Italian-styled restaurant La Padrona opened its doors in Boston’s Back Bay in mid-May, completing the significant — in foodie world, at least — array of restaurants and bars set in the much-ballyhooed Raffles Boston hotel, which opened in the heart of the Hub last September.
It’s a significant completion. La Padrona sees celebrated Boston chef Jody Adams creating a restaurant in a hotel setting, echoing her lauded Italian restaurant Rialto at the Charles Hotel in Harvard Square, which closed in 2016.
“This is very different,” Adams told Worcester Living, momentarily recalling her Rialto days. “It’s a very different time now and this is a high-profile international brand,” she said.
It certainly is: Raffles may be owned by French hotel giant Accor these days, but it gained its highbrow reputation as an upper-class English ex-pat hang in Singapore, opened in 1887, and is named for British Empire trading expansionist Sir Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles. Yep, there’s quite a name. Raffles is widely regarded as a founder of modern-day Singapore.
Raffles Singapore is more playfully known as the place where the gin-based Singapore Sling cocktail was invented.
'There's a lot of pressure'
La Padrona, whose name translates as "the owner," comes from Boston-based A Street Hospitality, a restaurant group headed by Adams, and her business partners Eric Papachristos and Jon Mendez. A Street’s considerable restaurant roster includes Trade on Boston’s Atlantic Avenue; Porto, located in the Back Bay; Saloniki Greek — there are five, including one in the Fenway and one in Harvard Square; and The Venetian in Weymouth. Still, there was considerable pressure with this latest and most high-profile project.
“There’s always a lot of pressure, even for a seasoned hospitality company,” said Papachristos. “There’s the pressure to hit the mark in choosing the design and right menu. We have strong personalities with the three of us; we know what we’re doing by now.”
The A Street culinary team also includes executive chef Amarilys Colón, with chef de cuisine Philip Nacron and pastry chef Kimberly Beatrix hands-on in La Padrona’s kitchen.
After three years of planning, La Padrona is the final culinary outlet to open in the Raffles Boston hotel and joins chef George Mendes’ Amar, Long Bar & Terrace, Blind Duck and Café Pastel, which opened in mid-April. Though Mendes grew up in Danbury, Connecticut, he made his mark with Aldea, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Manhattan's Union Square.
Going to the source ...
Beginning at street level with a bar and lounge that looks onto Trinity Place, La Padrona notches up 8,600 square foot and 240 seats over two levels. “The bar and lounge are light, bright with white paired with natural wood and stone,” said Papachristos. A grand staircase with a wrought iron and walnut balustrade, and steps made of natural travertine stone, connects to the second-level dining room. An elevator whisks guests up, adding accessibility and also saving the climb for those who wish to save the legwork.
The second level’s more voluptuous design, inspired by the idea of a grand Italian villa, pairs rich burgundy walls with heavy drapes, and adds an eye-catching central bar crowned with a violet-veined Calcutta marble countertop and matching marble floor surround. Seating fans out and across from there: Choose a cosy horseshoe shaped booth, table seating, or a perch at a more social communal table. There are several private dining rooms, too.
Though the A Streeters are no amateurs when it comes to Italian food, the mother of Western cuisine after all, when it came time to build the menu Adams, Papachristos, and Mendez went to source and took a trip around Italy, visiting 10 different regions in 11 days, exploring the food in each and then creating recipes.
“We tested and retested recipes until we had an extraordinary expression of Italian cooking, but through a New England lens,” said Adams.
One of her favorite dishes, she said, is a roasted arrowhead cabbage, cooked at a very high temperature to bring out the vegetable’s sweetness, and topped with a dollop of anchovy butter. “We also have a black cod served with a nettle pesto that’s clean and simple,” added Adams.
For Mendez and Papachristos, the cacio e pepe focaccia and the house-made pastas, such as a rich tagliatelle that unashamedly pays homage to the Emilia-Romagna’s most famous product, Parmigiano Reggiano, are irresistible. “The breads and the pastas are out of this world,” said Mendez.
“We have one unusual pasta dish,” Adams added. “It’s called paccheri and clams, and has small, sweet Barnstable clams, braised tomatoes, kombu and cruschi peppers. The pasta is made from burnt wheat and has a really nutty flavor.”
Adams explained that using burnt durum wheat (durum wheat is the type of hard wheat used for pasta flour) was traditional in Southern Italy where workers were allowed by landowners to take what grain was left after the end of harvest’s traditional field burning.
It’s peasant food! “Exactly, it’s peasant food,” confirmed Adams.
'A celebration of great Italian wine making'
Not surprisingly, the wine list favors Italian wines.
“The wine list is a celebration of great Italian wine making,” Mendez said. “It’s about 80% Italian. But we have great Burgundies, Bordeaux and great Californian wines. Also some Greeks, some Spanish. And for people who want that strong fruit forward white, we have New Zealand, too. The wine list is accessible to all tastes,” he said, adding, “We also wanted to make room for underrepresented wines, especially highlighting women-owned or -operated vineyards.”
The food menu is definitely set out in traditional Italian style, beginning with antipasti and insalata, and going through to primi and secondi. And then la dolce! The sweet stuff.
Papachristos and Mendez admit to having a sweet tooth: “The desserts are incredible. Kimberly is such a great pastry chef,” said Mendez. “The biggest problem is narrowing down which is the best.”
“The strawberry rum cake,” offered Adams as a contender. “It’s classic, but it’s light. There are also brioche gelato sandwiches. We serve them as a trio.” The toasted lemon-glazed brioche each have a different filling of pistachio, strawberry mascarpone and brown butter ginger gelato.
Adams also likes the funnel cakes, served with mixed berry compote, vanilla ice cream and whipped cream. North American-perfected funnel cakes don’t immediately scream Italiano, but, shrugged Adams, “I think every culture has some kind of sweet fried dough.”
But only one country gave the world cannoli. “Kimberly’s Florentine cannoli is exceptional,” said Adams. “She makes a really thin almond tuile and fills it with orange-flavored whipped ricotta.”
It sounds like a winning combo of a traditional cannoli and the thin nutty cookies called Florentines. Is Kimberly’s version good enough to start yet another Boston cannoli war? “These will definitely start another cannoli war, and win,” said Adams with a laugh.
An extensive drinks menu
It’s hard to say whether sgroppino, a traditional Italian after-dinner drink topping Prosecco with tangy lemon sorbet, and often adding Limoncello for a little kick, is a dessert drink or dessert itself. Maybe it’s both. But you’ll find it on the extensive drinks menus — just as much thought was put into the intriguing recipes for La Padrona’s drinks as its food. It also includes different sections to peruse: one for Martinis, one for Negronis, one for signatures, one for spritzes and one for nonalcoholic cocktails.
General manager and beverage director David Danforth meticulously blended different spirits and liqueurs and herbs and cordials to create something that stands out in the city.
“For the section of Negronis we wanted something more than just swapping out the main alcohol,” said Mendez. “David did an excellent job of creating different flavor profiles.”
The negroni menu includes a classic La Padrona Negroni, a Smoky Negroni, a White Negroni and the All American Negroni made with Short Path gin, which is distilled in Everett; St. George Bruto Americano from Alameda, California; and Vermont Vermouth’s Boreas vermouth from Brattleboro, Vermont.
“Also with the martini list, too,” added Mendez. “we wanted to bring back the opulence of drinking a martini.”
“We also wanted to have exciting drinks for those who don’t drink alcohol,” added Mendez. “Not just the usual fruit and mixer-type alcohol-free drinks.”
Padrona signature cocktails humorously add wordplay on popular Italian culture: the Clemenza Cooler name-checks the "Leave the gun, take the cannoli” hit man in “The Godfather” and pairs up Cazadores Tequila Reposado; Kleos Mastiha, a liquor made with mastic and native to the small Greek island of Chios; and Cardamaro, an amaro made with moscato wine and thistles. A dash of habanero is balanced by cooling cucumber.
Then there’s the Sophia Loren on the Beach, made with Rhum J.M. Fruité, Ten to One Caribbean rum, Batavia arrack, falernum, citrus, hibiscus and ginger, which is a refined take on the 1980s fruity Sex on the Beach. It cheekily refers to the sultry and brilliant Italian actress Sophia Loren, of course.
Bolder liquor forward standards like the Manhattan and the old-fashioned come with twists, said Mendez, and there are contrasting lighter drinks such as the popular Aperol spritz and a newly conceived Lambrusco Cobbler, made with naturally sparkling Italian Lambrusco wine and black currant.
At the beginning of May, the final touches were being added to La Padrona, leaving Adams to ponder the journey from the drawing board.
“It certainly hasn’t come together quickly. This is 37 months of working on the project with Raffles and Accor. We all play off each other,” she said of her A Street partners.“I think of us as the three legs of a stool.”
La Padrona opens at 4 p.m. daily for lounge service. Dinner service is from 5 to 10 p.m. Sun.-Wed., and from 5 to 11 p.m. Thur.-Sat. 40 Trinity Place, Boston. raffles.com/boston/dining/la-padrona.
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