Barbara Lynch:  A Work in Progress

 * * *

Everyone is worried about sitting on the kitten. 

Barbara is worried, the unnamed man (Frankie?) is worried, I’m worried, but the kitten, Evie—black as soot and impossibly small, who disappears and reappears, underneath, between, and on top of the vast collection of wine bottles, cookbooks, dirty dishes, stuffed ashtrays, and, yes, the seats of chairs—is not remotely worried.

It is fall, 2024, and I had managed to get an interview with chef Barbara Lynch, who had recently opened The Rudder on Rocky Neck, in Gloucester.  She was late.  Quite late.  Her staff apologized, a lot.  While waiting, I took in the sumptuous space, moody, dark, with heavy blues and teals, velvet, deeply gorgeous.  Barbara finally arrived, looking frayed, gave a quick hello, whisked me through the kitchen, hand waving over all the bubbling pots and busy staff, and then took me to her apartment upstairs.

I would spend the next two hours smoking cigarettes, drinking, trying to avoid squashing the kitten, and taking in the utter chaos around me.  Everyone was drunk, blithely unaware that the restaurant downstairs was open, and full.  Barbara came and went, presumably cooking, but spent most of the time upstairs.  When I finally left, her assistant pulled me aside, and, with a pleading look, gave me her card. 

Within just a handful of weeks Barbara would close The Rudder.  She would close all seven of her Boston restaurants.  She would lose her beautiful house in Lanesville and everything in it.  The Boston Globe would run a front-page article chronicling allegations of staff abuse and alcohol abuse.  The city of Boston would sue her for $1.7 million in unpaid taxes.  She would spend one night in jail, three months in rehab, and another three months in outpatient treatment.  

She would speak to almost no one for a year.  Only Evie, the kitten.

The story of Barbara Lynch is well known.  The short version is that she grew up, the youngest of seven children raised by a single mother in the projects of South Boston.  She survived drugs, gunfire, poverty, and sexual abuse.  Suffering from undiagnosed severe dyslexia and ADD she learned by being quick, clever, and working ten times harder than everyone else.  But her life changed when a high school home economics teacher taught her to cook.  (That same teacher would bake Barbara’s wedding cake years later.)  And while she did not finish high school, her education continued. 

What followed was a stratospheric rise to culinary fame.  Self-taught with little patience for convention, she opened seven restaurants in ten years, beginning in 1996 with the iconic No. 9 Park which put Boston on the map for fine dining. 

She would win three James Beard Awards, become the first and sole female Relais & Châteaux grand chef in North America, win an Amelia Earhart Award, and be named one of Time magazine’s 100 Top Most Influential People in 2017.  And, as ever fiercely independent, she retained total control of her restaurants as chef and owner.  At their height, her restaurants had a combined estimated value of $24 million.

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About a year after my night at The Rudder, I received a note—she was okay.  And living, as it turns out, right down the street in Manchester.

We decided to meet for coffee at the Laughing Gull.  Barbara, the eternal bad-ass, pulled up on her super cool, and rather tough looking, black moto e-bike.  (She is no longer allowed to drive.)  She looked different.  She had more color in her face.  Less make-up.  Better.  A lot better.

And she was.  She was painting.  Painting all the time.  Would I like to come by and see?

Her small, lovely space is near the water and totally flooded with light.  Evie is now fully grown, gorgeous and fierce.  The walls and most of the tables are covered with Barbara’s paintings.  Paintings of women’s faces, cakes, pastries, ships, lobsters, all with vibrant colors and playful composition.  And whereas, before, Barbara was always surrounded by people, now, she is alone.  Save Evie. 

Given all that Barbara had been through, I was surprised to see that she had laid out all of her personal journals from over the years.  They were packed with drawings, ideas, and menus, all sketched with very few written notes.  They are extraordinary.  I suddenly realized that her language—whether planning every last detail of The Rudder’s interior or creating an exquisite menu for No. 9 Park—is entirely visual.  Her language is form.  But there, between the sketches and drawing are words, thoughts, doubts.  Her worries.  Insecurities.  Some were written when she was drinking heavily.  Some were not.

What is clear is that she is, as she always has been, ferociously and almost maniacally creative.  It’s unstoppable.  Like water, it will find a way.  It is also clear that she thinks in and most effectively communicates through, images.  They are her natural language, and always have been.

Less than three months after I visited her studio, Barbara had her first gallery show.  Wildly, on very day that No. 9 Park would have turned 30.  It was rainy and gray, but despite the weather, attendance was good.  Barbara’s work looked cheerful amongst the other artists’ pieces.  She seemed a bit shy when speaking but I could tell that she was happy.  After the show when everyone was packing up and leaving, she headed outside and there, arching over all of Manchester, was a double rainbow.  

Days later I visited her at home and could hear music and voices from outside.  I came up the stairs to find the room jolly and bustling, like a modern day salon (the Gertrude Stein kind).  Amongst the group was fellow chef Rosalee Harrington along with her husband.  A young gal that worked for Barbara at The Rudder was puttering in the kitchen.  There were things being cooked, things being planned.  The train went by.  The ocean just outside.  The space was full of color, creativity, and — possibility.

 * * *

A couple weeks ago, in our last interview, Barbara shared with me a “sizzle reel” from an HBO piece that never aired.  In it, she recounts, for the first time, the details of being raped at the age of seven.  Her older brother’s friend offered to show her puppies in the basement of a tenement building.  She went.  There were no puppies, she told producers.  Instead, there were men, a few of them, one of whom was Whitey Bulger, the notorious mob boss.  In the piece, she describes leaving with her shirt on inside out.  Worried that she would be late for dinner.  Worried she would be in trouble.  She said that after that, life changed.

“You can’t outrun it.  Because it’s not behind you, it’s in you,” she explained.  You have to stop.  Go in.  Like the Buddhist saying, the only way out is through.  

When we speak about what happened over the past year, she is open and honest.  In the quiet of sobriety, she was able to see that her childhood trauma was her point of origin.  And only in that forced quiet, was she able to go back into the darkness, and let it go.  To finally, get free. 

Barbara is cooking again.  Simple.  In her home.  No. 9 classics.  She hosts small paid dinners along with some catering.  She enjoys it and also needs to pay the bills.  She noted that in attendance at one of her recent dinners was the same Boston Globe writer who chronicled her demise a year ago.  

The writer came under a pseudonym, but Barbara recognized her.  And her article, which came out just days later, covered the menu, the guests, and the food, but there was no mention of Barbara’s state of mind.   Because she never even asked. 

Barbara’s first cooking job was in a rectory.  And despite all that has happened in the last two years, Barbara believes in God and— perhaps improbably— that he has been there all along.  It makes me think of that great song by The Smiths, There Is a Light that Never Goes Out.  I guess, because, it’s true.

Now, Barbara spends her days painting in her light filled space and takes being there as a sign that she is on the right track.  And she is.  She is stronger.  Better.  Creating a new life, a work of art.   A work in progress. 

Just like the rest of us.