Tips for Dining, Eating, and Food Shopping in Boston (and suburbs)
Start New ThreadAt least, if it is, there's nothing about that online. Someone in another thread said that it was closed. Can anyone elaborate, or is this a good place and time to disengage the rumor mill?
Thanks in advance.
By sophie fox
on Jan 18, 2009 12:34 PM
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They are still open, at least as of tonight.
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Perhaps the intended reference was to Wittard's of Chelsea, the British tea store a few doors down from D-P. They went into bankruptcy and were sold two weeks ago and the doors on the store have been locked.
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The other thread in question is this one:
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/588010
Unfortunately, pommefrite has not come back to see the controversy she's stirred up with the throwaway comment "Durgin Park (RIP)" so we don't have any idea why she said that. You may be right that in walking past she confused the entrance to Durgin Park with the storefront for Whittard's.
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I agree, comments on closings are pretty serious if not verified and confirmed, last year one prominent poster commented on a closing and got 'skinned' by the owner who posted on the thread, the prominent poster not only apologized but patronized the place as a peace offer on the bogus info.
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Yeah, that's why I thought it important to start a thread to clarify. I wondered if I was just out of the loop (er hub) out here in the hinterlands. I'm glad to hear that it ain't so. That was quite a statement to make in passing and then to neither defend nor clarify.
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It's a fairly good bet that if Durgin Park were to close, it would be all over Boston.com, the papers and the TV. We're good, but we're not THAT good.
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Is Whittard of Chelsea definitely closed (including the Newbury Street location?)
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Don't know about the Newbury Street shop, although the fact that the parent company has gone bankrupt is not promising. The Faneuil Hall one is definitely closed. I saw it myself last weekend - and did NOT confuse it with the entrance to Durgin-Park a couple of doors down.
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It has been closed the few times I've walked by. I noted it for a feature I'm writing on Newbury Street.
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About half a century ago I went to college in the Boston and minored in Indian Pudding at Durgin Park. Any thoughts of DP closing strike me deeply - we went there a handful of years ago - still as good as ever, whatever that means but we had a Bosnian waitress who didn't know that the staff at DP was NOT supposed to be pleasant..
Anyway, I am glad that DP is still going to be there.
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My own limited recent experiences at Durgin-Park is that it has lost a step since it was bought a couple of years ago by a New York -based conglomerate whose holdings are mostly restaurants with historical interest located in heavily touristed areas. It's not terrible, but it's not as good as it used to be.
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Agreed. The only reason it has held on to any semblance of quality is the fact that the previous owners have been retained on a management contract for some period of time and are still heavily invloved in the day to day operations of the restaurant. As long as this is the case, DP will still be decent. Once they are completely out of the picture, look out below...
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Glad to hear they're not gone. I was just recently introduced to their coffee jello, and I'd hate to see such an oddity disappear. (And, by the way, I HATE jello, but I loved this stuff).
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