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BOSFAL12

Boston Common - Niche Media - A side of Boston that's anything but common.

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SO MANY LUNCHES... SO LITTLE TIME Bar seat no. 1, the best seat in the house. The Copley Plaza celebrated its centennial with a $20-million makeover. good wood T he collective "wow" you hear emanating from the Back Bay is exuberant approval for the new Oak Long Bar + Kitchen at The Fairmont Copley Plaza hotel. With its dramatic new glass vestibule entrance- way on Copley Square, vaulted Beaux-Arts ceilings, and 83-foot-long, copper-topped, opalescent glass tile bar that snakes its way down the length of the room, Oak Long Bar sets a chic standard for hotel dining in the Hub. Gone are the dark library stuffiness of the Oak Bar lounge and the museum-like Edwardian décor of Kate Hudson the adjoining Oak Room restaurant with its mounted animal heads. The wall between the two rooms has been torn down to create a single airy, cathedral-sized space that is simultaneously modern and traditional. See the two beveled glass mirrors over the liquor bottles behind the bar? With the flick of a switch, they turn into HDTVs. Oak Long Bar + Kitchen is the centerpiece of continued on page 78 76 BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM COPLEY PLAZA'S NEW OAK LONG BAR + KITCHEN REINVIGORATES GRANDE DAME DINING FOR THE 21ST CENTURY. BY MAT SCHAFFER The Fairmont Copley Plaza's $20-million- plus renovation marking the hotel's 100th anniversary. Built on the site of original Museum of Fine Arts, "Grande Dame of Boston" was designed by architect Henry Janeway Hardenbergh as a sister property to The Plaza in New York. Over the years, the hotel has hosted presidents, potentates, and personalities including Babe Ruth, Amelia Earhart, Tony Bennett, the the Lena Horne, Frank Sinatra, and Luciano Pavarotti. In 1975, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton spent their second honeymoon here, while in 1979, Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone hung out a fourth-floor window while awaiting rescue during a fire. Every US President from Taft to Obama has visited as well. In 1992, Tom Cruise filmed the interview scene in The Firm in the Oak Room (called the Plaza Bar & Plaza Dining Room at the time), and in 2008, Kate Hudson filmed scenes for both Bride Wars and My Best Friend's Girl in the hotel. President Barack Obama Since the Parker House opened its doors in 1855, Bostonians have used hotels to conduct business, pitch woo, and celebrate holidays and family occasions. The Copley Plaza was among the city's toniest hostelries, and for nearly a century the hotel's restaurant was a bastion of European-American haute cuisine, serving dishes like oysters Rockefeller, chilled lobster and avo- cado cocktail, steak au poivre, and grilled veal chop. From the end of Prohibition through the 1970s, the Merry-Go-Round Bar, a working-carousel-cum-watering-hole, attracted drink- ers and curiosity seekers alike. It eventually became the Plaza Bar & Plaza Dining Room, and then finally the Oak Bar, where pianists Dave McKenna and Bobby Wetherbee entertained at a Steinway Grand while patrons sipped Champagne and martinis. The new power breakfast: a whole-wheat crust flatbread. PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANDY RYAN (OAK LONG BAR); JORDAN STRAUSS/WIREIMAGE (HUDSON); JONATHAN ERNST/GETTY IMAGES (OBAMA)

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