ONE-NIGHT RETURN OF RIALTO
Chef Jody Adams revives menu items from iconic Cambridge restaurant
Thinking of Rialto still gives restaurateur Jody Adams all the feels. The James Beard Award-winning chef ran the iconic Cambridge eatery for more than two decades before saying ciao in 2016. And now, as she plans to revive the old Harvard Square landmark for a solitary night next weekend, she’s sharing what she misses most about her first venture.
“I really miss the food,” said Adams, who currently owns Boston establishments Trade, Porto and Saloniki. “For 22 years, I wrote menus that came out of my travels, that came out of my imagination. I love my work now, but I’m more focused on helping young chefs develop their own menus.”
Adams gushed over old trademark dishes that she pieced together from her journeys abroad, like grilled clams with andouille sausage — inspired by watching locals in Southern France cooking mussels over a live fire — and slow-roasted duck smothered in balsamic vinegar and accompanied by greens.
“In fact, my son was turning 30 last November and he was coming home,” Adams said. “I asked him what he wanted for dinner and he said, ‘I want the clams and I want the duck.’ So not only are they favorites for me, but they’re favorites for all of us at home.”
Those favorites will be brought back to life on Jan. 25, when she hosts the Rialto pop-up at Porto. The menu will also include other blasts from the past like lobster cavatelli, grilled sirloin steak, which she started drizzling with truffle oil before it was trendy, and a molten chocolate cake she had on the menu from its 1994 opening until its close.
Food aside, Adams said she also misses the people who’d stop by the Charles Hotel spot. There were members of her staff who worked — and ate — alongside her for the bulk of the restaurant’s lifetime.
“I started something called ‘guerilla grilling’ in 2007 or 2008,” Adams said. “I had this idea that me and the staff would drive to a farm with a little Weber grill in the back. We’d all go out and pick whatever was available at the farm and we’d cook a big meal with the people who worked at the farm to have this amazing experience together.”
Through their picnic tradition, she and her crew explored purveyors throughout New England, including Bully Boy Distillery and Allandale Farm, as a team.
“It showed our staff exactly where our food came from and gave them the stories to tell and then take to the guests at the restaurant,” she said. “It made for a really rich experience for everyone and our customers knew about these events — in fact, there were some who’d beg to come with us.”
Then, there are the old Rialto regulars. While Adams recalled encountering a couple of celebrity customers — like that time a pre-POTUS Barack Obama came in for salmon after giving his 2004 DNC address at the then-Fleet Center — she stressed the significance of her returning clients.
“I miss the community I built with the guests,” Adams said. “There are people who still come to Porto and Trade and Saloniki who I built relationships with over the course of 20, 25 years. They used to come in as customers and then they came in as friends.”
“In Greek, ‘hospitality’ has both the words for ‘friend’ and ‘stranger’ in the name,” she added. “So it’s important to remember that at the core, a restaurant is a place where our job is to welcome strangers and treat them as friends — and their job is to have a good time.”