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When one considers Boston, one tends to think in terms of cliches, as in a history-altering tea party, musket-toting revolutionaries and the Gahdens' fanatical baseball fans. But behind every cliche lies a certain truth, and behind that, a story. Boston has earned a reputation for having one of the worst restaurant scenes in the United States. But a recent trip proved that, like most cliches, this one deserves a big delete mark.

"Everything was just too big, too brown, too much of the same thing," chef Gabriel Frasca says of his city's not-so-distant dining past, as he stops by to greet us at Spire, in the edgy Nine Zero boutique hotel. We've come here to sample his brand of intelligent American cuisine.

About a decade ago, young chefs like Frasca (cute and curly-haired) started a new food movement in Boston by creating inventive recipes determined by the seasons, such as his organic chicken seared under a brick with summer truffle and sides of creamy stone-ground grits and bacon-infused mustard greens (a clever take on collards). This was considered forward thinking in a town known more for its baked beans and cream pies than foraged chanterelles and house-cured pancetta.

When one considers Boston, one tends to think in terms of cliches, as in a history-altering tea party, musket-toting revolutionaries and the Gahdens' fanatical baseball fans. But behind every cliche lies a certain truth, and behind that, a story. Boston has earned a reputation for having one of the worst restaurant scenes in the United States. But a recent trip proved that, like most cliches, this one deserves a big delete mark.

"Everything was just too big, too brown, too much of the same thing," chef Gabriel Frasca says of his city's not-so-distant dining past, as he stops by to greet us at Spire, in the edgy Nine Zero boutique hotel. We've come here to sample his brand of intelligent American cuisine.

About a decade ago, young chefs like Frasca (cute and curly-haired) started a new food movement in Boston by creating inventive recipes determined by the seasons, such as his organic chicken seared under a brick with summer truffle and sides of creamy stone-ground grits and bacon-infused mustard greens (a clever take on collards). This was considered forward thinking in a town known more for its baked beans and cream pies than foraged chanterelles and house-cured pancetta.

Changing people's tastes has been a struggle at times, Frasca admits, because Bostonians, like so many North Americans, have tended to favour portion size over all else. Plus, the relatively small population here has made it difficult for high-end establishments to make a go of it. But as Spire's smart, steely-hued room - fully booked on this Saturday night - proves, a young generation of well-heeled foodies is embracing the modern makeovers of their favourite dishes.

We're served jade-coloured cucumber gazpacho bejewelled with a brunoise of heirloom melons, avocado, red jalapeno and a crown of olive-oil-poached shrimp. Next, three monster diver scallops arrive, seared on one side to an exquisite brown, with the other side gossamer and smooth. It's like a French kiss from Maine. Dessert, a plate of warm cinnamon-sugar beignets served with a shot of Mexican hot chocolate, could be misconstrued as a sexual advance.

Later that evening, Frasca recommends his favourite watering hole for a postprandial top-off: the swishy No. 9 Park in Beacon Hill, where chef Barbara Lynch dishes out seasonal upscale bistro food such as prune-stuffed gnocchi and blood-peach sorbet. After the dinner rush, the place turns into a speakeasy of sorts, where classic cocktails from the Prohibition era are muddled and shaken. "You can't go wrong with any of their house specialties," Frasca hints. And we don't. It is yet another tasty introduction to a city on the make.

"In NYC people have the Zagat in their back pocket like it's their bible. Here, people hear the word Zagat and they think it's the name of a disease or something," Dan Andelman says as we slide into a picnic table and order a pitcher of Sam Adams brew. "But walk around this room and say Phantom Gourmet and everyone knows it." Andelman is executive producer and host of The Phantom Gourmet, a popular Boston-based TV show, and his city favourites are very much of the old school, though Spire and No. 9 rank among his picks for top high-end tables.

He is not the Phantom Gourmet. The mysterious Phantom is in fact the most trusted name in restaurant news and reviews in New England. When reviewing products such as the best frozen pizza brands, he wears opera-length purple satin gloves, but besides that, he's never seen. Andelman says the stories viewers respond to most involve the best steak-and-cheese sub in New England, or a five-pound hamburger. "Here's the best sausage sandwich you can buy, here's a great seafood place that also happens to do the best fried chicken in the universe." The show has even reviewed Burger King.

Tonight Andelman joins me at one of his all-time favourite restaurants, Jasper White's Summer Shack. "Jasper turned a formerly run-down Chinese restaurant into a humongous clam shack on steroids," he says. This translates roughly into 300 picnic tables, a 1,500-gallon lobster tank and 80-gallon steam cookers, lobsters you rip and dip, smashed crabs and mini clambakes. "If I was going to the chair tomorrow, I would order his pan-roasted lobster as my final meal," Andelman says, and you can tell he has seriously contemplated this. But Jasper's is the type of place where you can also get a corn dog or a plate of fried chicken. And the celebrity chef is almost always in the kitchen.

Adelman's death-row meal, pan-roasted lobster, is a one-and-a-half-pound live lobster cut into six pieces and seared in chervil, bourbon, white wine, butter and chives. The clambake arrives in a yellow mesh sack packed with lobster, mussels, steamers, an ear of corn, a couple of red potatoes, a piece of chorizo and a hard-boiled egg. You cut it open and proceed to maul. Local clams, grilled over wood charcoal and basted with garlic butter, are divine. Jasper's fried chicken is quite good, but not the best I've had, while the retro lemon-chiffon icebox cake proves yet again why we should all cherish our childhoods.

Early the next morning, I pass by the grave of Sam Adams (whose namesake beer we enjoyed the previous evening), cut through genteel streets lined with elegant brick townhouses, trek along the almost finished Big Dig - a 12-year, US$15-billion project that has seen Boston's main expressway turned into a network of underground tunnels - and arrive on the fringes of the city's famed Little Italy. "We're in here!" Michele Topor waves from the door of Martignetti Liquors.

A true aficionado of all things Italian, Topor will be our guide to the North End, an area that's 40% Italian and as vibrant as it's ever been.

Maria's Pastry Shop is our first stop. Maria frowns as we enter, then returns to the back of the store to fight with her sisters. "She's cranky as hell, but she's good," Topor says. Her sfogliatelle, a breakfast pastry consisting of paper-thin layers of crispy dough, candied fruit, eggs and powdered sugar, is lovely, and the cannoli are filled on the spot with creamy, sweetened ricotta. "No self-respecting Italian buys them prefilled," Topor says.

As we stroll the narrow cobblestoned streets, we spot elderly men sitting on chairs and chatting loudly. "When the developers came in, they sold their flats and moved to the suburbs," Topor says. But the old guys got bored sitting alone at home all day. "So they load their lawn chairs into their cars and drive to the North End to sit in front of coffee shops all day."

Alba Produce is another interesting spot. Bruce Alba, who mans the tiny storefront, crams it with the best in seasonal produce. This time of year brings baby dandelion and fava beans, while winter means blood oranges and cardoons. But here's the kicker: There are no prices, and no touching allowed. Alba picks your produce for you, and to complicate matters further, he is by all accounts quite moody.

Topor describes Salumeria Italiana as the best Italian grocer in America, with the finest imported commercial and artisanal pastas and an incredible range of olive oils, including dated unfiltered. Refrigerator cases boast specialty Italian cheeses, cured meats, including imported Parma, and more.

For a final meal, I cut across Boston Commons toward the antithesis of my North End experience, the Upper Crust. Tucked into a Beacon Hill storefront, it's a small pizza joint with a communal table down the middle, a few counter-side stools and a guy tossing pies in the window. I order a slice with fresh sauce, whole basil leaves, portobellos and roasted red peppers layered on to a wafer-thin crust. The peppers have blistered to black. It is just too good.

Irish, Italians, Asians and African-Americans: They all settled into Boston's distinct neighbourhoods and gradually built a city where young chefs infuse food with intellect, where a Phantom tells you what to eat and where some of the best food you'll ever taste has been around for almost 100 years. It's a town full of real food for real people, where the more things change, the more they stay the same.

And that's a cliche you can let stand. Where to eat

- Spire at Nine Zero Hotel. 90 Tremont St., 617-772-0202, spirerestaurant.com
- Jasper White's Summer Shack, 149 Alewife Brook Pkwy., 617-520-9500, summershackrestaurant.com
- North End Market Tours, 617-523-6032, northendmarkettours.com
- The Upper Crust, 20 Charles St., 617-723-9600, theuppercrustpizzeria.com

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