Here’s how to spend the perfect day in Hyde Park

Ruthzee Louijeune, Boston City Council president, takes us through her perfect day in Boston’s Hyde Park neighborhood.

In Boston.com’s Perfect Day series, we’re talking to a local expert in each of Boston’s 23 neighborhoods about how they’d spend their perfect day. See what makes this city so special to your neighbors, and share your perfect day with us at [email protected].

Hyde Park’s motto is “A Small Town in the City,” and it rings true for the neighborhood which, despite being just a short ride on the commuter rail from downtown Boston, has a much slower, suburban feel.

The neighborhood began as a farm community before it was incorporated into the city of Boston in 1868, and later became a destination spot for different immigrant communities, according to Ruthzee Louijeune, a Hyde Park resident and president of the Boston City Council.

Louijeune grew up in neighboring Mattapan but moved to Hyde Park when she was 11 years old. Even after leaving for college at Columbia University, the neighborhood always remained her “landing spot.” During the pandemic, she lived with her family for two years before buying a house of her own in the neighborhood.

Hyde Park is a very diverse neighborhood, with sizable Black, Hispanic and white populations – there is no single demographic making up a majority in the neighborhood. Its one aspect of many that Louijeune loves about the neighborhood, and what sets it apart from others, she said.

“I love how diverse Hyde Park is. It’s a residential neighborhood in the city of Boston, one where public transportation is still really key. My parents are immigrants from Haiti, and there’s a large Haitian community in both Mattapan and Hyde Park,” she said.

Along with its demographic diversity, Louijeune said the neighborhood also has a growing diversity of local businesses and nightlife options.

“I love that we are seeing an increasing number of places where people can go out in the evening and enjoy themselves,” she said.

Indeed, the neighborhood is set to host BridgeFest again this year, a four-week festival to help local businesses impacted by the River Street Bridge closure. The festival will feature live music, a vendor pop-up market, food trucks and a mobile brewing beer garden. Louijeune will be a special guest speaker at the event, which will be held in Cleary Square at 1269 Hyde Park Ave. from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Friday evenings through August 2.

Here’s how Louijeune would spend a perfect day in Hyde Park.

Morning | Afternoon | Evening | Map | Share your perfect day in Boston

Morning: Steam room at the YMCA, Haitian patties, and a forest hike

Louijeune’s job as the Boston City Council President is no easy feat. So, she’ll start her perfect day in Hyde Park with a trip to the Thomas M. Menino YMCA (1137 River St.). She’ll head straight for the steam room for a bit of relaxation.

Next, she’ll pick up her dry cleaning from Kenney Cleaner’s (1162 River St.) down the street before grabbing breakfast at one of her two favorite spots in the neighborhood: Au Beurre Chaud (725 River St.) for Haitian baked goods and Richy’s (1461 River St.) for a sit-down American breakfast.

The Boston metropolitan area is home to the third-largest Haitian population in the United States, with a large community settling in Hyde Park during the 1980s and into the 1990s.

There are plenty of Haitian restaurants, stores, and bakeries across the city, and everyone in the community has their opinion on where to get the best patties (also spelled pate), a baked puff pastry commonly filled with beef, fish or chicken.

“It’s a big dispute in the Haitian community, where to go for the best patties. I’m just saying that in Hyde Park, [Au Beurre Chaud is] where you go,” Louijeune said.

At Richie’s, she will keep it simple and opt for the classic eggs over easy with hash browns and tea (she’s not a coffee drinker).

After breakfast, she’ll make a quick stop at her parents’ house to talk – but really, to “see if there’s any food for me to forage,” she said with a laugh – before heading to Logan Square for some shopping.

Logan Square is part of Cleary Square, which is the commercial district of Hyde Park. The area features a slew of independent shops along River Street and Fairmount Street, the neighborhood’s main thoroughfares. Louijeune will pop into several stores in the area for some leisurely browsing and shopping.

First up is The Switch Artist Co-op (21 Fairmount Ave.), which was founded by local artist Walter Marroquin alongside Hyde Park Main Streets business owners. Louijeune will peruse the artwork there by local artists at the shop and see if they have any community events coming up.

Then, she’ll walk down the street to Dress with Confidence (80 Fairmount Ave.) to look at their clothing selections. Louijeune gets a lot of her African clothing from the store, and recommends owner Yolanda Sealy’s tailoring, too.

Next door to Dress with Confidence is Intriguing Hair (82 Fairmount Ave.), which sells hair extensions and wigs. Louijeune will stop in and say hello to owner Baron Langston before finishing up her shopping and heading out on her next adventure: hiking.

Louijeune’s favorite hiking spot is the Stony Brook Reservation (95 Turtle Pond Pkwy.) This small forest in the middle of Boston offers up to 12 miles of trails for hiking, running, biking and even mountain biking. It also hosts fishing, canoeing and kayaking in Turtle Pond, and more. The park’s southern end offers athletic fields as well as a pool and spray deck.

For a “bonus green space” on the Hyde Park-Mattapan border, Louijeune recommends heading to the Edgewater Food Forest (640 River St.), a formerly vacant lot now filled with fruit trees, berry bushes and mushrooms. Anyone in the community can harvest food for free, and it is maintained collectively by volunteer stewards as a part of the Boston Food Forest Coalition community land trust.

Afternoon: Lunch, a painting class, and a visit to the library

After hiking, Louijeune is sure to have worked up an appetite. For lunch, there are three options she likes to choose from in Logan Square: there’s Colombian restaurant Las Delicias Colombianas (1231 River St.), ZAZ Restaurant (1238 River St.), a Caribbean fusion restaurant, and Little Haiti International Cuisine, which serves authentic Haitian food.

If she’s at Las Delicias Colombianas, Louijeune will order the arroz con pollo (she also recommends their empanadas or arepas). At ZAZ, she will order the salmon burger and a fruit drink. And if she’s at Little Haiti International Cuisine, she’ll order tassot cabrit, which is fried goat meat, with plantains and pikliz, a condiment in Haitian cuisine made from pickled cabbage, carrots, bell peppers and Scotch bonnet peppers.

After lunch, Louijeune will head to Canvas Studio (55 Fairmount Ave.) for a painting class. Last year, she celebrated her sister’s birthday at the painting studio, and created a painting of Tupac that is hanging “in my mom’s living room or in my office,” she said. The studio hosts paint and sip events, instructed workshops, classes, and private events.

To keep the creativity going, Louijeune will head to the Hyde Park branch of the Boston Public Library (35 Harvard Ave.) for their Living Histories of Color exhibit. The art exhibit features 13 Hyde Park residents of color who have left a positive impact locally and nationally in addressing inequities. Louijeune is one of the Hyde Park residents listed in the lineup, along with Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley and Imari Paris Jeffries, executive director of Embrace Boston.

Louijeune is a frequent library-goer and enjoys attending their events, whether it be a book talk for herself or a storytime event for her niece and nephew.

Evening: Dinner, drinks, ice cream, and candlepin bowling

To bring the evening to a close, Louijeune will head to Roundhead Brewing Company (Westinghouse Plaza Building #10), which is Massachusetts’s first Latino-owned brewery according to their website. The brewery offers a menu of year round and seasonal brews, four-packs to grab-and-go, as well as a pizza kitchen.

For a “nice Italian dinner,” Louijeune will head to Antonio’s Bacaro (5 Fairmount Ave.), a Venetian wine bar and restaurant in Logan Square. She will order their fried scallops or their mushroom Italian bread pizza. Louijeune also recommends the rasta pasta, wings and cornbread at Park 54 Restaurant and Lounge (81 Fairmount Ave.) for another dinner option.

If it’s a hot day, she’ll want to break for ice cream, and there’s no better place in Hyde Park than Ron’s Gourmet Ice Cream (1231 Hyde Park Ave.). The ice cream parlor has been a neighborhood institution since 1976, doling out handcrafted ice cream alongside a 10-lane retro candlepin bowling alley. Louijeune will order her favorite ice cream flavor, birthday cake.

“I love going there with my family to do some bowling,” she added.

Nearby is Riverside Theatre Works (43 Fairmount Ave.) where Louijeune recommends you can catch a show, although she admitted it has been a while since she last saw one.

“I love that we are seeing an increasing number of places where people can go out in the evening and enjoy themselves. I love all the nooks and crannies and things that you can discover,” she said of the neighborhood.

Find all of Ruthzee Louijeune’s recommended spots below.