Your post got me thinking of what seems to be a paucity in Boston of restaurants with good food served elegantly in a really grand space. I’m thinking of NY restaurants such as Del Posto, The Modern, EMP, etc., with impressive rooms (high ceilings a must), space between the tables, and really polished service that pampers you. Biba, back in the day, was something like that, especially if you got a table by the window.
What’s like that in the Boston area these days? We do not eat out as much others here might, so its entirely possible that there are several such places of which I’m unaware.
Oddly, a couple of places where the space fits the bill, the food does not: Changsho has a nice, high-ceilinged room, but the food’s often mediocre and just decent at best. Ditto Helmand (where I think the food has declined – but I’ve not been there in a year).
And, on a recent visit to Cafe du Pays, my wife and I found the service absolutely top-notch, and worthy of the best restaurants we’ve eaten at, but we were not entirely blown away by the food. There were a couple of knockout dishes (pea soup, brussel sprouts caramelized to the extreme) but others were often just too salty or not well conceived (sour pickled mushrooms with foie gras, for example). Plus, the rooms are small, and the upstairs dark.
