Going down, down . . .

The city's fustiest dining neighborhood is becoming its hottest

by Rob McKeown

Downtonw is dead. Long live downtown! It's conventional wisdom that Financial District dining is a dismal affair. This isn't just a local problem -- even in food-as-holy-substance towns like New York and San Francisco, the phrase "downtown restaurant scene" is usually an oxymoron. By day, hand rolls, bagels, and Starbucks rule the area; by night, cuisine that really matters is found elsewhere: the South End, Back Bay, Harvard Square.

But that's changing. In the past two years, high-profile Financial District restaurants such as the Exchange and the Vault have opened to warm receptions. And standbys such as the Bay Tower Room and the Parker House have spruced up their menus and boosted their wine lists in a bid for culinary seriousness. This feels like the maturing of a neighborhood, but it may be the beginning of something even bigger.

Restaurants mentioned in this article The Black Rhino, 21 Broad Street, 263-0101. The Exchange, 148 State Street, 726-7600. The Good Life, 28 Kingston Street, 451-2622. Le Midi, Two International Place, 439-9292. Kitty O'Shea's, 131 State Street, 725-0100. Maison Robert, 45 School Street, 227-3370. No. 9 Park, 9 Park Street, 742-9991. Radius, 8 High Street, 426-1234. Silvertone, 69 Bromfield Street, 338-7887. Traders, 131 State Street, 523-2081. The Vault, 105 Water Street, 292-9966.

The news this fall is the arrival of Chefs with Names. Earlier this year, Moncef Meddeb spiced up the lunchtime scene with his Provençal lunch spot Le Midi, in the lobby of Two International Place. And the two most talked-about restaurants of late '98 are both downtown openings. Barbara Lynch's No. 9 Park, which opened with a barrage of publicity this summer, is perched on the Common near Park Street Station; and Michael Schlow's Radius, scheduled to open in October, is located at the foot of High Street -- so far downtown it's almost in Southie.

Of course, the downtown story isn't just about the high end. It's also about a small cadre of new bars that actually take their menus seriously. To yearlings like the Good Life, Hibernia, and Silvertone you can now add pub/restaurants Trader's and the Black Rhino, both of which opened recently, and Kitty O'Shea's, a two-story Irish pub slated to start serving in the next month.

All this in a neighborhood that, not long ago, could claim precisely three restaurants where any civilized person would eat after dark. One of these was Maison Robert, today going strong in its Old City Hall location after 27 years in business. Here's general manager Andrée Robert on the neighborhood: "It's gotten to be an area where the food is much more interesting and much better. There wasn't much there for a long time. It was kind of us, Locke-Ober, and the Parker House. Now, there's much, much more."

It may finally be time to declare downtown officially . . . undead.

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To be sure, the Financial District -- with its one-way streets, its drastic daily population swings, and the omnipresent Big Dig -- still carries risks for restaurateurs. Marquee, a clubby high-end restaurant, opened in 1997 near International Place and shut down earlier this year. "Marquee was a wonderful place," says Harry (yes, just plain Harry), general manager of the Exchange, "but it's a cash-flow problem. If they shut the lights off on you once, it's over."

On the other hand, Harry's own bar, the high-end bar-cum-restaurant-cum-nightclub Exchange, opened around the same time and has been drawing steady crowds since then. That's the kind of success Radius hopes to replicate when it opens in October. The much-talked-about new home of chef Michael Schlow -- whose last gig at Café Louis, on Newbury Street, vaulted him to national notice -- Radius is planned as a high-concept venture, with two separate bars, a prix-fixe communal table, and a 200-bottle wine list.

Chris Myers, Schlow's partner in the restaurant, says the first thing people always ask him is, "Why? Why open in the Financial District?" His knee-jerk response: "Why not?"

He's not the only one thinking that way. The so-called taboo on dining downtown is a myth to most of the people behind the scenes. "I don't feel that there's a taboo at all," says Heidi Marcouillier, the assistant manager of the Vault, a wine-oriented New American restaurant in Liberty Square that opened a year ago. "I've been here since 8:30 today and the phones haven't stopped ringing off the hook."

"I'd like to say that we did intensive studies of traffic patterns," says Myers, "but we didn't. Michael [Schlow] and I just stood outside the restaurant and watched . . . and between 5:30 and 7 p.m., there is a tidal wave of people who come by here."

That might not be scientific, but then the food business isn't famous for running on logic.

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It is, however, famous for thriving on scene, and one thing downtown has never been is much of a foodie scene -- unlike Newbury Street or Harvard Square, it doesn't get a lot of foot traffic after dark. In some ways, it's not dissimilar to the South End of a decade ago, where Icarus was chugging along in a vacuum until Gordon Hamersley opened his bistro in the Tremont Street location that now houses Geoffrey's. Nobody could have predicted the obscene multiplication that would follow. The restaurateurs going downtown in this wave are hoping for similar results.

"I think it gets into people's heads that this a good area to come to. It's kind of like how Tremont Street grew in the South End," says Andrée Robert. "In the beginning, there was nothing, and now you just sort of go and walk around. I think this area's going in that direction."

On the other hand, the South End isn't host to the largest public-works project in the country. The Big Dig, nearly unavoidable in any trip to the Financial District, raises interesting questions for would-be downtown restaurateurs. Are they betting that people won't be put off by the Caterpillars and roadblocks? Or are they betting they can stay in business until the streets clear up? Moncef Meddeb is in the latter camp; he believes the long-term payoff could be big. His restaurant, Le Midi, looks out of towering plate-glass windows -- directly onto the rusty Central Artery. But that view, give or take five years and one rusty Central Artery, could quickly turn spectacular.

On the other hand, that time frame is optimistic in a business where the future is never more than a rent check away. "For a restaurant to look four or five years ahead is not practical," says Myers.

A lot of restaurants, in other words, are betting on the here and now. Enough, anyway, that fall '98 may mark a turning point for downtown -- the moment when, in response to the question "Where do you want to eat tonight?", people begin to say the unthinkable: "Let's just go downtown and see."

Rob McKeown can be reached at rmckeown16@hotmail.com.