of my top Boston moments of all time.” Did you hear that? Of all time!
For her part, Murray says she never meant to offend the grocery chain with her “Wh*** For Your Dollar” merchandise or the pictures of her wearing a bikini made out of Market Basket plastic bags (the old, un-environmentally friendly kind). “Like, I love Market Basket,” she told Boston.com. “I would never, ever try to tarnish their brand. If anything, I created it to try to pay homage and show my love for Market Basket even more.” Meanwhile, Boston.com readers have shown their love for you, Madison! That and 99 cents will get you a bottle of Chelmsford soda.
Honorable mentions:
The New Hampshire Diaper Spa: Let’s face it, calling your business “The Diaper Spa” — a nursery-like business for adults who role play as children and [checks notes] wear diapers — is probably going to get you into trouble with the neighbors, which is exactly what happened in Atkinson, New Hampshire, this year. Not that we can think of anything better … “Babies R Us,” maybe? (On second thought, never mind.) “The diaper thing was funny, but not my top choice — seems like more of a bottom,” wrote Alison from New Hampshire.
The Bourne Rotary stealth camper: There are probably worse ways to get YouTube famous than by sleeping out in the iconic rotary at the entrance to Cape Cod, cooking up a lobster roll, and waking up covered in pine sap. But there are probably better ways too.
Celebrities take over Boston: We’ve had our share in Boston and the surrounding area this year, including the likes of Jason Momoa, Channing Tatum, Larry David, and Renee Rapp and Ed Sheeran, not to mention local fixtures like Matt Damon and John Krasinski. And most recently, Robert Pattinson and Zendaya sightings have become so common that the TV news doesn’t even notice them anymore. Bonus: Where goeth Zendaya also goeth Tom Holland, and/or his lookalikes.
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Joro spider hits Beacon Hill: The arrival of the Joro spider — you know, that invasive, bright yellow-and-blue arachnid that can grow to about the size of your palm — in Boston in September caused, well, just about the amount of panic you’d expect. “Grab the flamethrowers!” exclaimed Christine M. of Westboro in response to our poll on the matter, which found that 41% of readers classified the spider’s arrival as among their “worst nightmares.”
Ayo Edebiri reveals her favorite dessert: The Boston-born star of “The Bear” told Seth Meyers about The Cool Dog — the frozen treat remembered only by dyed-in-the-wool New Englanders — and the rest was history. “Cool Dogs forever!” wrote Em P. from Cambridge.
Stay tuned for a full list of the most-read stories on Boston.com in 2024 next week.
Peter Chianca
General Assignment Editor
Peter Chianca, Boston.com’s general assignment editor since 2019, is a longtime news editor, columnist, and music writer in the Greater Boston area.
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