Barbara Lynch, a Boston chef and restaurant owner, announced this past Friday that most of her establishments had closed by the end of 2023. These locations include her fine dining restaurant Menton, which was one of the city’s most prestigious destinations since its opening in 2010, and two other restaurants in the same building in the Fort Point neighborhood: the trattoria Sportello and the cocktail bar, Drink. Additionally, two of her restaurants in the South End, The Butcher Shop and Stir have also closed.
The foreclosure of these businesses came after Lynch was accused of multiple forms of workplace abuse by more than 20 employees in a New York Times report last year.
In her statement, Lynch claimed the closings were the cause of “post-pandemic realities,” financial mismanagement by her previous employees, and an “uncooperative landlord.” According to CBS Boston, the reason is that Lynch could not keep up with the payment of the rent on these establishments.
She did not mention any of the longtime issues that came from her alcohol abuse and verbal/physical aggressions with employees in the statement, yet these incidents reportedly created a high rate of staff turnovers and became an open secret among Boston’s service and hospitality workers.
As a result of these shutdowns, about 100 employees have lost their jobs, according to a statement made by the company Barbara Lynch Collective. The company’s new chief operating officer, Lorraine Tomlinson-Hall, who was hired after the Times report was published, called the remaining restaurants “stellar” in a company Zoom meeting on Friday, and expressed hopes for expansion onto the North Shore, where Lynch currently lives.
The establishments that remain in service are No. 9 Park, the Beacon Hill institution that Lynch’s empire was built on, the seafood bar B&G Oysters, and her newest project, the Rudder, which is a seasonal restaurant on the waterfront in Gloucester that opened this past June after two years of delays.
Lynch made a point to speak out against gentrification in the Boston area in her statement, as Acadia Realty, a New York-based investment company that owns the Fort Point building where several of Lynch’s restaurant were, is trying to usher in renovated and trendy places to the area of South Boston where she was raised. “Boston is no longer the same place where I opened seven restaurants over the past 25 years,” she wrote. “Properties have been flipped and flipped and the landlords just want the rents that only national chains can sustain.”
Acadia Realty has not yet responded to Lynch’s comments.
At the peak of her success in 2017, Lynch had countless culinary awards, a best selling memoir, and a spot on Time magazine’s annual Most Influential People’s list, but these last few years have been rough decline for her as someone that became one of the most acclaimed women in American Food and a leading chef in the New England region for decades.
