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ArtBar: Hotel Lobby Restaurant, Reconsidered (With Some Help from A Kendall Jackson Cab)

Posted 08/10/2008 at 09:03 AM by Cathy

I know ArtBar is in a hotel lobby (at the Royal Sonesta on Edwin Land Boulevard in Cambridge).

I know it's tiny tiny (a few two-tops, a few more tables for four, seating at the bar, and a communal high table for eight or so).

I know these places normally get a bad rap.

But ArtBar is tastefully done (the art, the bar, and the food).

And the wine – I chose the 2003 Kendall Jackson Hawkeye Cabernet Sauvignon – is awesome.

What more could I want?

Besides, isn't it time to rethink hotel lobby restaurants anyway?

ArtBar, and its neighboring Dante, in the same hotel, make that case persuasively.

ArtBar's Restaurant Week menu features tomatoes – in the middle of August in Boston, who in their right chef's hat wouldn't? – in their first and second courses, but they do it with flair that is both creative and credible. They have a gazpacho, but it's a golden tomato gazpacho. They have a fresh mozzarella-tomato Napoleon, but the tomatoes are slow-cured and the third layer of the Napoleon is a crispy lavash.

Sauvignon Blanc and Sangiovese are thrown around as common wine pairing suggestions with the tomato, depending of course on the preparation. So, to a lesser extent, is Cabernet Sauvignon.

It could be tricky, but the Kendall Jackson Hawkeye is no run-of-the-mill Cab.

The Hawkeye is refined. Certainly there are tannins but they are trim tannins rather than overbearing tannins. Think Gothic, not Romanesque. Think flying buttresses rather than post-and-lintel, and you've got the idea.

It's a wine that could stand proudly on its own but it also graciously partners with a variety of foods. I found myself sipping and eating, sipping and eating, and then just sipping. Sipping, and feeling quite happy just where I was, in a hotel lobby restaurant bar in east Cambridge.

What more could I want?

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About the Author

Cathy Huyghe
Cathy Huyghe

Cathy Huyghe writes about drinking wine every day in the Boston area. She finds the quirky characters, the after-hours events, and the surprising stories that make up Boston's vibrant local wine scene. But no matter where she is, what she's doing, or who she's with, she mostly just wants to drink the stuff.

Her first restaurant gig was at Chez Panisse, when she knocked on the kitchen's back door and asked if she could work there. She's also worked for Jean-Pierre Vigato in Paris and Thomas Keller in Las Vegas. She went to graduate school at Harvard (twice), and her writing has run in Boston magazine, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, Edible Boston, and on Nevada Public Radio and Grist.org.

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