A Nostalgic New Italian Restaurant Is Coming to an Iconic Kenmore Space

Max Faro, Tuscan Brands’ senior project manager of hospitality and development, in front of the future home of Buitoni Spaghetti Bar. / Courtesy photo

The original Eastern Standard space in Kenmore Square—which briefly housed the New York export Blue Ribbon Brasserie—is back in local hands. Tuscan Brands, a growing Italian-food empire with venues across Massachusetts and New Hampshire, will open Buitoni Spaghetti Bar here in spring 2027, as a nostalgia-steeped restaurant named for, and inspired by, a bustling 1940s and 1950s restaurant in New York’s Times Square. As Tuscan Brands owner Joe Faro puts it: “One iconic restaurant in one iconic square in another iconic city comes to this iconic square in this iconic city.”

Despite the major New York nod and ties to a pasta brand founded in Tuscany nearly 200 years ago, the modern Buitoni Spaghetti Bar is as local as it comes—Faro, a native of Lawrence, Massachusetts, who once sold a pasta company to Buitoni, bought Buitoni in 2024. “Life has a funny way of coming full circle,” says Faro. In 2006, he sold his first venture, Joseph’s Gourmet Pasta & Sauces, to Buitoni, which was then under the Nestlé Prepared Foods umbrella. (Joseph’s, which Faro began developing while studying at the University of New Hampshire, has since come under different ownership and wasn’t part of the 2024 sale.) “After years spent growing restaurants, hospitality, and real estate ventures, I’ve returned to own the very brand that once acquired my business,” says Faro. “What makes it even more meaningful is watching my children step into the next generation of this company and help shape its future.”

As an homage to the Buitoni Spaghetti Bar of yore, the Kenmore restaurant will have a “time-gone-by Italian immigrant vibe,” says Faro. “It’s going to have one-pound meatballs, fresh spaghetti being made right in front of you all night long.” He says “the vision” is akin to the pasta-makers in the window at Filomena Ristorante in Washington, D.C.

Given the legacy of the space, particularly Eastern Standard’s reputation as a great spot to go before or after a Sox game, “we want this to be a little different than any of our other locations,” says Max Faro, one of Joe’s sons and Tuscan Brands’ senior project manager of hospitality and development. The group’s other restaurants tend to lean moderately upscale, including Tuscan Kitchen in Boston’s Seaport and Salem, New Hampshire; Sorella, the recent revamp of a Tuscan Kitchen location in Burlington, Massachusetts; and other concepts. The Spaghetti Bar, says Max, will “lean a little bit more into the sports crowd” without being a sports bar, he says. It’s a spaghetti bar, after all. But once you walk past the pasta makers, there’ll be plenty of big screens. “Come for a meal before or after the game,” he says, or watch the game at the restaurant. Or, forget about the game: date night, private events, anything. “We want people to come and have an experience, not just dinner,” says Max.

To that experiential end, the team is thinking about bold flavors and dramatic presentations while developing the menu. The food will be “authentic Italian with a little bit of a twist,” says Max. Adds Joe: “It will be our spin on the classics—lasagna, meatballs, spaghetti, Sunday sauce, and everything in between.” It’s too early to promise specific dishes, but there’ll be various theatrical tableside presentations for sure, they say: vodka pasta flambé, maybe, or slicing open burrata over a big veal parm, or filling cannoli to order.

A vintage postcard of Buitoni Spaghetti Bar in Times Square from around 1943. / Public domain

Designer Taniya Nayak, a TV personality and Boston native who has been regularly collaborating with Tuscan Brands since the 2020 opening of Tuscan Sea Grill in Newburyport, is working on Buitoni Spaghetti Bar as well. “Our design team and Taniya are really licking our chops to get our teeth into this space,” says Joe, with the intention of creating “a really fun, retro interpretation of a time gone by.” The color palette will be a classic Italian combo—lots of greens, deep reds, and white. The long bar, which will remain along the left wall as you look into the space, as it was at Eastern Standard and Blue Ribbon Brasserie, will be a focal point. The bar area will have high-tops and, hopefully, two or three people deep at the bar during peak and late-night hours, says Max. Adds Joe: “The bar scene is going to be such a vibe.”

“I love Kenmore Square, and we love this spot,” says Joe. “It’s such an iconic space, and one I’ve been chasing for a long time—we were in the running when Eastern Standard closed. [The developers] went in another direction, which we respect, but I said, ‘If you ever need us, we’re here.’” Some Bostonians felt a little salty that New Yorkers took over the beloved Eastern Standard space—and opened a similar brasserie concept, to boot—but Blue Ribbon Brasserie, a respected brand since its 1992 debut in New York, did earn solid reviews during its short span in Boston. (Eastern Standard, for its part, thankfully reopened nearby.) Ultimately, Blue Ribbon Brasserie closed here after about two years in business, so the space hit the market again. This time, the New Hampshire-born Tuscan Brands got it.

So when Buitoni Spaghetti Bar opens next spring, it’ll be a double dose of nostalgia. There’ll be echoes of the original Eastern Standard in the hopefully boisterous game days and late-night service. But with vintage vibes, it’ll also harken further back to the Times Square of the 1940s and 1950s and the fresh-pasta-filled original Buitoni Spaghetti Bar. “We’re excited to bring a pulse back into the area,” says Joe, “and honored to be in a historic part of Boston.”

528 Commonwealth Ave., Kenmore Square, Boston, tuscanbrands.com.