#boston-history

#boston-history

Walk through Boston's neighborhoods today and you'll find Thai, Korean, Italian, Indian - the city's food scene has come a long way. But in the 1930s, if you wanted something beyond American fare, your options were sparse. That's what makes Deeb G. Salem's decision to open The Nile all the more remarkable. Right in the heart of the Depression, this Syrian immigrant and his wife Rose decided to open a restaurant on Hudson Street, transforming it into one of New England's most talked-about dining destinations.

Roxbury puddingstone, the mottled rock quarried nearby and used for much of the old church masonry in Boston, formed 600 million years ago in violent submarine landslides off the coast of a barren volcanic microcontinent that rifted off Africa. This is so long ago thatin the course of the perpetual wander of continentsthe whole thing happened somewhere near the south pole.