Situated overlooking North Square in Boston's historic North End, the brick townhouse at "number 3" dates back to around 1820. But earlier dwellings at this address shared North Square with Boston's original settlers beginning with Cotton Mather (the presiding judge over the Salem witch trials) and including Paul Revere (the famous patriot who couriered first news of the American Revolution). The nineteenth century brought visits from Charles Dickens and the construction of Boston's largest private mansion. Late in the 1800s, waves of immigrant Jewish, Irish and Italian populations washed over the neighborhood. By the turn of the century, our townhouse became home to an Italian Bank, an obstetricians office, a funeral home, and beginning in the sixties, a rich legacy of Sicilian restaurants.

Mamma Maria, in its current form, began in 1984 as an upscale northern Italian restaurant featuring the "nouvelle Italian" cuisine fashionable in the late eighties. By 1990, under its current ownership, Mamma Maria was fully renovated and the cuisine "re-grounded" in a regional farmhouse style typical of the Italian countryside.

The most striking feature of Mamma Maria is its residential character. Diners have the option of proceeding down a narrow hall to our street-level dining rooms, or else up a tiny staircase to a warren of second-floor rooms. Ranging in size from a one-table private enclave to a twelve-table dining room accommodating up to fifty diners, Mamma Maria is really five distinct dining areas - any of which can be taken privately and four of which offer city views.

A second distinctive feature of the restaurant is the wonderful and striking view of downtown Boston. North Square sits on a small hill overlooking the city. Floor-to-ceiling windows reveal a dramatic panorama contrasting the Boston skyline with the largely unchanged historic village in the foreground. Diners look out over four centuries of Boston's history revealed just beyond our dining room windows.

Finally, the cuisine at Mamma Maria is truly regional and "product-driven". We focus strongly on the local foods of New England and find authentic Italian dishes through which to showcase them. In the fall and winter, our menu features more northern Italian and mountain dishes. In the summer, our menu veers to the south - allowing us to highlight local produce and the abundant and diverse summer seafood market. Mamma Maria believes that an Italian restaurant can only be "authentic" when it exploits its own regional specialties. As any real Italian will tell you, the best food comes from his very own village - and the best cook is, of course, "Mamma".