Michael Harper

Anyone who knows me knows that I keep a list. It covers where to eat, where to stay, and a few places I mention to almost no one. It exists for the people closest to me, and it rarely leaves my phone. This week, I am opening the hotel section.

A club built in 1930 in Miami made the cut. So did a sixteenth-century palazzo on the Grand Canal, along with a castle that one family spent three decades bringing back. Each one belongs to its place. Save this for your next trip.

This weekend, some of the best-kept automobiles in the country gather just north of Boston.

The sixteenth Misselwood Concours d'Elegance runs July 17 through 19 at Misselwood, an oceanfront estate on the Beverly shoreline, the same stretch of coast Boston's summer families built up a century ago. Classic and antique automobiles, judged the way great houses are judged: on fidelity to what the maker intended, and on the decades of stewardship since.

Saturday morning brings a free Cars and Coffee on the lawn; the Tour d'Elegance rolls out at nine, tracing the coastal roads of the North Shore. Sunday is the concours itself.

Last summer's Best of Show was a 1921 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, built in Springfield, Massachusetts, the only place a Rolls-Royce was ever made outside Britain.

This summer, a chef's tasting counter comes to the South End.

George Mendes earned a Michelin star at Aldea in New York, then came to Boston to run a local kitchen. This year he left it, and signed a lease three blocks from his own front door. Agosto opens at 1673 Washington Street: forty-five seats, twelve of them at a counter where the tasting menu is served. Portuguese roots, French technique, the seafood that comes off New England boats.

Next door at 1679, a bakery café called Baby Sister follows later in the year. Morning bread and pastéis de nata, named for his daughter, who was born here.

The South End keeps the talent that used to pass through on its way somewhere else.