No. 9 still tops

Barbara Lynch’s flagship is a true classic

October 21, 2009|Devra First, Globe Staff

Do too many restaurants spoil the cook? That’s always the question when a chef builds on success by opening a second restaurant, then a third, and a fourth. Before you know it, the offspring have spread across the country like an infection, eventually lodging, fatally, in Vegas. As for the chef, she’s more likely to be on television than behind the stove.

Unless she’s Barbara Lynch, whose second and third and fourth restaurants didn’t even spread across the Charles. Lynch is Boston through and through - why would she want to leave? Since opening No. 9 Park more than a decade ago, she’s debuted B&G Oysters, the Butcher Shop, and Sportello, plus the bar Drink, the demonstration kitchen/cookbook store Stir, and the fruit-and-vegetable museum Plum Produce (currently closed for renovation). She just released a new cookbook, “Stir: Mixing It Up in the Italian Tradition,’’ and another high-end restaurant is slated to open in early 2010: She describes it as grown-up and glamorous, with French and Italian food and an emphasis on service and hospitality.

With all of this on her plate, how has No. 9 Park stood up? It’s been 11 years since the Globe last reviewed Barbara Lynch’s flagship. It’s time to take another look.

If we can get in. Amid all the talk of restaurants suffering as a result of the economy, and as establishments rush, lemming-like, to lower their price points, No. 9 keeps drawing a crowd with $39 entrees and $96 tasting menus. The bar area at the front of the restaurant seems prime hunting grounds for someone hoping to meet a well-off future spouse, while the dining rooms are likely places to spot the famous and semi-famous. It’s the kind of place where people at adjacent tables strike up a conversation and are quickly trading pedigrees. (New York prep school? Check. Harvard? Yes, what year?) On a recent evening, a group of Young Turks in tweed savor a gents’ night out, while a fellow with wavy, steel-gray hair expounds on political strategy to his tablemates. A woman with tattooed upper arms takes a dainty bite of dessert as she gazes into her date’s eyes. At the bar, the elegant, the arty, and the BlackBerry-obsessed drink well-balanced cocktails such as the Palmyra (vodka, mint, and lime) and the No. Ten (gin, Campari, and grapefruit). They can again eat from a bar menu with somewhat lower prices, which the restaurant did away with briefly then reinstated; one can now also order off the regular menu in the bar room.