Burying the Hatchet Job, Part II

ENGLISH: They had all of the wines on two barges. And one of them, I guess, sunk.

RICHMAN: They had to get rid of it. I mean, they recovered it, but you can’t sell wine that’s been underwater. Of course, Todd does that in most of his restaurants, but back then there were some standards. [Laughs.]

I’m trying to think…there were some places that specialized in scrod, but there were no good Italian restaurants that you went to. What else was there?

TRAVERSO: There was Jasper White and Lydia Shire.

ENGLISH: That was it. Jasper and Lydia were the beginning. And Gordon Hamersley branched off.

RICHMAN: Wasn’t Olives before Gordon Hamersley?

ENGLISH: No. Hamersley’s was a small place in the South End. And it was Lydia at the Bostonian, at Seasons. People talked about the Harvest. And that was [David] Kinkaid.

RICHMAN: I don’t remember it being that great.

ENGLISH: Maybe more of a scene.

RICHMAN: Seasons. Wasn’t that the one with the all-American wine list? Nobody had that. I can’t say this, but I think that was [Shire’s] best work ever. She was fabulous. That was a fabulous restaurant.

ENGLISH: Lydia is one of the most imaginative, most creative, wildest chefs I’ve ever met.

TRAVERSO: Given all your flavor combinations, even more imaginative and creative than you?

ENGLISH: Yeah, she really goes out there. Her plates are just—they’re like a storybook. It goes on and on. It’s like a fairy tale. There’s a sugar-cane house in the corner and the pork glazed with molasses. And there’s some always a whole wild story behind it. And there’s usually some big piece of fat that we all know and love but don’t want to admit it.

RICHMAN: Seasons may have been one of the first go-to restaurants in Boston and it was a hotel restaurant, which made it all the more unusual. Nobody had good hotel restaurants.

ENGLISH: So unusual.

RICHMAN: Everyone had hotel restaurants but nobody wanted to go to them. And so it was a hotel restaurant, it had the all-American wine list, it had amazing food, it had Lydia.

ENGLISH: People went to Locke-Ober, they went to Harvest, and they went to Anthony’s. And that was it.

RICHMAN: Pretty much. There was such a big Italian population, and they went to Pizzeria Regina.