Parm, an Ode to Italian-American Comfort Food, Is Opening Inside the Burlington Mall

Major Food Group, the celebrated New York City-based restaurant group known for restaurants like Carbone, Dirty French, Sadelle’s, and ZZ’s Clam Bar, is on something of an expansion tear. In 2021 alone, the group has opened four new restaurants — two in Miami, one in upstate New York, and one in Paris — and announced many more, including Contessa, Newbury Street’s forthcoming glitzy, glamorous rooftop restaurant.

As it turns out, the expansion tear is far from over, and Contessa isn’t the only restaurant MFG has planned for Greater Boston — it’s also planning an expansion of Parm, its wildly popular ode to Italian-American comfort food, for the Burlington Mall.

Parm is MFG’s fast-casual Italian-American mini-chain, which specializes in meatballs, chicken parm subs, wings, calamari, and the like. The first Parm outpost opened in 2011, and the brand has since expanded to include five locations, including one at an outlet mall in upstate New York called Woodbury Commons. MFG can do upscale, pricy restaurants on the rooftops of historic hotels, and MFG can do meatball subs inside shopping malls. (Simon Property Group, which is behind Woodbury Commons, the Burlington Mall, and many other malls, is a minority stakeholder in MFG. There are 13 Simon malls in Massachusetts, so perhaps other parts of the state will be seeing their own Parm locations spring up one day.)

MFG hasn’t shared menu details for this forthcoming location of Parm yet, but eaters can get a sense of what to expect from glancing at the menus of the existing locations around New York. Think sandwiches stuffed with mortadella, ham, coppa, pepperoni, and provolone; spaghetti and meatballs; shrimp scampi with penne; fried zucchini; and eggplant parm. The beer list will probably include Peroni (as the menu at any Italian joint worth its weight in marinara should), and the cocktail list will probably feature some sort of spritz and a Negroni. Safe to assume there will be prosecco on offer, too.

There is no opening date for Parm (the Burlington Mall’s website lists it as “coming soon”), but this post will be updated as that information becomes available. In the meantime, get lost in this melty cheese:

• For Major Food Group, the Good Times Still Roll [E]
• Contessa, a Glitzy Rooftop Restaurant, Will Open by the Public Garden in June [EBOS]