Blog offers guidance for downtown lunch patrons

The Financial District has been partly off its feed following a water-main break Saturday that cut off gas service to some of its restaurants, and now a public relations firm seeks to offer some real-time lunch guidance to hungry bankers and stock brokers.

Yesterday operatives of Solomon McCown & Co. Inc. of Boston conducted a restaurant reconnaissance mission of about a dozen neighborhood eateries and posted their findings about what restaurant fare is currently available at www.fidoboston.blogspot.com. FIDO stands for Financial District Open for Business. And visitors to the site can get the latest information available on the status of local restaurants, Solomon McCown said.

Famished financial types can rest easy. Many bistros are offering a full menu, and others seem to be operating at just below full capacity, according to the blog.

For example, Central 37 is serving everything but French fries, and patrons will temporarily have to go without steaks at the Italian Cafe, the FIDO blog reported, but then, there's always the Greek tuna, a menu item highly recommended by Solomon McCown chief executive Helene Solomon.

In a statement, Solomon offered the thinking behind the blog: "As an employer in the area who loves the Greek tuna at the Italian Cafe and many other local favorites, all of us at Solomon McCown want to help out our neighbors."

Hopefully, a return to culinary normalcy in the Financial District is imminent. Of the 410 customers whose gas service was shut off, 300 had been restored to service by yesterday evening, the Globe reported this morning; the remaining gas customers are expected to have service restored today.
(By Chris Reidy, Globe staff)