La Summa

This restaurant on Fleet Street in the North End is a well-​kept secret. Off the main North End drags of Salem and Hanover Streets, it may get overlooked, but it’s a great place to take a date, your family, or friend. We had a large group and they were great about accommodating us. I had called in advance for a reservation. Many in the group commented on how much they liked their food and the waitstaff/​owner were extremely welcoming on the phone and in person!

Good old style, red sauce Italian restaurant. Good portion sizes and great prices for the North End.

Good choice for dinner if you like attentive service, good home style Italian cooking and no ridiculous lines. Very good portion size.
Ordered Caprese Salad as an appetizer. Meal consisted of spinach gnocchi with sausage and chicken and pesto.
Service: ⁵⁄₅
Value: ⁵⁄₅
Food: ⁴⁄₅ (a 5 being eating In Italy itself)

This is a nice place with a great ambiance and décor. We visited this location recently for a graduation celebration and had a large party. The restaurant did a great job accommodating us and our waiter was prompt, professional, and very knowledgeable of the menu. The pasta didn’t appear to be well proportionally served, yet it was tasteful.

Service was attentive and our waiter was very kind and accommodating – when I asked about the risotto of the day, he explained it and then immediately asked if I was hoping for any particular risotto and that they’d be happy to make it.
Frutti di Mare: The seafood was excellent – plump mussels, tender squid, crisp shrimp – but the tagliatelle underneath was very bloated and overcooked. It was advertised as freshly made tagliatelle (one of my favorite types of pasta!) but even though I tried it as soon as it got to the table, before it could’ve had time to sit and get soggy, it was already lacking the textural component that I associate with fresh pasta.
House Special (combination of veal, chicken, sausage, artichokes, pepperoncini, olives, mushrooms and Italian spices infused with white wine served over linguine): My boyfriend ordered this dish. Visually, the linguine looked just like the tagliatelle and texturally, it felt similarly overcooked. I felt like the flavor was a little too sour for my liking but my boyfriend finished the plate, so he thought it was alright.
TL;DR Good service. Good seafood. Lackluster pasta.

Great low key North End restaurant. The Gnocchi and Stuffed Artichoke was really good. This is my new go to North End spot.

This is an excellent place for Italian dinner. If you want good Italian off the beaten path, this place is great. We didn’t have to wait in the long lines and got great quality food for reasonable prices. We loved the Fusilli pasta, the sauce was amazing. The owner was very nice and had fantastic recommendations. Overall a great Italian restaurant in the North End.

AMAZING! I called at 5 pm for a reservation for 10 and they fit us perfectly! They were one of the only places that would fit us and the food was amazing! Everybody loved their meal. I have no complaints. Favorite pasta in the north end, by far.

I ate at La Summa on New Year’s Eve and had an absolutely wonderful experience — my first time there, but most certainly not my last.
Just a little background: When I called to make a reservation (just a few days prior too), they had availability for 7PM. The hostess mentioned that a lot of people make reservations for 8:30/9PM, so I highly recommend this place if you’re looking last minute for a (relatively) early NYE dinner!
For our dinner, we had the following:
–Eggplant bruschetta (app special of the day): tasty! The plate came out with 4 hot fried eggplants topped with bruschetta and mozzarella melted on top — plenty for 2.
–Salsiccia: for this pasta dish, the spicy italian sausage paired well with the broccoli rabe and red peppers. Served with a light olive oil sauce. Big portions.
–Pasta Spinaci: This dish was sooooo good. The pasta was *so* fresh and chewy. It came with pieces of Italian ham, spinach, and sundried tomatoes. I would get it again in a heartbeat.
Like many other fellow fans have written, it’s a block off from Hanover so it’s got a cozy, intimate, family feel to it — even on New Year’s Eve!
Last but not least, their entrees are $ 15 – 20 and are big and filling — very reasonably priced.

Tonight a friend and I were looking for a place in the North End to get pasta with broccoli rabe and sausage-​the perfect dish for a cold winter night. Someone recommended that we go off the main street to La Summa on Fleet Street and ask for a waitress named Sharon. We went to La Summa and were given the only free table which happened to be in a cosy corner near the window. Sharon was our waitress and she was wonderful. She was warm, helpful and clearly wanted to make our experience a positive one. I did have the broccoli rabe I was hoping for and my friend had the lentil soup-​both delicious. The restaurant had a comfortable, homey feel to it, Sharon was very attentive and the people at the only other table in our cosy corner were very nice to talk to. We topped off our meal with a scrumptious slice of ricotta pie and a cappucino.
The atmosphere, waitstaff and food all contributed to a wonderful experience. Thanks so much Sharon. We will be back! And thanks also to Karen for recommending it to us.
Beth A. and Pat V.

What a great hidden gem. First I walked in, was greeted and shown a very cozy table. The waitress was very attentive, she recommended the stuffed calimari. Was truly delicious. Then for the main course, Veal parmesan over home made pasta, another home run. It was fantastic, I highly recommend it.
It’s a definite stop when you’re in the north end.
Five stars from me

I’ve been to La Summa few times. A friend who has since moved the to the West Coast turned me on to this place as it is a bit of a hidden gem within the North End. The most recent time I went, which was about a week ago, I got a lasagna special. It was delicious and huge!
La Summa is reasonably priced for the area and has a pretty extensive menu of italian classics. My water glass was kept topped up which was great. This place is definitely worth checking out.

Delicious food at a great price and amazing staff!!! Located in the heart of the North End. Highly recommended.

La Summa is one of those restaurants that is a perfect 3 stars. Definitely no more. And probably no less.
We had reservations for 9 people (6 adults, 3 kiddos) for 7:30pm on a Saturday during on of the North End’s Italian festivals. We were seated by 8pm, not so bad considering we made the reservations only a few hours before and the streets were packed with peeps.
The ambiance for La Summa is definitely geared more towards the romantic and fancy. They did not have a kids menu (we didn’t do much research ahead of time), but they were willing to make the kids anything they requested. I will say it took a good 20 minutes for our server to come over to get our drink orders (beer or wine only), another 10 minutes for our food order, and I lost track of how long to get bread, but we were losing our patience by then.
Bruschetta (with melted cheese?) was delicious as well as the crab balls. My fellow diners seemed to enjoy their meals, but I on the other hand thought it was lacking flavor. It was the Frutti De Mare ($ 28) and had scallops, shrimp, calamari, and mussels over homemade linguini. The pasta was phenomenal and I found myself digging down to the bottom of the dish past the seafood to get to it!
With so many choices for Italian cuisine on the North End, I probably will not be going back the next time I visit Boston. I do recommend, though, if you’re dining at La Summa to try any of their homemade pastas.

The ambiance is great and the food taste really good! I had baked Haddock with crispy bread crumbs, creamy mashed potatoes, and steamed fresh broccoli, with a glass of Merlot.

Service was poor and food was OK but nothing special.
If I go all the way to the North End and have to spend $ 18 to park my car, I expect a lot more from a restaurant.
Others in my party were equally unimpressed with their food and lack of service.
I would never go back.

Cute little Italian retaurant off Hanover and close to my daughter’s apartment. We had not been here b4. Dinner was good. There were 4 in our party and it was a late lunch/​early dinner so we were the only table seated. Service was good. Food was good –chicken parm, veal parm, and a chicken marsala type dish.
Important notes: the sauce on the fresh pasta is a pinkish penne vodka type sauce, and the chicken parm was thicker than I like (RI chicken parmesean is paper thin). I would def try it again.

If I could, I would have preferred to give this resturant 3.5.
We made reservations for this location for 6 people. We get there with two people still missing from the group and they wouldn’t sit us until we were all present. Luckily it wasn’t too crowded by the time our other friends arrived.
The resturant is small, with dim lighting making for a more traditional, intimate appeal.
The menu was decent, the pasta made fresh. I decided to order a fresh pasta with white sauce, spinach, sun dried tomatos. The sauce was thick, the pasta was very el dente. The portions are uneven– some pasta dishes were much smaller than others. Nonetheless, my food was delicious and relatively filling, although I wish for slightly more seasoning. We paired it with a nice Pinot Nior. I tried a piece of my friend’s Gnocci which was too plain.
I would recommend this place but I would’t say it was impressive.

Strictly ok Italian food for the north end, we went here to try a new place, have to say the food was OK. Nothing really amazing the table bread was mediocre but the staff and service was excellent

So many choices off Hanover street, and we were so glad we found this one on a recommendation. It is one block off Hanover which means it is more quaint and less noisy and crowded, which is exactly what we wanted. The food here was traditional Italian with good risotto, gnocchi, and other wonderful pastas. We couldn’t decide so we had a few appetizers including the risotto and some meatballs, and then followed up with our main courses. All and all a great meal, and I highly recommend searching it out.