On a recent Thursday night, the martinis and wine flowed at 29 Newbury, and Donna Camillo, a manager at Salon Mario Russo, was working the crowd. It was her birthday, and friends and colleagues had packed the restaurant, something they do regardless of occasion. Amid the partygoers, Camillo's friend Jeremy Dellaria, co-owner of Salon Mark Harris, chatted with Web designer Bob McKelvy, who was enjoying a cocktail with his girlfriend. Another buddy, Stephen Bruno, a stylist at Salon Red & Spa, schmoozed nearby.
"It's where we come to network - still," says Bruno, who's been a regular for 20 years. "We've been coming here for so long, it's like the gathering spot for Newbury Street royalty."
While other boites and boutiques on the street have come and gone, 29 Newbury has remained - a favorite of the fabulous, the famous, and those who like to think they are. Since 1986, owner Debbie Lewis has watched the well-heeled crowds, becoming an accidental sociologist as the city's tastes, habits - and, yes, even hairstyles - have changed.
"It gave me a window into my world and helped shape my style sensibility," said Eric Yellin, an assistant director of "Pink Panther 2," who waited tables at 29 from 1987 to 1990 while studying at Boston University. "I met a lot of people in the entertainment world. We had a lot of regular artists, photographers, and models. It got pretty wild."
On a recent afternoon, Lewis was just back from a culinary excursion to Africa via Paris. Two days later, she'd be scooting off for some fishing and clamming on Nantucket. In the meantime, she was at 29, talking marble with an artist. Because her guests are increasingly eating at the bar, she's getting rid of the restaurant's hulking black countertop and replacing it with a slab of sleek granite that juts out almost a foot further than the original.
"People want to be at the bar and hang out there," says Lewis, switching one pair of stylish specs for another, adjusting them to hold back her long auburn hair. "This restaurant has turned into a gastropub of sorts - a watering hole with good food."
It wasn't always that way. During Lewis's first few years at 29, people dined in parties of two and four. But the DNA of social interaction has changed since then. People have always mobbed the bar for cocktails, but now dinner reservations are more commonly made for groups of eight or 10 or even 16. So about two years ago, Lewis tore out the low wall that cut lengthwise through the dining room to make space for larger tables.
One thing that hasn't changed at 29? The crowd's unabashed desire to see and be seen.
"When people get dressed up and go out, they want to be seen out," she says. "There's so much more to dining out now than eating. The cafe outside has always been casual, but even inside, people might be wearing jeans and a T-shirt, but they'll have good jewelry on. It's a beautiful dressed-down look, more of an easy-going dressed up. It's not a stiff look anymore.
"People are almost more comfortable with themselves. They want to be seen in the right places, but they want to be comfortable."
While 29 remains one of those "right places," the number and quality of bars and restaurants in Boston has exploded in the two decades since Lewis first appeared on the scene. And competition for the city's hip cocktail crowd only grows more intense with each season.
That said, Lewis chalks up the steady flow of customers to an infallible formula: location, location, location. But the layout of 29 hasn't hurt either. Though the entry is a few steps below street level, huge windows reveal revelers at the bar inside, and during the summer months, Newbury Street denizens flock to the outdoor tables - air-kissing, chatting on mobiles, and gazing at passersby.
It's not bad for a restaurateur who says it all started "on a lark." In 1986, Lewis's then-fiance (now ex-husband) George Lewis, who now owns the chic Foundation Lounge, bought the restaurant, which, despite constant crowds, had gone bankrupt.
It had been and continued to be a magnet for the boldface and the beautiful - of the local and Hollywood variety. When Jack Nicholson or Nicholas Cage dropped in, they'd sit inconspicuously amid the local designers, high-end retail trendsetters, real estate magnates, and well-tailored pols like Senator John Kerry, who was often spotted at the bar in the early '90s. Likewise, when Madonna and her entourage needed a post-concert pick-me-up, or when the cast of "Cheers" gathered for a final round, they converged on 29.
"It was like, 'Here's our place, it's neat that you come, but we're not about that. Everyone's going to be treated like everyone else,' " Yellin said. "People knew they could come there and have a comfy place for a meal and not have people tripping over themselves to serve them."
"In the '80s, it was the Elaine's of Boston," said Maggie Trichon, referring to the storied hot spot on New York's Upper East Side. Trichon, a modeling and talent agent, has worked on Newbury Street for more than three decades. "People who went to 29 went because they wanted to see each other rather than go cross town to a new trendy restaurant."
But back then, it wasn't all just cocktail chatter over Lesbian Fizzes, 29's once-signature drink that was as mod as shoulder pads. When the AIDS epidemic was still referred to as the "gay man's cancer," its impact was felt strongly among Boston's style cognoscenti. Determined to jumpstart action within the community, Trichon corralled a group of fashion and nightlife denizens such as Patrick Lyons, radio personality Sunny Joe White, then-magazine publisher Robert Birnbaum, and Harry Collings, who's now the executive secretary of the Boston Redevelopment Authority. The group, which became known as Boston Against AIDS, naturally had its first meeting at 29 Newbury.
While 29 has long been a favorite of the city's style mavens, Lewis herself is something of an unlikely scenester. Certainly, her Rolodex is thick with names and heads swivel when she pulls up in the navy blue Maserati Spyder Cambiocorsa she bought for her 50th birthday. She's quick to rave about the ostrich purses she picked up in Africa.
Still, Lewis is more inclined to toil in her gardens and feed the chickens at her Chestnut Hill home than she is to drop names. Long before "organic" and "locally grown" were the lingua franca of restaurants, Lewis was bringing in fresh herbs, fruits, and veggies that would end up on diners' plates.
"My grandparents taught me sustainable agriculture, but they just called it 'vegetable garden,' " she says with a shrug. That sensibility has become an integral part of her lifestyle. Her back yard looks like a landscape painting by a Hudson River School artist.
As Lewis talks about 29 Newbury and the guests who come back to visit years after they've moved away, she admits she leads something of a charmed life. Her restaurant has survived the city's economic highs and lows and remains vital even as the local bar and restaurant scene has grown more sophisticated and competitive.
Still, 29 Newbury isn't a dream she necessarily chased. In conversation, Lewis slips in asides that make a listener do a double take, as when she refers to something that happened "when I was in law school" or "when I worked as an investment banker." Turns out, after Delaware Law School, she worked for Drexel Burnham Lambert. But then she went to 29 Newbury.
Her love affair with the place continues. As it does for quite a few others.
"People move on, but they come back," Lewis says of 29. "Its longevity ends up being its youth."
