Less than a year after more than 20 employees accused the renowned Boston chef Barbara Lynch of workplace misconduct, she has closed most of her restaurants, citing rent increases and failed landlord negotiations. Once Boston’s most established fine dining chef—with countless culinary awards under her belt, a rave-reviewed memoir, and a coveted spot on Time’s Most Influential People list—Lynch’s fall from grace has been sudden.
Starting in 1998 with her flagship restaurant No. 9 Park, serving sophisticated French and Italian-inspired cuisine, Lynch put Boston on the map as a not-to-be-ignored dining destination. Over the next two-plus decades, her empire grew to encompass a slew of restaurants that each brought something cutting edge to the city’s dining scene, from Drink, the innovative cocktail bar where customers could order based on flavor profile, to B&G Oysters, which was buzzing well before slurping raw bivalves and ’tinis after work was cool.
At the end of 2023, Lynch’s restaurant group, the Barbara Lynch Collective, shuttered three locations: Menton, her temple to fancy tiny plates, swanky trattoria Sportello, and Drink, all housed in the same Fort Point building on Congress Street. Over in the South end, Stir and The Butcher Shop have also shut their doors—and are apparently under agreement for sale. Still in business are No. 9 Park; B&G Oysters; and The Rudder, her latest ode to seasonal cooking, which opened last year.
A statement from the restaurant group explaining the many closures cited a combination of “post-pandemic realities,” as well as alleged mismanagement by ex-employees and the landlords at Acadia Realty Trust (the company behind the Fort Point building that housed three of her restaurants), which supposedly collected a cumulative $88,000 per month in rent from the chef.
Lynch took aim at Boston’s real estate scene more broadly, claiming that independent chefs are getting squeezed out by sky-high leases. “Boston is no longer the same place where I opened seven restaurants over the last 25 years,” Lynch said in the press release. “Properties have been flipped and flipped and the landlords just want the rents that only national chains can sustain.” (Bon Appetit reached out to Lynch and Acadia Realty Trust for comment, and will update this story accordingly.)
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