Get Out of Town: A Trip to Boston Gives a Taste of Big City Life
Rhode Island connections abound at Beacon Hill's 1928 restaurant and the Liberty Hotel in Boston.
The upside-down holiday trees at the Liberty Hotel are now installed.
I’ve always loved Providence for its intimacy. I can walk down the streets of the city and bump into people I know almost every single day. I’m familiar with almost every business and restaurant, and chances are, I’ve been to each one once or twice. The city often feels like a small town without the hustle and bustle of big cities like New York and Boston. But sometimes I want to feel that frenetic energy. New York is only a three-hour drive a way, but Boston is even closer. And sometimes I wanna go where everyone doesn’t know my name, as ironic as that sounds. So I recently planned a mini getaway to Boston after getting some tickets to see comedian Kevin Hart for my husband’s birthday. As I got out of town, I found lots of Rhode Island ties on my overnight, as I do every time I travel anywhere.
I used to be an editor at Boston magazine about fifteen years ago before joining the team at Rhode Island Monthly. I rarely go back to the city for a date night because we have two small kids, babysitters are expensive, and travel time adds up. For this night, I secured a much-needed overnight with no kids. After the stress of the election wore us down, we needed to get away, and we desperately needed to laugh. Kevin Hart was the antidote and an overnight stay at the Liberty Hotel was the icing on the cake. I was amazed at how much each Boston neighborhood has changed with new development and restaurant changeovers.
Providence’s restaurants have longevity with classic places like the Capital Grille, New Rivers, Parkside, CAV and Hemenway’s sticking around for decades, while Boston seems to have new openings every other day. For dinner, we chose 1928 Beacon Hill restaurant. The restaurant owner, Kristin Jenkins, is an interior designer from Rhode Island, and she also owns Leonards New England in Seekonk, which has been in business since 1933. She designed the speakeasy-style restaurant tucked high up on a quaint cobblestone street in Boston’s most Brahmin neighborhood. The dining room and bar are decorated with curated antiques from Leonards and her personal collection.
1928 Beacon Hill restaurant. Photo by Jamie Coelho.
The restaurant gives diners a history lesson on Boston, while serving American comfort food and seafood dishes with some international influences and Prohibition-era cocktails. The menu also highlights historical Brahmin figures who lived on Beacon Hill like Sylvia Plath, Louisa May Alcott, Robert Frost, Nathaniel Hawthorne and others, and tells guests the dark and gory tale of the Great Molasses Flood of 1919 that killed twenty-four people and injured 150. The city smelled like molasses for years after they cleaned up the 2.3 million gallons of the sticky, sweet substance that rushed through the streets after a fifty-foot tank burst.
I did not have molasses in dessert or drinks that night, but I did sip a delightful espresso martini made with tequila (trust us, they said, and I did), as well as the signature 1928 cocktail with Tito’s, elderflower, raspberry and lemon, each served in dainty glassware. For an appetizer, we started with the Thai coconut shrimp with pineapple sweet chili sauce, then ordered the halibut with pickled fennel salad and ratatouille, as well as the filet with asparagus, and key lime pie for dessert. It was the perfect dinner-before-a-show experience with conscientious service and thoughtful suggestions, all with a Rhode Island connection.
Then it was off to the show at Fenway’s MGM Music Hall. If you go to a show there, remember not to bring a big bag with you as they have size requirements at the theater. Kevin Hart also did not allow phones at his show so we had to lock our phones up into Yondr pouches that could only be opened in secured areas. After the show, we headed back to the Liberty Hotel. This hotel is like a blast from the past to my early twenties. When I worked at Boston magazine, I used to hang out in all the bars and restaurants there and attend Fashionably Late often when it first opened in 2006-08.
The hotel has a sinister past, which is alluring to some guests. It was a prison in the mid-1800’s until 1990 when it was closed due to poor living conditions and prison reform. A developer turned it into a luxury hotel in the early 2000s, and it still has cool details like prison bars on the windows and brick work. It also has terrific restaurants, including Scampo by renowned chef Lydia Shire, Clink, and Alibi lounge. As you enter the hotel, and go up the escalator, you can view tile artwork created by a Rhode Islander, too. The mixed media artist is Coral Bourgeois, who has been featured in Rhode Island Monthly. Upside down Christmas trees were also recently installed, giving the hotel a festive atmosphere.
Tile artwork by mixed media artist Coral Bourgeois.
When we returned to the Liberty Hotel, we grabbed a drink at the hotel bar. The upstairs lobby was bumping with a deejay playing Top 40 hits and a wedding after party that blended with hotel guests. People of all ages were dancing and the drinks were flowing. We decided to go downstairs to the Alibi bar and lounge to peek in and “see what the kids were up to these days,” as I thought it would be a very young crowd down there. To my surprise, I recognized deejay 4Hundo, Drew Girard, from Rhode Island, who was spinning all my favorite throwback tunes from the 1990s and early 2000s. The crowd didn’t make me feel terribly old, so we stayed and danced a bit for old time’s sake. Like any good trip, it always funny to find so many coincidental ties to home.
The Liberty Hotel also serves a great breakfast at Clink, including a menu of eggs Benny and omelettes. But one place I wanted to check out before we left was the new Levain Bakery, which brings its famous enormous cookies from New York City to Boston, and is opening a second location in the Seaport. That is one thing Boston has that Rhode Island needs. Unfortunately, we couldn’t make it over because I had to relieve my sitter, but there’s always next time, or cookie delivery. Think I can convince them to expand to the Ocean State?
