Locke-Ober: Better Closed than Casual.

[Noble Savage]

Locke-Ober, the Boston restaurant which opened in 1875, has closed.

“… if there isn’t a place in Boston for something so beautiful, with good food and service, something’s wrong,” says Lydia Shire, who served as executive chef there from 2001 to 2010. “Why do we all have to go to the next newest place?”

It’s easy to go back in time amid Locke’s magnificent mahogany carvings, art nouveau windows and gilt wallpaper. Add the bronze sculpture, “Gloria Victis,” which became an irresistible hat rack for high-spirited lads; the portrait of naked Mademoiselle Yvonne draped in black when Harvard loses to Yale; the stash of speakeasy-era bottles found recently in a closet; the buzzers in the upstairs dining rooms to summon service.

http://www.improper.com/features/locke-over/

“ ...the 137-year-old genteel eatery that catered to [Boston] Brahmins, royalty, presidents and even movie stars, closed its glossy black doors this weekend.

A sign posted outside the Winter Place restaurant said it is “closed for business, pending Locke-Ober’s sale of its buildings.” The note went on to thank our “loyal and valued customers” for years of service, and asked people to “remember the good times.” Management could not be reached for comment. — Boston Herald”

DOWNTOWN
Locke-Ober owner David Ray explains his decision to close
10/22/2012 1:09 PM

David Ray, the owner of the venerable Locke-Ober, called this morning to confirm what a city already knew. He has sold the building on Winter Place in Downtown Crossing, shuttered his restaurant, and is moving on.

“All done,” Ray said, pausing for a moment. “I think we gave it a good effort.

“Here’s what I was faced with,” Ray continued. “I had a choice. Make Locke-Ober more casual, lower our standards to conform with the way society is today, or I could close it. I could close it with its history and its dignity intact. Because, frankly, it looked as good as it’s ever looked. The service was good, and the food was good.”

“It’s unfortunate,” Ray continued. “It’s bittersweet for me. I’ve owned it since 1978.”

But the reality, Ray has learned over the past decade or more, is that Boston has changed, often for the better, but not always so. An increasingly younger city is on a constant search for the next new thing, restaurants being no exception. Formality, here as everywhere, is a thing of the past.

Which is why the Ritz-Carlton on Arlington Street is no longer the Ritz, and even before it changed ownership to the Taj, it had shuttered its second floor dining room overlooking the Public Garden. It’s why the famed Oak Room at the Fairmont Copley Plaza has been completely reimagined into the contemporary and snappy-sounding OAK Long Bar + Kitchen. It’s why L’Espalier now has contemporary quarters in a modern hotel. It’s why Maison Robert in downtown Boston and Aujourd’hui at the Four Seasons are no more.

Locke-Ober, for a long period of time, represented Boston, or a certain element of Boston, that which is bound in tradition. Founded in 1875, it’s where the captains of downtown industry mingled with the city’s most prominent lawyers and financiers over lunches composed of lobster stew and thick cut steaks. Famed maitre d’ Tony Accardi presided masterfully at the door. Jackets were required of diners, and many of the waiters – all male – marked their tenures not in years, but decades.

Presidents visited, along with sports stars, Hollywood actors, and power brokers from coast to coast. Some diners were so regular that the Globe once published a map of the dining room showing who sat where. When customers died, their chairs were leaned against the tables to signify the loss.

Rumors have abounded since the late 1990s over the restaurant’s future. At one point, John Kerry was believed to be a potential suitor to buy it. Famed chef Lydia Shire was brought in as a principal a little more than a decade ago and the room underwent a mild renovation and deep cleaning, but even that didn’t stop the decline. Shire has since moved on.

“Business has been OK,” said Ray, a Newport-based restaurateur. “You have busy nights and you have nights when there are 25 people in there. I wasn’t losing any money. We were just treading water.”

Ray said the new owners plan to put housing in the upper quarters of the building, where there is now a warren of private dining rooms, including one tiny alcove reputed to be the site of more marriage proposals than any other room in Boston.

Those new owners will likely put a restaurant on the first floor, city officials said in confirming that a purchase and sales agreement has been signed on the building. But it will be something different.

“There’s not going to be another Locke-Ober in that building,” Ray said. “I’m the one locking the door.”

http://www.boston.com/metrodesk/2012/10 ... story.html

http://blog.zagat.com/2012/10/137-year- ... loses.html

[Costi]

a stoic suicide...

[Slewfoot]

Wow. Lovely room. Wish I had made it there. Every time I remember about how society is becoming so much more casual it tugs at me a bit.

[Noble Savage]

Wow. Lovely room. Wish I had made it there. Every time I remember about how society is becoming so much more casual it tugs at me a bit.

The way it was set up, a visitor would have no way of knowing that any of these rooms, besides the main dining room, even existed. They were for private events only. Further, the restaurant building itself was located in a small alley, neighboring rather cheap retail stores and office buildings — a busy and a bit seedy area by day, a desolate and empty downtown district by night. If you walked by you wouldn't know there was a restaurant there. While discretion was certainly a part of the original design, it didn't help the bottom line that few outsiders found out about it at all.

Top Image: “Camus - Dating back to 1875, this room originally featured ornate wooden booths whose heavy velvet curtains ensured the privacy of its occupants. Sometime during the mid twentieth century the Camus Room was given a face-lift when the Columbia National Life Insurance building in downtown Boston was remodeled. One of Columbia National’s Director’s Rooms featured oak paneling carved by the artisans of Irving & Casson. The paneling was a perfect fit for the Camus Room and Locke-Ober’s manager at the time, Bill Harrington, acquired it. Additional architectural details include the original frosted glass windows with their coat of arms motif.”

Middle: “Ober - Early in the 1950’s the second floor of what had been Frank Locke’s Wine Rooms was re-acquired and remodeled extensively to become the Ober Room. In 1978, then owner David Ray added wall wood paneling that had formerly graced the walls of the Astor’s Newport, Rhode Island mansion. Other period details include built-in buffet, which display an antique china collection, as well as a fireplace.”

Lower: Main restaurant room.

In addition (not shown), there was a Third Floor — “Six intimate dining rooms that accommodate parties from six to sixteen people and are original to the restaurant. Silent witnesses to the highest levels of classified corporate meetings, decades of political intrigue and innumerable personal celebrations, these rooms define “private” dining. The unique service bell located in every room allows for the up most confidentiality. ”

Also, “Yvonne's Private Club” took up three floors of the rear of the building:

[Noble Savage]

Jackets-Required Fine Dining Is Dying. Does Anybody Care?
You don’t have to be very old to remember a time when certain Boston restaurants had a jackets-required rule. Locke-Ober, the Dining Room at the old Ritz-Carlton (now the Taj), and L’Espalier (in its original location) were three notable examples of rooms that insisted that male customers wear a tailored sport coat or suit to gain admittance. The maître d' literally would not seat you in the dining room without one. If you didn’t have the foresight to wear a jacket, or were arrogant enough to think they’d bend the rules for you, you faced a choice: go home and change, don one of their humiliating, ill-fitting loaner blazers, or dine somewhere else.

And they were dead-serious about it. Mick Jagger was famously denied entrance to even the bar at the Ritz in his t-shirt and jeans; being rich, famous, and a guest at the hotel didn’t matter. At Locke-Ober, that hallowed Downtown refuge for Boston’s vanishing Brahmin class, I witnessed many a host-stand scene featuring a young, well-heeled customer arguing in vain that his jeans cost $300, why couldn’t he get a table? But the jacket was non-negotiable. The owners were throwing a specific kind of party, and the invitation said “semi-formal attire”. You could get with the program, or take your business elsewhere.

...

I also worry that our all-casual, all-the-time sensibility is related to a broader coarsening of our culture, the decline of civility toward strangers in public life, the bubble of self-entitlement that a growing number of people appear to live in. I suspect the absence of a sense of decorum, an underdeveloped belief that some situations demand more formal behavior and dress than others, might be of a piece with our society's increasing rudeness and self-centeredness.

Still, I can’t shake the feeling that something small but significant is being lost, and once gone, it will be gone forever. What remains of our dining-out culture will be slightly sadder, shabbier -- a bit more vulgar. It’s not the end of civilization, just the passing of a small grace, another tiny corner of a more genteel world sacrificed for our schlubby comfort. I think maybe I’ll put on a suit, head over to the Oak Bar, and have a drink there before it becomes just one more place where a jacket looks as quaintly old-fashioned as Don Draper’s tie bar. Sic transit gloria.

http://mcslimjb.blogspot.com/2011/04/ja ... dying.html

[choipolloi]

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

Loved Locke-Ober. Literally had plans to go there this weekend (although no reservations, obviously).

At least we've still got the Algonquin. . . .

[NJS]

It goes to join the Tabard Inn; The Mermaid Tavern; Rosa Lewis´s Cavendish Hotel. Tout lasse...

[Royal_Elegance]

This is sad... Locke-Ober was old world. The service was fantastic, the food nice, the environment really something else. Unfortunately, it was never too busy and I was afraid this was coming. The world has changed indeed. Nonetheless, this is not an excuse to erase this place; they could have tried to convert it to a museum, hotel or a super elegant bar. I hope the new owners keep this place's spirit intact.

[Noble Savage]

I had lunch at the old Ritz Bar today. A guest was walking around in green sneakers, jeans, an untucked shirt and baseball cap, closely studying the artwork, as if in a museum.

This is exactly the sort of thing that most likely will be going in the new reopened old Locke-Ober rooms.

[Mark Seitelman]

* * *

At least we've still got the Algonquin. . . .

The New York City Algonuin is not the same that it was.

The Oak Room is no longer a cabaret. I am not sure what it is now.

Also Feinstein's at the Regency Hotel has closed since the entire hotel is undergoing renovation.

That leaves The Caryle as the sole survivor of hotel nightclubs in New York.

[Noble Savage]

The Carlyle Lobster Bisque is no match for the Locke-Ober Lobster Bisque. The stew was even better.

[couch]

Whether it will have any impact I can't say, but there is an active online petition to restore the evening supper-club programming at the Oak Room. Can't hurt to chime in:

http://www.change.org/petitions/bring-b ... -algonquin

[old henry]

anybody remember the tiny little bar in the algonquin?
maybe gone 20yrs now?

[Noble Savage]

“It has it’s own personality,” said Sager, a Boston resident. “There’s no place like Locke-Ober.”

That sentiment brought him back one last time Friday to join a crowd bidding on some of the estimated 250 items that had been in regular use at Locke-Ober before it closed in October. The keepsakes were auctioned off by the new owners of the site, who plan to open a different restaurant on the ground floor next year.

Sager was just one of the many regulars who came to bid on memorabilia and have one last look at the vintage restaurant that welcomed local business leaders, presidents, and even movie stars for 137 years. Among the items up for auction: a pool table, mirrors, glassware, and table lamps.

About 225 people attended the auction and 80 more signed up to bid online. The event raised about $55,000, which co-owner Jay Hajj said would help pay for cleaning and planned renovations.

The bidding started in the dining room, where representatives from the Paul E. Saperstein Co. stood on top of a ladder and announced item after item, including china, pans, menus, chairs, tables, lamps, coffee grinders, and ashtrays.

Several key Locke-Ober items, such as its silver servers, oil paintings, the restaurant’s name, and the famous painting of a woman named Yvonne that hung on the wall of the main dining room, had not been purchased by the new owners, so they were not up for bidding.

To many, Locke-Ober represented a bygone era when tycoons and politicians would feast on three-course lunches and drinks. Women were not allowed in the dining room until nearly a century after it opened, and a dress code was upheld until 2011.

The property was sold last month for $3.3 million to Hajj, James P. Robertson, and Michael Fallman, local businessmen who bought the building, its liquor license, and everything put up for auction Friday. A sale of the liquor license is pending. Hajj, who also owns Mike’s City Diner, said he and his partners want to keep as many elements of the landmark restaurant intact as possible.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massac ... story.html

SPÉCIALITÉS DE LA MAISON: LOCKE-OBER
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED DECEMBER 1943
HES BRODY

The best restaurant in Boston to my mind and palate is Locke‑Ober (3 and 4 Winter Place). This is a very old place, perhaps a hundred years old, situated in a narrow thoroughfare. Since I went with ladies both times I was there, I couldn’t enter the downstairs main dining room, which is reserved for men only. But the upstairs rooms are even better, and have just as much atmosphere. I tasted a lobster bisque at Locke-Ober, absolutely out of this world! And the broiled lobster is alone worth hopping on a train and traveling up to Boston for. I also tried duck a l’orange, comparable to the Foyot version, a fond memory for anyone who used to eat at that superb Parisian place. Desserts—there are only a few—are unbelievably good. Try the frozen pudding, and where do they get that wonderful Port Salut cheese! Good wines. This is not a cheap place (you may dine modestly for three or four dollars), but every morsel is worth its weight in gold.

http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/1940s/1 ... ber-review

[alden]

In reality, restaurants requiring any dress code are getting harder to find in Europe as well. And those that remain are often lambasted by food critics for being "behind the times."

I think the sights and sounds of any of the grand old restaurants are pretty Dantesque these days. Waiters, Maitre D's and Sommeliers (lest we forget them) dressed in formal attire serving clowns in track suits. I wonder what these clients would say if the staff donned Adidas as well?

This holiday season I had the chance to dine at Wilton's on Jermyn Street, a restaurant that still maintains a dress code, and serves superb seafood.

Maybe we need to start a list of the remaining elegant dining establishments...would be a short list?

Cheers