THE GAPING ATRIUM at 500 Harrison is aflutter with buzz saws and jackhammers and thick, gauzy dust clouds, as construction crews methodically obliterate every telltale vestige of its former tenant. But ghosts? Not here. Seth Woods doesn’t believe in them. He also doesn’t believe in curses, which you can tell by how vehemently the chef dismisses the implication that his latest dining venture might come with a gratis side of the supernatural. In fact, he gets downright rankled that the topic even comes up. On the eve of our tour of the overhaul-in-progress, Woods and his Aquitaine Group partners Matt Burns and Jeff Gates nearly pull the plug once it slips out that paranormal blather might figure into this story about their new restaurant, slated to open this spring in this space – this decidedly not-cursed space – which until December 2010 housed the Italian eatery Rocca.
Reversing a restaurant curse
GLOBE MAGAZINE
Fortunately (oops: charitably), Woods throws me a bone. “For a restaurant to succeed,” he says, “you need a certain confluence of factors – the right people, the right concept, the right food, the right location, the right fiscal structure.” It’s all perfectly . . . rational. “Yes, there are spaces where multiple concepts haven’t worked, and people like to explain it as a ‘curse’ or ‘jinx.’ But some spaces simply present more of a challenge for nailing that ideal confluence.”
Woods has reason to be reasonable. In 1995, he opened the unpretentious and still successful Metropolis Cafe on nearby Tremont Street. Since 1988, he and his partners in the Aquitaine Group have specialized in placing that kind of neighborhood eatery – think Aquitaine, Union – in not-quite-gentrified pockets of the South End. Just two blocks away, their French brasserie, Gaslight, has been going gangbusters from the day it opened in August 2007. And in a town that’s quick to ascribe preternatural hoodoo to disappointing outcomes – where family recipes for Bambino-bane still get passed down through generations – an outright rejection of doom-mongering forces is, frankly, refreshing.
That said, if a restaurant space is merely a logic puzzle, this one’s calibrated to “expert.” As the frenetic activity surrounding us makes plain, this particular address requires far more than a new name and a fresh coat of paint. Former Rocca patrons will scarcely recognize the place. The wavy blue and tan carpeting, meant to evoke the mountainous coast of Italy’s Liguria region, has been stripped away. And the almost two-story circular bar on the first floor, the old spot’s most striking feature? Demolished.