Feed

IT'S A week before Persephone is scheduled to open, and chef Michael Leviton is limping through the construction rubble of his edgy gastropub in Fort Point Channel. He's charged up, moving briskly around the space, and it takes a moment to notice the crutch he's using to push aside electrical cables. "Sports - a broken ankle," he explains. "Hey, I'm thrilled. I got my cast off yesterday!" This intense, disciplined chef is pumped with high-octane urban energy today, seeming 10 years younger than he does in the stately surroundings of Lumière in Newton, where he's the chef/owner. Welcome to the city, Michael!

Located in a rehabbed, warehouse-like space, Leviton's new restaurant aims to be the "It" place for lunch, after-work drinks, dinner, and late-night gathering for the designers, architects, and urban pioneers who live and work in the neighborhood. There's lots of food action in the Fort Point Channel and Seaport District, but in this little speck of city, Persephone will be a culinary oasis. Glamorous and gritty, it has all the ingredients necessary to be a destination for young, food-savvy city dwellers - a cool bar and snuggly lounge serving simple but sexy food, lunch through late night.

But Persephone isn't a stand-alone restaurant. It's a core component of a bigger endeavor called the Achilles Project, which also features an upscale casual-apparel shop, Achilles, for men and women. Owners Michael Krupp and Shaka Ramsay explain that it's a new experiential concept for Boston, one that will "bridge the gap between retail boutique and restaurant, offering great clothes, food, drinks, and exciting design." Both the food and fashion are intended to be hip and edgy. The space is visually cool, with lots of brick, white, metal, and leather. Clothes and accessories hang in glass booths, suspended on ceiling rails that can slide across the space. Achilles is deceptively well-stocked, with Euro-style alternatives for a casual-Friday or chic weekend look. And unlike other restaurants set in boutiques - Boston Public at Louis Boston, Restaurant Pava at Tess & Carlos, and the now-defunct Armani Café at Armani Emporium, here you've got to walk through the fashion to get to the food. During the day the retail activity may dominate, but the nights will belong to Leviton.

Flashback to nine years ago, when Leviton was first opening Lumière in West Newton, a neighborhood then considered a culinary wasteland. It was a tough-minded business decision for a young chef/owner. Leviton was a pioneer, the first of the young chefs with perfect pedigrees - trained as a chef in France, New York, and San Franscisco, stints with renowned chefs including Eric Ripert and Daniel Boulud, executive chef at UpStairs at the Pudding (now UpStairs on the Square) - to open a fine-dining bistro in the 'burbs. And Lumière was luxe: elegant dining room, flowers, white tablecloths, and food that suggested that driving downtown was only for those who couldn't get a reservation in Newton. It was expensive, but still a value. Soon, even people who lived in town would do the reverse commute to have dinner with friends.

Once Leviton proved that there were lots of people who appreciated good food and would rather drive 10 minutes and park for free, Lumière became the model for other Boston-based chefs - and a culinary boomlet began in suburbia. Today, practically a blink later, Boston's near suburbs are pulsing with great food and great chefs.

In a way, Persephone is everything that Lumière is not. Spare décor, tables that can be slid together for a big group or notched into twos and fours. No tablecloths, no carpet. Unapologetically urban. Yes, the chef still has the same insatiable lust for the best, freshest local ingredients, but beyond that, it's a whole new adventure for Leviton. And that's what makes it fun. "The execution is the same as at Lumière," he says, "but with one less thing on every plate." Dishes are listed by size (small, medium, large, and XL) rather than sequence. The mix is crazy and comforting, with French technique and local product.

Bounding into the huge kitchen, Leviton almost cackles as he shows off the capacious cook line, gleaming with every appliance from a chef's wish list, the computer ready for take-out orders. The move back to the city is rejuvenating for Leviton. It's the second time he's been in a position to pioneer a new neighborhood. City dwellers won't be disappointed, and for the faithful from the suburbs: there's valet parking. @

[Photo by Joel Veak]