To the delight of cocktail lovers everywhere, Barbara Lynch opens Drink, the first of three Fort Point ventures
Fresh from the shower after her early-morning boxing workout, her hair damp and loose, chef Barbara Lynch steps into the dust of the construction site that is Drink, her cocktail concept restaurant in Fort Point. Lynch radiates adrenaline, flitting like a butterfly and ready to sting like a bee, marveling earnestly at what she’s put together here in the old 1800sera Wool Market on Congress Street, only blocks from her birthplace in South Boston. By early spring, there will be three new little Lynches: Drink; Sportello, a casual counterservice Italian eatery and takeout joint; and a yet-to-be-named fine-dining restaurant that Lynch calls “aspirationally, a Relais & Chateau” property.
It’s commonplace, tedious even, to call the kitchen “the heart and soul” of a restaurant. But here, it’s an understatement. This kitchen is conceived to maximize artisanship, efficiency, and sophisticated techno-wizardry. The heart and soul of Lynch’s three-phase undertaking occupies approximately 5000 square feet. It’s a whatever-you-wish-for culinary Disneyland for a chef who’s been rigorously planning the perfect kitchen for several years while simultaneously launching Stir and Plum in the South End. The basement commissary has dedicated rooms for everything, from chocolate-making to bottle-crushing; from a fish room with special file drawers in which seafood literally “chills” in ice chips to a butcher shop with a band saw. There’s even a dedicated refrigeration pump room, where all the plumbing and equipment dials are clustered, allowing a chef or an inspector to keep tabs on the building’s functions without having to pull apart an entire industrial kitchen.
Drink is phase one of Lynch’s food-experience trifecta on Congress Street. Here it’s all about building the perfect cocktails, sitting at the bar, and schmoozing with sophisticated bartenders as though they’re a combination of shortorder chef, sommelier, and sushi master. Don’t look for the standard “one-jigger from here, one-half jigger from there” kind of cocktail. Everything — from the fresh herbs to the right vintage glass to the size and shape of the ice cubes — is a matter of punctilious concern. Come knowing your taste preferences, not just your brands.
Or, better yet, come prepared to be experimental. Drink is a cocktail bar. It’s set up to put each guest in face-to-face communication with the drink masters. A long zigzag wooden bar fills the space; it’s Drink’s major design feature, other than the bug boxes that line the walls. Oh, yes — the bug boxes. More precisely, dead beetles encased in large cubes of plastic. Lynch says the idea came from the late-1800s-era cabinets of curiosities, often home-based museums where curious amateur and professional naturalists would collect specimens of interest from world travels. What’s the connection to Drink? “Tinctures were often made from beetle wings,” Lynch explains. “The red color in the Maraschino cherry? Distilled from beetles.” Who knew?
And who knew there were so many things to know about cocktails? Like the fact that there’s an optimal size for the perfect martini. Can’t be too large; there are no “swimming pool” martini glasses at Drink, just glasses that are the same size as the authentic martini glasses from the cocktail’s earliest days. There’s lots of that authenticity at work, says Drink’s John Gertsen, who came from Lynch’s No. 9 Park. “The task of the perfect martini glass is to cradle a drink that stays cold throughout,” he says. “Not too warm, not too diluted.”
For that, let’s move to the ice stations. At Drink, you’ll see 50-pound blocks of ice for chipping, shaving, sharding, and chunking. Each cocktail, it seems, calls for ice in a specific shape and size; there’s a man in goggles, an ice artisan, patiently chipping, shaving, and sharding, drink by drink. There’s a special ice-cube machine too — a Kold Draft machine — that produces one-and-a-quarterinch cubes, which Gertsen says are the best size for controlled melting.
As for ordering wine or Champagne, that’s hard to screw up, what with the very thoughtful Cat Silirie — another No. 9 Park alum — in charge of the list. There are three types of Champagne available by the glass, as well as a revolving selection of two reds, two whites, and two sparklers. Snacks, too: Lynch refers to Drink’s menu as “canapés,” the kind of thing she’d serve at a cocktail party at her house (think fried bologna, egg salad, caviar, deviled eggs, and hamandcheese pinwheels).
For real food, take the stairs to Sportello, an odd but fabulous combination of a Woolworth’s-style long lunch counter for 40 and a great Italian trattoria. It’ll be chic in brown and white, very Cinema Paradiso, sleek but fun. Like Drink, Sportello — slated to open in late October — will be small and built for speed. At first it will serve only lunch for eat-in and takeout, with soups and salads, pasta, and Italian sandwiches on homemade flat breads. Prices will be kept low; Lynch thinks a bowl of her pasta fagioli soup will be about seven bucks. The menu will be small, with two or three entrée choices per day — simple, perfect pastas, for example, such as Lynch’s ravioli filled with black olives, rigatoni with white beans, and fish and meats.
Finally, later in the winter comes the final phase of the project: “A beautiful, perfect dining experience,” Lynch says. The new restaurant will be a step up from No. 9, with captain service and a private dining room, “the kind of restaurant where you don’t see computers or dirty dishes.”
Overall, Lynch adds, “This is the building I always wanted, with the space to build the kitchen and concept I’ve been dreaming about. Now, I feel full. I’m done. I can’t take another thing on now. But maybe in five years.”
Louisa Kasdon can be reached at food@stuffatnight.com.
