Garett Harker, owner of Eastern Standard, Island Creek Oyster Bar, and the Hawthorne, all in Kenmore Square’s Hotel Commonwealth, has announced that all three have closed permanently. Photo by Barry Chin/Boston Globe via Getty Images

Food & Dining

Kenmore Square Favorite Eastern Standard Closes Permanently

Other Hotel Commonwealth eateries and campus haunts Island Creek Oyster Bar, the Hawthorne victims of the pandemic, landlord issues

One of the BU community’s favorite haunts, Eastern Standard in Kenmore Square, is shutting its doors after 16 years in business.

Also closing are its sister restaurants, the Hawthorne and Island Creek Oyster Bar (although that restaurant’s Burlington location will remain open). All three were inside the Hotel Commonwealth. The closures, first reported by the Boston Globe Thursday, were confirmed by Marlo Fogelman (LAW’97, GRS’97), founder and CEO of Boston-based marlo marketing, which represents the restaurants.

“The closures were not due to the pandemic,”  Fogelman says. “They couldn’t come to terms on a new lease.”

Garrett Harker, owner of the three eateries, had been negotiating for several years about his lease with his landlord, real estate group UrbanMeritage, the Globe said, and those negotiations got more contentious once COVID body-slammed the restaurant industry. The paper quoted Harker last June as saying the landlords “don’t seem to acknowledge that there’s anything special about these restaurants.” 

Cornwall’s Pub, a Kenmore Square institution for almost half a century, is now handling food and room service at the hotel from its 644 Commonwealth Avenue location. “We are providing room service to the hotel from our own kitchen,” co-owner Pam Beale and general manager Bill Moran said in an email. “We partnered with the hotel in an effort to help each other navigate these difficult times. We will not be operating out of any of the restaurant spaces at the hotel.

“This is a sad time for the Square. The community has lost great operators and neighbors,” they added.

In a lengthy Facebook post marking Eastern Standard’s 15th anniversary last May, amid the pandemic, Harker thanked his employees:

“You let me put marble on the bar top when a wood top made more financial sense. You jumped behind the raw bar after the kitchen went home and shucked a dozen oysters. You walked out into the cold sunrise after vigorously detailing the bar so many times. You told me you were taking the baked rigatoni off the menu, and when I told you you couldn’t, you still went back and put your heart into every dish. You wrote me letters, some recaps of disappointing experiences, and you gave us a second chance.”

He waxed wistfully about what the anniversary might have been but for COVID-19. “I would have said a few words,” he wrote, “and hugged all of you, and stood off in the corner with a beer and a fernet. I would have let myself imagine a time when I might not be in Eastern Standard’s life, and I would have been at peace. I just never could imagine for a second that I wouldn’t have ES in my life.”

An upscale restaurant and bar, popular with both locals and tourists, Eastern Standard was the spot that BU students convinced their parents to take them for dinner when they were in town. It was where staff met after work for drinks and appetizers, and where anyone in town to catch the Red Sox playing at nearby Fenway Park could grab a juicy pregame burger and beer. It also was the first foray of many into cocktails beyond a Long Island Iced Tea and a rum and Coke. 

The spot, which marked the beginning of Kenmore Square’s transformation from a somewhat seedy neighborhood to a hub of commerce, has been closed since last March 16. The announcement of the closures of Harker’s three Hotel Commonwealth spots nearly a year ago spurred an online petition to save the “exceptionally creative, fun and worthy restaurants.”

“Each of these three establishments has represented our city, Boston, well,” the petition read. “If you’ve ever been to one of these three excellent spots in Kenmore Square for a date, a game, a killer cocktail, or simply a great meal, you’d quickly realize they are run by professionals, dedicated to their craft and to their neighborhood.”

While Eastern Standard withstood the coronavirus pandemic, according to Fogelman, COVID-19 forced it and the restaurant industry to shut down in-person dining in an eyeblink last year when the state imposed gathering and social distancing limits. While eateries have tried to survive with takeout and delivery, patrons’ continued wariness about dining out, especially as deadlier variants of the virus have come to the United States, has shuttered more than 110,000 restaurants nationally—17 percent of the total—permanently or long-term.

In pandemic-free days, the Globe rhapsodized, “The silver-haired, charismatic Harker was a charming presence in the bustling Eastern Standard dining room, moving easily among colorful locals, enchanted visitors, and Fenway Park throngs.” Dinner there could range from upscale raw bar selections to a Rohan duck breast to the famous Standard Burger, served on an English muffin and with thin crispy fries that rivaled what McDonald’s was selling next door. 

Cocktails were the real star, though. The staff was as comfortable dealing with bros ordering Bud Light as those seeking something more exotic from the extensive cocktail list. Tell them you were in the mood for rum and something sweet, and they might suggest an Old Cuban, a drink made with aged rum, sparkling wine, and mint, among other ingredients. The restaurant’s best seller was probably the Whiskey Smash, so named because bartenders would smash a mint leaf in their palms to release the oils.

Members of the BU community were saddened to hear the news, though perhaps not surprised, since the restaurants haven’t had lights on for close to a year. Restaurant regular Devin Hahn, a BU Productions senior editor, fondly recalls Harker and his beverage director Jackson Cannon, saying the duo’s restaurants had the best hospitality in the city.

“They made it their beeswax to make sure everyone felt more like a guest than a customer,” Hahn says. “When my wife and I got married, we knew one of the great benefits of having everyone stay at the Hotel Commonwealth and doing the reception at the Hawthorne was that while we ourselves would be too busy to make sure every single out-of-town guest was having a good time, we could trust the folks at Eastern Standard, Island Creek, and the Hawthorne to take care of our family and friends, make them feel at home.”

Another regular, Victor Coelho, a College of Fine Arts professor of music and director of the Center for Early Music Studies, compares Eastern Standard the restaurant to the café under Gene Kelly’s flat in An American in Paris, “where everything converged at once—music, sports, business, school, family, friends, work, pleasure. It was one thing for everything. It was cultured and casual, Parisian and American, jazzy and bluesy. Garrett and his staff deserve to be in the restaurant Hall of Fame. The closing of Eastern Standard creates a huge void of nothingness. I don’t know how I can go on.”

John Battaglino (MET’08, Wheelock’10), BU assistant dean and director of student activities, says the news is personal for him—he met his wife at the corner of the Eastern Standard bar, and their family has celebrated just about every major family occasion there ever since—birthdays, graduation dinners, an engagement party, and more. “Such a sad day,” he says. “I feel like I’m not just losing a great neighbor, but also a member of my family.