Expansion common in Boston as fine dining recovers from economic and tourism slump

Nation's Restaurant News, June 17, 2002 by Bret Thorn

The 90-seat restaurant also will have a 20-to-25 seat "bruschetteria" and wine bar, which will stay open throughout the day. The main restaurant will close between lunch and dinner. The bruschetteria will offer a dozen small plates, such as skillet pizza, antipasti and assorted bruschetta.

Via Matta also will have 40 seats on the patio for outdoor dining.

Schlow has brought Guy Neil, with whom he worked in New York at Sappore di Mare and 75 Main, to Boston to work as general manager.

DiFillippo of Davio's is closing his original restaurant on Newbury Street and moving it to a larger location, with banquet rooms, a lounge and a takeout counter, in the Paine Furniture Building at 75 Arlington St., across from the Park Plaza Hotel.

The new restaurant will have a function room with a capacity for up to 100 people. The main dining room will seat 150 instead of 130 and will have a 15-seat food bar facing an open kitchen. There also will be a separate bar that seats 30 people, a lounge off the bar and a wine room that seats 30.

The new restaurant is connected by an atrium to the neighboring office building, 5 St. James, so DiFillippo also will open a takeout shop to cater to the workers in that building. It is scheduled to open in September.

The original Davio's opened 17 years ago, DiFillippo said. "Now I'm finally bringing it up to what it should be." DiFillippo's three other Davio's restaurants are in Cambridge; Philadelphia; and Providence, R.I.