We went to No. 9 Park tonight, had each the tasting menu for $170 and the wine pairing for $115. 2 out of the 7 courses were great, the others okay — though overall the portions were too too small for the money we paid at the end. No value for money. Go spend it somewhere else.
Atmosphere: 2
Food: 3
Service: 2
Jace DC
Madai crudo and pork belly were tasty. Chicken tortellini stuffing lacked flavor and moisture. Prune stuffed gnocchi was packed with savory sweetness.
Atmosphere: 5
Food: 4
Service: 5
Michael W.
Dinner at a place like No. 9 Park is more of a total experience than a meal. Your whole night will be thoughtfully considered- delivered through a very personal level of service. The wine list is extensive and the servers and sommelier have always offered bangers, even given constraints on preference and cost. My wife and I are plant based eaters, but we are treated as 1st class citizens by a restaurant that could easily give us the cold shoulder. When dining on the tasting menu, you will be presented with dish after dish of well prepared items that are as beautiful to look at as they are appetizing to eat. Seasonal options will be on offer, so be sure to keep an eye out- such as the fresh black truffle upgrade- and the ambience of a cozy-but-elegant side room with a view of the park will only enhance the meal. No. 9 Park is holding the candle in terms of fine French style dining experiences in Boston, so if you're looking for that kind of energy, this is your spot.
ClausS
Positives first, the service is good and the staff both attentive and pleasant. But the food is a huge disappointment. Considering the price point and positioning as a fine dining establishment, the food experience is incredibly bad. This is the flagship restaurant of a celebrated chef? Does she ever visit the kitchen? I had a tasting menu, and of the six courses only two worked, that was the first starter, and the dessert. Neither were great, but both were interesting and good (in my subjective opinion). The four courses in between range from uninspired to borderline shameful. A scallop dish with an odd composition (that's fine, people like different things), and a small scallop with an off grainy/mushy texture and a terrible dry-burned sear. Chicken tortellini in a broth with some microgreens. No redeeming qualities in this dish in my opinion. Easily the worst dish I've had in a tasting menu. Completely bland, and with a pasta that was almost crumbly in texture. A pork belly dish with some fried mushrooms and vegetables. Pork belly was alright and had a nice crunchy skin. The dish was seasoned, but the whole thing was very greasy with no acidity or freshness. Tasty, yes, but hardly a fine dining dish. The final main course was a piece of wagyu beef. The same experience as the pork with the fried oily greens (and ditto potato). The meat itself was slightly overcooked and chewy for my taste. All in all this felt dated and underwhelming, especially considering the price point. From looking around the dining room I got the same impression from other diners, not a lot of smiles. Good service, good ambience, good cocktail, good wine. But the food is far of the mark.
John W.
This is probably the most famous restaurant in Boston but I can't say it fulfilled my expectations. I wanted to try it out, especially since the owner has been closing so many of her restaurants amidst some controversial treatment accusations of her staff. Better get it done before it is gone right? We got the 6 course tasting menu and it was just...ok. It is just like other types of European/French style of cooking. Light on the salt, butter heavy and lacking in taste. The best part of the meal was the interesting gazpacho with pomegranate which I had never experienced before. But the sirloin was dry, the porkchop was bland the dessert was mushy and lacking in flavor. it was just so disappointing and the price was outrageous. I will say, the service was excellent so I have no complaints there. but for a restaurant, the food was really subpar and NOT worth the price. I realize one pays for the experience also and it really wasn't that great overall. it felt like just a normal restaurant. Nothing amazing, nothing terrible. I won't be returning and I have no reason to recommend it to others. If you want to eat a nice restaurant, go to NYC and try out one of the Michelin star types. The prices are the same and the flavor is so much better.
James Robbins
Very disappointing food. Especially at a high price. Only the desert was very good. All other dishes were fair to poor. Fish was sent back, it seemed off. Scallops themselves were great but the sauce with them was uninteresting. Steak tartare meat was good, but it was covered in mediocre sauces as well.Service was very good. Had an excellent waiter.
Atmosphere: 3
Food: 3
Service: 5
Recommended dishes: Chocolate Soufflé, Prime Steak Tartare, Seared Hudson Valley Foie Gras
Food was underwhelming. Atmosphere was meh and decor was dated. We spent over $400 for two (prix-fix menu and one drink each). There are so many better restaurants in the area at a much lower price tag.
Overall, a fairly stale environment. The staff tried to make up for it. But the ambiance, food, and wine fell completely flat. We walked away hungry and feeling like we'd been ripped off.
Abigail Wolowitz
Not worth going for the food.Staff was attentive and welcoming. Food was fine but nothing memorable.Just a BORING experience. All the dishes had a bit “washed-up/has-been pasty old white men” feeling. Kinda ironic.Two people prix fixe for 400+ (including tips, cocktails, no wine), the whole dinner is “NOT ENOUGH”. At this price, I had much better tasting menu experiences in other pricy cities like LA/NYC/DC. Cost adjusted, not a good choice. (Haven’t found a decent restaurant in Boston in this price range yet)If you dine on company card, I’d say go for it. Good non-offensive food and nice ambiance.If you look for good food, look somewhere else.
Atmosphere: 4
Food: 3
Service: 5
Brianna Spiegel
I am very disappointed with our experience eating at No.9 Park last night. For the money, it was a complete rip-off.Yesterday was my mom’s birthday, so I was in touch with the restaurant for a few months, booking the reservation as soon as I was able to. I had heard great things and was looking forward to trying this flagship restaurant. Despite the importance of the occasion that I communicated, we were not seated with any special consideration - no window seat for us. The ambience in the rest of the restaurant feels like you are sitting in someone’s living room, which of course would be fine had the food made up for it. It did not.There were only two options on the menu: a tasting menu or a prix fixe. When one of us wanted to do a tasting menu and the others prix fixe, we were told that we all had to do the same. There was no a la carte. I reached out to the restaurant numerous times in advance to ask for a pescatarian option for my mom, but this was not prepared for us ahead of time. While our server did offer a pescatarian version of the tasting experience upon me asking, it was unclear what that would even include.We went with the prix fixe, and I can say that overall, it was an unbalanced, carb heavy meal. The food was not worth the $140-$155 price tag. There was only one vegetable option for the starter: a very plain, bitter green salad. The steak tartare began to taste monotonous after a while. The ricotta fritters tasted like the child of amusement park fried dough and pub mozzarella sticks. For the second course, most options were carb focused. While the prune gnocchi were delicious, the only way to order them is with a $15 supplement no matter what menu you choose. The entree was very disappointing with very small portions. The sea bass was salty, and the beef bourguignon was seasoned like simple beef you would have in a stew. It had no vegetable accompaniment, and the mashed potato portion was extremely small in comparison to the amount of beef. The dessert was absolutely abominable. Yes, it was very kind of the restaurant to offer us the soufflé complementary. But my mother loves pavlova normally, and she said this was the weirdest one she ever had. I tried it, and it was chemical-tasting. The caramel dessert was similarly so overly fruity that it tasted gross and we could not eat it.This isn’t even getting started on the cocktails, which were expensive, watered down, and sugary - mine had a huge block of ice taking up more than half the glass.Bottom line - I would not recommend unless you want to shell out almost 250 a person for a mediocre experience at best.
I’ve dined in a couple of times in 2023 at the bar. It was good then, especially dessert! Haven’t been in yet for this year. Would like to see if anything had changed since the closure of the other Barbara Lynch restaurants, but excited for my next visit!
Atmosphere: 5
Food: 5
Service: 5
Noiseman
A memorable experience. This was my first time dining at #9 Park, but had been to Barbara Lynch's other restaurants many times. Everything about the dinner was superb. It was without question one of the finest dining experiences I've had in my life. We had the Four-course Prix Fixe dinner. Both the preparation and the presentation of the courses were excellent. The service was attentive but not intrusive. It's not often that I think about a meal days afterwards, but this was one of those experiences. Highly recommended!
Absolutely incredible. Extremely impressed by the service and their attention to detail. The food was outstanding. There is no other word to describe our experience other than perfect.
Jade Z.
Came to eat the famous Prune Stuffed Gnocchi before another Barbara Lynch restaurant closes and I was pleasantly surprised! I'd say it's super worth the value to come with 2-3 people and between the whole table, you get one of each option from each section of the $140 prix fixe menu and share it all! The portions are decently sized despite the superfluously large Michelin-style plates. I think if you ate only your four courses on the prix fixe, you'd quickly get palette fatigue. The restaurant definitely has an old money vibe to it, clean and woody, not overly flashy or decked out. Quiet enough to hear the people at your table but also a bit too quiet such that you can very loudly hear the staff announcing dishes for other tables. Our waiter was well versed about the menu! Although I found it peculiar that when I said we wanted to share everything family style / basically order one of each option from each course, he still insisted that each person at my table speak the 4 individual dishes out loud. But then when we were actually served the food, they didn't put the correct plates in front of us? (I got my boyfriend's order, he got mine, etc.) Parmesan Parker house rolls with butter and salt - warm, crispy on top, and we were able to get a second order of bread! 4/5 Little Gem Salad - was dressed with dijon aioli which made the leaves very heavy / fatty. Topped with pistachio, very few parm crisps, and dried orange that overpowered. So confused by this salad, worse than Costco caesar salad. 1/5 Steak tartare, kojiut squash, cranberry, juniper - typical, didn't taste much nuance in the toppings but nice with the brioche. 3/5 Ricotta fritters with marcona almonds, honey, black peppercorns - this was definitely pure dessert but honestly probably my ideal donut texture! So fluffy! But I can't imagine 1 person eating all 5 of them as an appetizer?! 4/5 Caramelle di Patate, beech mushroom, chestnut, potato - loved the light and delicate flavors of this dish, perfectly cooked pasta / no thick gummy doughy parts where the pasta is folded, wish I could spoon the broth. 4/5 Seared Hudson Valley Foie Gras, pistachio, grapefruit, blood orange - came with a crumbly mix that tasted like graham cracker crust so the dish was dessert-y as well (what is with foie gras having so many sweet pairings! same experience at Deauxave). 3.5/5 Prune stuffed gnocchi, foie gras, marcona almond, vin santo - I think this dish lived up to the hype! The gnocchi was more of a prune dumpling, a soft mushy dough with mashed and chunked prune inside. I usually hate prunes but paired with the brown buttery sauce it was like a bakery giving you a hug, straddling sweet/savory... like upgraded maple bacon. I don't think the foie gras did anything flavor wise, mostly just added fattiness. The sauce was so good to dip bread into (and then dip into the pasta mushroom broth!) but it did severely separate towards the end : my curiosity is satisfied and would eat again but not craving it! 5/5 Seabass, rainbow chard, saffron veloute, guanciale - this is usually served with salmon but I'm glad they had a seabass special today! Fish was meaty and tender, super crispy skin. The chard and saffron tasted oddly soapy. 4/5 Beef bourguignon, polenta, blue cheese, mixed mushrooms - definitely not traditional and a let down, was 2 very large chunks of plain braised beef, with a meager drizzling of red wine sauce and crispy onions. So maybe 10% of each chunk was very yummy and well rounded, the rest was very fibrously well cooked beef. Polenta was plain, I thought the mushrooms were fried sage at first?! They turned out to be limp, not seared to their full flavor potential. 3/5 Vermont quail, parsnip, brussels sprouts, rosemary - wonderfully cooked! Super acidic brussels paired with the buttery parsnip. Upgraded classic roast chicken dish and fun presentation. 4.5/5 Barley creme caramel, yuzu, curacao - much needed yuzu sorbet that was so refreshing, could taste the nuttiness of the barley but also came off a bit bitter with the flan s
We went to No. 9 Park tonight, had each the tasting menu for $170 and the wine pairing for $115. 2 out of the 7 courses were great, the others okay — though overall the portions were too too small for the money we paid at the end. No value for money. Go spend it somewhere else.
Atmosphere: 2
Food: 3
Service: 2
Madai crudo and pork belly were tasty. Chicken tortellini stuffing lacked flavor and moisture. Prune stuffed gnocchi was packed with savory sweetness.
Atmosphere: 5
Food: 4
Service: 5
Dinner at a place like No. 9 Park is more of a total experience than a meal. Your whole night will be thoughtfully considered- delivered through a very personal level of service. The wine list is extensive and the servers and sommelier have always offered bangers, even given constraints on preference and cost. My wife and I are plant based eaters, but we are treated as 1st class citizens by a restaurant that could easily give us the cold shoulder. When dining on the tasting menu, you will be presented with dish after dish of well prepared items that are as beautiful to look at as they are appetizing to eat. Seasonal options will be on offer, so be sure to keep an eye out- such as the fresh black truffle upgrade- and the ambience of a cozy-but-elegant side room with a view of the park will only enhance the meal. No. 9 Park is holding the candle in terms of fine French style dining experiences in Boston, so if you're looking for that kind of energy, this is your spot.
Positives first, the service is good and the staff both attentive and pleasant. But the food is a huge disappointment. Considering the price point and positioning as a fine dining establishment, the food experience is incredibly bad. This is the flagship restaurant of a celebrated chef? Does she ever visit the kitchen? I had a tasting menu, and of the six courses only two worked, that was the first starter, and the dessert. Neither were great, but both were interesting and good (in my subjective opinion). The four courses in between range from uninspired to borderline shameful. A scallop dish with an odd composition (that's fine, people like different things), and a small scallop with an off grainy/mushy texture and a terrible dry-burned sear. Chicken tortellini in a broth with some microgreens. No redeeming qualities in this dish in my opinion. Easily the worst dish I've had in a tasting menu. Completely bland, and with a pasta that was almost crumbly in texture. A pork belly dish with some fried mushrooms and vegetables. Pork belly was alright and had a nice crunchy skin. The dish was seasoned, but the whole thing was very greasy with no acidity or freshness. Tasty, yes, but hardly a fine dining dish. The final main course was a piece of wagyu beef. The same experience as the pork with the fried oily greens (and ditto potato). The meat itself was slightly overcooked and chewy for my taste. All in all this felt dated and underwhelming, especially considering the price point. From looking around the dining room I got the same impression from other diners, not a lot of smiles. Good service, good ambience, good cocktail, good wine. But the food is far of the mark.
This is probably the most famous restaurant in Boston but I can't say it fulfilled my expectations. I wanted to try it out, especially since the owner has been closing so many of her restaurants amidst some controversial treatment accusations of her staff. Better get it done before it is gone right? We got the 6 course tasting menu and it was just...ok. It is just like other types of European/French style of cooking. Light on the salt, butter heavy and lacking in taste. The best part of the meal was the interesting gazpacho with pomegranate which I had never experienced before. But the sirloin was dry, the porkchop was bland the dessert was mushy and lacking in flavor. it was just so disappointing and the price was outrageous. I will say, the service was excellent so I have no complaints there. but for a restaurant, the food was really subpar and NOT worth the price. I realize one pays for the experience also and it really wasn't that great overall. it felt like just a normal restaurant. Nothing amazing, nothing terrible. I won't be returning and I have no reason to recommend it to others. If you want to eat a nice restaurant, go to NYC and try out one of the Michelin star types. The prices are the same and the flavor is so much better.
Very disappointing food. Especially at a high price. Only the desert was very good. All other dishes were fair to poor. Fish was sent back, it seemed off. Scallops themselves were great but the sauce with them was uninteresting. Steak tartare meat was good, but it was covered in mediocre sauces as well.Service was very good. Had an excellent waiter.
Atmosphere: 3
Food: 3
Service: 5
Recommended dishes: Chocolate Soufflé, Prime Steak Tartare, Seared Hudson Valley Foie Gras
Food was underwhelming. Atmosphere was meh and decor was dated. We spent over $400 for two (prix-fix menu and one drink each). There are so many better restaurants in the area at a much lower price tag.
Overall, a fairly stale environment. The staff tried to make up for it. But the ambiance, food, and wine fell completely flat. We walked away hungry and feeling like we'd been ripped off.
Not worth going for the food.Staff was attentive and welcoming. Food was fine but nothing memorable.Just a BORING experience. All the dishes had a bit “washed-up/has-been pasty old white men” feeling. Kinda ironic.Two people prix fixe for 400+ (including tips, cocktails, no wine), the whole dinner is “NOT ENOUGH”. At this price, I had much better tasting menu experiences in other pricy cities like LA/NYC/DC. Cost adjusted, not a good choice. (Haven’t found a decent restaurant in Boston in this price range yet)If you dine on company card, I’d say go for it. Good non-offensive food and nice ambiance.If you look for good food, look somewhere else.
Atmosphere: 4
Food: 3
Service: 5
I am very disappointed with our experience eating at No.9 Park last night. For the money, it was a complete rip-off.Yesterday was my mom’s birthday, so I was in touch with the restaurant for a few months, booking the reservation as soon as I was able to. I had heard great things and was looking forward to trying this flagship restaurant. Despite the importance of the occasion that I communicated, we were not seated with any special consideration - no window seat for us. The ambience in the rest of the restaurant feels like you are sitting in someone’s living room, which of course would be fine had the food made up for it. It did not.There were only two options on the menu: a tasting menu or a prix fixe. When one of us wanted to do a tasting menu and the others prix fixe, we were told that we all had to do the same. There was no a la carte. I reached out to the restaurant numerous times in advance to ask for a pescatarian option for my mom, but this was not prepared for us ahead of time. While our server did offer a pescatarian version of the tasting experience upon me asking, it was unclear what that would even include.We went with the prix fixe, and I can say that overall, it was an unbalanced, carb heavy meal. The food was not worth the $140-$155 price tag. There was only one vegetable option for the starter: a very plain, bitter green salad. The steak tartare began to taste monotonous after a while. The ricotta fritters tasted like the child of amusement park fried dough and pub mozzarella sticks. For the second course, most options were carb focused. While the prune gnocchi were delicious, the only way to order them is with a $15 supplement no matter what menu you choose. The entree was very disappointing with very small portions. The sea bass was salty, and the beef bourguignon was seasoned like simple beef you would have in a stew. It had no vegetable accompaniment, and the mashed potato portion was extremely small in comparison to the amount of beef. The dessert was absolutely abominable. Yes, it was very kind of the restaurant to offer us the soufflé complementary. But my mother loves pavlova normally, and she said this was the weirdest one she ever had. I tried it, and it was chemical-tasting. The caramel dessert was similarly so overly fruity that it tasted gross and we could not eat it.This isn’t even getting started on the cocktails, which were expensive, watered down, and sugary - mine had a huge block of ice taking up more than half the glass.Bottom line - I would not recommend unless you want to shell out almost 250 a person for a mediocre experience at best.
Atmosphere: 1
Food: 1
Service: 4
Restaurantji Recommends
Very good
Atmosphere: 5
Service: 5
I’ve dined in a couple of times in 2023 at the bar. It was good then, especially dessert! Haven’t been in yet for this year. Would like to see if anything had changed since the closure of the other Barbara Lynch restaurants, but excited for my next visit!
Atmosphere: 5
Food: 5
Service: 5
A memorable experience. This was my first time dining at #9 Park, but had been to Barbara Lynch's other restaurants many times. Everything about the dinner was superb. It was without question one of the finest dining experiences I've had in my life. We had the Four-course Prix Fixe dinner. Both the preparation and the presentation of the courses were excellent. The service was attentive but not intrusive. It's not often that I think about a meal days afterwards, but this was one of those experiences. Highly recommended!
Absolutely incredible. Extremely impressed by the service and their attention to detail. The food was outstanding. There is no other word to describe our experience other than perfect.
Came to eat the famous Prune Stuffed Gnocchi before another Barbara Lynch restaurant closes and I was pleasantly surprised! I'd say it's super worth the value to come with 2-3 people and between the whole table, you get one of each option from each section of the $140 prix fixe menu and share it all! The portions are decently sized despite the superfluously large Michelin-style plates. I think if you ate only your four courses on the prix fixe, you'd quickly get palette fatigue. The restaurant definitely has an old money vibe to it, clean and woody, not overly flashy or decked out. Quiet enough to hear the people at your table but also a bit too quiet such that you can very loudly hear the staff announcing dishes for other tables. Our waiter was well versed about the menu! Although I found it peculiar that when I said we wanted to share everything family style / basically order one of each option from each course, he still insisted that each person at my table speak the 4 individual dishes out loud. But then when we were actually served the food, they didn't put the correct plates in front of us? (I got my boyfriend's order, he got mine, etc.) Parmesan Parker house rolls with butter and salt - warm, crispy on top, and we were able to get a second order of bread! 4/5 Little Gem Salad - was dressed with dijon aioli which made the leaves very heavy / fatty. Topped with pistachio, very few parm crisps, and dried orange that overpowered. So confused by this salad, worse than Costco caesar salad. 1/5 Steak tartare, kojiut squash, cranberry, juniper - typical, didn't taste much nuance in the toppings but nice with the brioche. 3/5 Ricotta fritters with marcona almonds, honey, black peppercorns - this was definitely pure dessert but honestly probably my ideal donut texture! So fluffy! But I can't imagine 1 person eating all 5 of them as an appetizer?! 4/5 Caramelle di Patate, beech mushroom, chestnut, potato - loved the light and delicate flavors of this dish, perfectly cooked pasta / no thick gummy doughy parts where the pasta is folded, wish I could spoon the broth. 4/5 Seared Hudson Valley Foie Gras, pistachio, grapefruit, blood orange - came with a crumbly mix that tasted like graham cracker crust so the dish was dessert-y as well (what is with foie gras having so many sweet pairings! same experience at Deauxave). 3.5/5 Prune stuffed gnocchi, foie gras, marcona almond, vin santo - I think this dish lived up to the hype! The gnocchi was more of a prune dumpling, a soft mushy dough with mashed and chunked prune inside. I usually hate prunes but paired with the brown buttery sauce it was like a bakery giving you a hug, straddling sweet/savory... like upgraded maple bacon. I don't think the foie gras did anything flavor wise, mostly just added fattiness. The sauce was so good to dip bread into (and then dip into the pasta mushroom broth!) but it did severely separate towards the end : my curiosity is satisfied and would eat again but not craving it! 5/5 Seabass, rainbow chard, saffron veloute, guanciale - this is usually served with salmon but I'm glad they had a seabass special today! Fish was meaty and tender, super crispy skin. The chard and saffron tasted oddly soapy. 4/5 Beef bourguignon, polenta, blue cheese, mixed mushrooms - definitely not traditional and a let down, was 2 very large chunks of plain braised beef, with a meager drizzling of red wine sauce and crispy onions. So maybe 10% of each chunk was very yummy and well rounded, the rest was very fibrously well cooked beef. Polenta was plain, I thought the mushrooms were fried sage at first?! They turned out to be limp, not seared to their full flavor potential. 3/5 Vermont quail, parsnip, brussels sprouts, rosemary - wonderfully cooked! Super acidic brussels paired with the buttery parsnip. Upgraded classic roast chicken dish and fun presentation. 4.5/5 Barley creme caramel, yuzu, curacao - much needed yuzu sorbet that was so refreshing, could taste the nuttiness of the barley but also came off a bit bitter with the flan s