art + antiques
l’espalier’s soul food
The restaurant’s modern new space
demonstrates the transformative power of fine art
Written by TINA SUTTON
Photography by JOEL BENJAMIN
When frank mcclelland
moved his much beloved
L’Espalier restaurant from
a historic town house in
Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood to the decidedly
contemporary Mandarin Oriental hotel, local
foodies thought he’d gone mad. How could the
award-winning chef/proprietor possibly capture the homey elegance of the original restaurant’s architecturally detailed rooms in the new
6,000-square-foot modern space?
Turns out fine art was a key ingredient.
“We thought it was important to keep the
three-room arrangement of the town house, plus
a little salon area,” says New York-based designer/
architect Martin Vahrta, who oversaw the challenging project. “Art is another layer that gives
the restaurant that residential feeling.”
In other words, this is not “Oh, we need
to cover that blank wall” kind of art, but rather
an honest-to-goodness cohesive collection that
achieves its drama through unusual hanging
treatments.
With one of the largest inventories of oil
paintings, drawings, watercolors, prints, and
sculpture in the United States, Boston’s 70-year-
old Childs Gallery, where McClelland had been
a client for more than 20 years, offered one-stop
shopping for works that spoke to the restauran-teur’s sensibilities and complemented Vahrta’s
design vision. While McClelland was delighted
to discover that he and Vahrta were instinctively
drawn to the same pieces, a trait even married
couples seldom share, Childs vice president
the new l’espalier restaurant in Boston’s
Mandarin hotel is configured as a series of rooms,
rather than one large dining hall. Here, framed
prints hang in the blue-hued library. “I’ve always
had an eye for artwork, but what speaks to me,
rather than a name that’s supposed to be
important,” says restaurant owner Frank
McClelland, who favors early-to-mid-20th-century
American artists with a New England connection.
“Boston was a very important center because it
was so close to so many areas of natural beauty.”
