It’s “official”–Clear Flour bakery is by far and easily the best bakery in the city. Unusually, it has first-rate breads and sweets.  Most bakeries do one well, if that; Clear Flour, in Brookline, excels at both.  We’re talking German-style loaves of dark rye, pretzels, Gruyere croissants, grainy baguette, and then, too, chocolate tarts and fruit pies.

Santouka, in Harvard Square, which is the 17th outpost of an Hokkaido-based ramen enterprise, is killing it with $13 plates of cold sesame noodles atop which is salad of greens and finely chopped tomatoes.  Front-of-the-House needs to go to charm school ASAP, but rude hostess aside, service is tops and there are no better noodles in town.

Meridian Food Market: We’re talking old school, you might as well be in Queens or Brooklyn, at this wonderful, homey Italian-American restaurant in East Boston.  Open day-time only, the guys are making subs so delicious as to be memorable, and the matriarch behind the cash register, standing beside the dollar-laden poster for a saint to be honored in a parade this summer?  She’s not fooling around.

For pizza, take your pick: Galleria Umberto, Santarpio’s, T. Anthony’s, Fig’s, or Iggy’s.  In that order.

Now what’s left out?  Hmmm….