Boston Public Market — Restaurant in Boston

★☆☆☆☆ | Visited June 2025

I came to Boston Public Market hoping for a quick salad. Unfortunately, every single salad on the menu was “unavailable” because the kitchen was out of one ingredient—kale.

The baffling part is that the other 95 percent of the toppings—greens, proteins, dressings, veggies—were fully stocked and visible behind the counter. Yet the point-of-sale system had been hard-blocked by management, so the staff couldn’t ring up a salad even if they wanted to swap in spinach or arugula.

As someone who can’t even eat kale, it was frustrating to be told “no substitutions, no exceptions.” A more flexible approach—allowing the team to substitute a different leafy green or offering a small discount—would have prevented a waste of perfectly good produce and money. Instead, several customers (myself included) walked away empty-handed.

Boston Public Market usually shines for variety and freshness, but rigid policies like this turn a minor ingredient shortage into a full-blown customer-service failure. Please empower your staff (or update the register) so a missing bunch of kale doesn’t cancel an entire section...

The bar tender working at the bar tonight (August 25 2022 around 4:45pm) was absolutely terrible. My friend and I ordered a round of drinks and the bartender became hostile just because i nodded at him. He said something to the effect of "im not a dog, dont wave at me" it was completely unprofessional. He then said "if you wave at me im going to take even longer" which he in fact did. Ultimately this ended in us missing our (which was delayed originally till 5:11 but then to 4:56). Spiteful actions like this shouldn't be taken lightly. Stay away...

On November 4th I stopped at the Boston Public Market waiting on the Cape Air plane to grab some lunch. I ordered food and stopped by the bar to charge my phone and eat. Half way through eating a “Caren” from the bar came up to me and told me to move to the dining area 10 feet away. I thought that was ridiculous as there was only one other person than me and the whole bar was empty. I understand that when busy me taking a space to eat and not ordering a drink is a bad business for the bartender, but there was all the sits...