Good Ol’ Boy Network Gets Some Culinary Rewiring

The doors are shut tight. So where, with Locke-Ober abruptly closed, does one turn for the food and atmosphere known fondly as “cold roast Boston?”

An institution here since its founding in 1875, Locke-Ober was the city’s link to an era when men in business suits drank too much at noontime and lunched on slabs of prime red meat. The fabled restaurant on the alley where the patriot Sam Adams made his home felt like a musty old men’s club--reluctantly allowing women at its downstairs bar about 15 years ago. The food, served by white-jacketed waiters who spent their lives at Locke-Ober, was vintage men’s club too: heavy on the sauce, in every sense of that word.

Last weekend, a sign told would-be diners that the culinary alcazar of Boston’s old guard was closed for renovations. Employees received barely any more notice that Locke-Ober was out of business. The sudden shutdown was a blow to old Boston--and a concession, in effect, that the city’s new blood has different tastes than its blue blood.

Adding to the shock of losing the landmark, the Boston Globe reported that Locke-Ober would reopen in the fall under the scepter of the city’s nouvelle cuisine queen, Lydia Shire. Consider the prospect of coulis of quail’s egg displacing baked scrod. That is the effect of the impending changeover.

“Well, the menu will change. It will have to change,” said another member of Boston’s alimentary aristocracy, Julia Child. “But I’m sure she will keep the old Boston atmosphere.”

Notoriously shy of the press, Shire did not return calls. The Globe said Shire is heading an investment group that will lease Locke-Ober for five years. She transformed Boston’s restaurant scene a decade or so ago when she opened Biba, a splashy spot on the Boston Common, and later a bistro called Pignoli.

The two tony establishments could not be further from Locke-Ober in spirit or setting. In the novel “The Verdict,” Locke-Ober was where attorneys from the fictional white-shoe firm of Rutledge, Guthrie, Cabot & Moore repaired to savor a fleeting victory over salty defense lawyer Frank Galvin, “who couldn’t afford a sandwich, never mind Locke-Ober,” said author Barry Reed.

With his law office a short walk away, Reed said, “I’ve only been to that male chauvinistic preserve maybe two or three times. I didn’t think the food was all that good. It was where you dined in style and grace, but it was overpriced, and maybe that symbolizes old Boston too.”

In his first novel, “Mackerel by Moonlight,” former Republican Gov. William F. Weld devoted an entire chapter to Locke-Ober.

“It’s a love scene,” Weld said. “The hero and his budding love interest have dinner in one of the romantic rooms upstairs, and that pretty much sets his course.”

Weld should know about those private caverns on the restaurant’s third floor, having spent much of his undergraduate career at Harvard hanging out there. Soon after he lost his bid for the U.S. Senate in 1996, Weld sat down with the victor, Democrat John F. Kerry, to talk about jointly buying Locke-Ober. The bipartisan effort, Weld said, fell victim to “the press of events.”

Still, Weld cherishes memories of “the presentation and the ambience and the attitude. They were even more important to me than the food, although the chicken Richmond was a longtime favorite.”

(For the record: under glass, with cream, toast and a slice of ham.)

When friends came from out of town, “I would always recommend Locke-Ober to people for a drink so they could see the gorgeous, if somewhat decrepit, bar,” said Corby Kummer, the food writer for the Atlantic Monthly.

But it was not a place where someone interested in fine food would want to eat, Kummer stressed. “Oh never, no. You would have steak or over-buttered lobster. Besides, you wouldn’t pay any attention to it. It was only stabilizing the liquor.”

Generations of Brahmins frequented the place. When Harvard lost to Yale at football, the patrons would throw a drape over Yvonne, the nude whose portrait hung in the dark, wood-paneled dining room. Tycoons conducted business at Locke-Ober. Politicians traded favors over scotch-on-the-rocks. A monthly notice in the Wall Street Journal was Locke-Ober’s sole form of advertising.

The restaurant’s signature dish was lobster Savannah: $75, and if you hadn’t eaten for days, you might have been able to finish half of it. Every day, the kitchen whipped out order after order of baked Alaska--for 20.

But even as the meringue kept rising, Locke-Ober’s appeal was falling. Old Boston liked the faded glory of what one reviewer called Brahmin Central. New Boston, said longtime publicist Sally Jackson, “wants clean and new. They want simple food, plainly prepared.” Locke-Ober, she declared, “feels old-fashioned.”

But Child, for one, celebrated at least one feature of the late, lamented Locke-Ober.

“The chowder was lovely,” she said. “What a shame. Now that it’s closed, I won’t be able to go there and have that again.”