Third “whoa”. Sad to hear but not terribly surprising… I little doubt there will be other casualties.
Hoping No. 9 manages to sail on…
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Does anybody know what Todd English is doing these days? Lydia Shire?
Here is a link (unfortunately, beyond a paywall with no option for gifting) to a Boston Globe article by Devra First that to me offers a balanced view with historical perspective.
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Would be interesting to hear what they are up to these days. Both have had quite the career arc. I remember meeting English when he was at Michela’s in Cambridge. His plates got a bit busy (for me) by the time Olive’s migrated to their larger digs in Charlestown, but his talent is undeniable. Would love to have met Shire, though I’ve been sampling her cooking since her Seasons days at the Bostonian Hotel. I felt Biba was the pinnacle of adventerous cooking in Boston for its time. Offal!
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Correction…been following Shire’s cooking since her Maison Robert days!
Several years ago, I ran into her at the Crate and Barrel outlet in Kittery. She was unmistakable with her mane of red hair. I had to say hello and she was quite pleasant.
ETA: I just remembered that she served us once at Scampo (in its infancy). She was quite the host but I can’t remember a single thing we all chatted about. Too much good wine (not to mention good pastas).
Perusing Shire’s Wikipedia page, I noticed an error: Pignoli was not in the Copley Plaza Hotel (though it was close-by). Anybody know how to make corrections?
I would have blubbered 
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There’s a little pencil/pen icon in the upper-right hand corner that looks like the one here on HO. I’ve never edited Wikipedia. I think you can edit even without an account?
Having a number of restaurants all over the US - at least the 1-2 we went some time ago in Las Vegas weren’t memorable
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A friend of mine bartended at a private birthday function she was cooking at with her son, Alex, back in mid-October, and said she was wonderfully nice and delightful, as was her son.
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Gosh, that would be a nice birthday surprise
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I am not a Boston area resident but the area has been part of the entirety of my adult life: family from NH, undergrad, visiting clients often, summers on the Vineyard, and I now work for a Cambridge-based company. I had heard the rumblings of the ‘toxic environment’ in Lynch kitchens.
With all these posts, I wanted to understand more about what happened. Did you read the Boston Globe’s coverage? Wow. I will never give her another cent.
Paywalled, but here is what I just read:
If you do not have a sub, I am happy to post a few paragraphs.
Call me naive, but I think she needs support rather than scorn. Alcohol is an occupational hazard in that industry, and I hope she is getting the help she needs. She overcame other challenges, she can meet this one.
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Sounds like you have access to the Globe. Devra First wrote an interesting op-Ed piece.
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Don’t have access. Would be interesting to hear a synopsis.
I thought it was an interesting balance on her part. Appreciating the talent while recognizing the problems.
The story is posted to the Globe’s FB and Instagram pages. Not sure but I don’t think you need to have an account with them to read. I can’t tell since I have a BG subscription.
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For me, this excerpt from the Devra First opinion piece balances the evident troubles around Ms. Lynch by acknowledging her talents too. Complicated legacy, for sure:
”Lynch is one of the most talented restaurateurs Boston has produced. She can cook incredibly delicious food. She can envision a concept that’s just right at just the right moment, and make it look like she invented it, though there may be no new thing under the heat lamp. Many years ago, when I was scraping by as a temp, I convinced my visiting mother to take me to dinner at Galleria Italiana, where Lynch was the up-and-coming executive chef. It was the best meal I’d ever had in Boston. Two years later, Lynch opened No. 9 Park. She was part of a wave of chefs — Jody Adams, Todd English, Gordon Hamersley, Lydia Shire, Jasper White, et al. — who put the city on the culinary map for something beyond chowdah.”
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That’s a Murderer’s Row if there ever was one…I for one am hoping Lynch gets back in the lineup…
Also a shout-out to restauranteur par excellence Michela Larson, who helped launch English and Adams. And Edwin Land for “discovering” Larson at Harvard School of Public Health
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^ Fascinating to learn this.
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Interesting story. There was a small cafe in the Harvard SPH that Larson worked in or ran. Land was visiting one of his acquaintances there (memory fails me - it was likely either David Hubel, who Land had a collaboration with related to color vision, or Elkan Blout, who was at one time dean of the SPH and a former VP at Polaroid). Land was enamored of the food, and at the time he was starting up the Rowland Institute for Science (now the Rowland Institute at Harvard) in Cambridge, in a new building adjacent to the Longfellow Bridge. He encouraged Larson to launch her own restaurant, and it just so happened Michela’s opened directly across the street from the Rowland Institute. I presume but don’t know for certain that Land was a financial backer. Michela’s provided catering services for Rowland in the early years.
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