News Summary

• Lynch’s restaurant group, the Barbara Lynch Collective, cited rent increases and failed landlord negotiations as primary reasons for the closures in a press release.Fine dining destination Menton, Italian restaurant Sportello, and seminal cocktail bar Drink are closed, effective immediately, according to the release..
• “We have done everything possible to avoid putting these creative, dedicated, hard-working people out of jobs, but had no choice when a working solution with the landlord wasn’t ‘agreeable’ to them.” The restaurant group has also been under fire over the past year due to Lynch’s alleged leadership failings..
• Filed under:Menton, Sportello, and Drink are done, effective immediatelyChef and restaurateur Barbara Lynch, who faced scrutiny in the last year when allegations that she harassed staff at her restaurants became public, announced today, January 5, that she is closing down the majority of her restaurants in Boston..
• The New York Times and the Boston Globe published separate investigations last spring in which over a dozen employees alleged that Lynch had displayed physically and verbally aggressive behavior toward staff in her restaurants for years, including at the now-closed Menton, Drink, and the Butcher Shop..
• “Properties have been flipped and flipped and the landlords just want the rents that only national chains can sustain.”Sportello, Menton, and Drink, all located on Fort Point’s Congress Street, had a large impact on Boston’s dining scene over the decades that the restaurants were in business..
• 9 Park, seafood spot B&G Oysters in the South End, and her newest restaurant, the Rudder, in Gloucester, which opened last year..