Poof—Amar’s Star Chef Is Gone from Raffles Boston
But chef George Mendes, previously behind New York’s Michelin-starred Aldea, has big plans for Boston following his time at the fine-dining Portuguese restaurant.
Amar, on the 17th floor of Raffles Boston in Back Bay. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal
A dramatic shakeup has hit Amar, the Portuguese restaurant perched on Raffles Boston’s 17th floor: Chef George Mendes, who launched the high-profile venture in 2023, is out. And the acclaimed New York chef’s departure from the luxe hotel dining room has happened with remarkably little fanfare.
The partnership between Raffles Boston and Mendes had been highly anticipated, bringing together the luxury hotel brand with a chef known for earning months-long waiting lists at his former Manhattan restaurant. His arrival was seen as a significant boost to Boston’s fine dining scene. Meanwhile, the chef’s exit in mid-April was so understated that many regular diners at Amar may not yet realize Mendes has left, even as the restaurant continues to serve its upscale Portuguese fare.
Mendes brought his signature arroz de pato (duck rice) to Amar, among other Portuguese-inflected dishes. As executive chef of the first U.S. property from Raffles, he also had culinary oversight at the hotel’s Long Bar & Terrace, Café Pastel, and the speakeasy-inspired cocktail bar Blind Duck (but not La Padrona, which is operated independently by A Street Hospitality).
“We love it here,” Mendes says, alongside his wife and brand manager, Suzanne, during a recent chat with Boston on a patio in the South End. “We’re embracing Boston, and I hope to open this restaurant that welcomes the communities—Bostonians, foodies—and I’m able to tell my story through authenticity and love and passion for my craft.”
Mendes, originally from Danbury, Connecticut, spent more than 25 years in New York City, interspersed with stints as a line cook in Europe at the height of the influential avant-garde culinary movement. A renowned chef at the forefront of the modern Portuguese cuisine movement in the United States, Mendes earned and maintained a Michelin star for 10 years at his Manhattan restaurant, Aldea. (The famed Michelin Guide, if you haven’t heard, arrives in Boston this year.) His acclaimed restaurant closed in 2020, but “not on my terms,” he says. “It was such a personal restaurant that I built from scratch. I still almost feel like I’m grieving over it.”
See also: Where to Find Excellent Portuguese Food in Boston and Beyond
Ember-grilled Maine lobster with pineapple from the Azores and preserved fennel, one of Mendes’s dishes at Amar. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal
Part of what he misses from Aldea is the open kitchen and chef’s counter. Those elements are non-negotiables for his new Boston project, he says. “I’m super excited about being able to reconnect with the intimacy of serving customers directly.” The chef is “in negotiations” regarding locations, he says, hoping to find a sub-2,000-square-foot space in or around the South End, where his family lives. “I want to be able to walk there,” Mendes says.
The chef admits that Boston wasn’t on his radar when Raffles came calling, but that the quality of local ingredients available here was a huge selling point. “Getting fresh product in the door and then onto the plate with the most minimal amount of distraction, and noise, and processes, is something that I missed dearly, that I really had at Aldea,” Mendes says. “That’s what I’m going to rebuild.”
Chef George Mendes. / Courtesy photo
The new project will not be Aldea, and it won’t be Amar. The name and other details are still to be determined. “My energy has shifted,” he says. But not too far. The chef is envisioning a dining room with “casual elegance” and a “sexy, comfortable bar,” with his style of “refined rusticity” on the plate. “What that means is deep-rooted flavors in my Portuguese upbringing, with a free spirit,” Mendes says. “I want to evoke memories. I want to evoke emotions.”
Details about the market-bakery-café are even more elusive, but Mendes alludes to having a culinary partner in that project. “I’m really excited about the relationship that’s being built,” he says.
The chef brought along a boule of homemade sourdough to his interview with Boston. Made with a fermentation starter that’s at least eight years old, bread represents Mendes’s first culinary obsession, he says. In the early 1970s, when Mendes was growing up first-generation Portuguese-American, his nanny would get him ready for school with a “Portuguese grinder, as they were called,” he says, describing the personal-sized loaf—and a cup of decaf Singa coffee, “as crazy as that sounds.”
“With her old hands, she would take the grinder and cut it in half, spread butter on it first, and then put it into the toaster oven,” Mendes recalls. “Around the edges of the bread would be this caramelized brown crispiness, and that’s what I would bite into.”
While his new projects will be duly informed by the chef’s Michelin-starred experience and bullishness on fine dining, “cooking is about nurturing,” Mendes says—and that’s what he’s excited to do in Boston.
Maine sea urchin on toasted brioche with cauliflower puree, shiso, and wasabi, another of Mendes’s dishes Amar. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal
Amar, 40 Trinity Pl. (Raffles Boston), Back Bay, 617-351-8888, raffles.com; George Mendes, instagram.com/geomendes.
