Bar Mezzana and Shore Leave Are Having a Last Season, and It Has a Schedule

"Eight years of Shore Leave is nuts for a weird little rum bar with occasional drag shows," Ryan Lotz told the Boston Globe in July. Lotz is the beverage director and managing partner for Shore Leave and No Relation. He said it in the same story that announced the end. Colin Lynch's Traveler Street Hospitality will close Bar Mezzana, No Relation and Shore Leave on New Year's Day.

Lynch announced the closures roughly six months ahead, and the restaurants are using that time. With about nine weeks left, the rooms are still open and taking reservations. One of them is serving food it has never served before.

Why the date was set so far out

The reason is a lease. Lynch told the Globe the decision came down to renewing it, and whether doing so was prudent. "The new lease would have entailed a strain on the business. We would have limped along. Leases go up. It's not like we didn't see it coming," he said. He also said he has a strong relationship with the landlord, National Development. Speaking later to Boston Magazine, he described the wider climate this way: "the highs are still very high, but the lows are getting lower."

He was just as direct about the timing. He told the Globe he announced early so employees had plenty of time to find new work. "I don't think there's any good or easy way to close a business, but as much as it might bite us in the end, being short-staffed, it was the right thing to do to give everyone ample time to stick with us or to find a new job."

The early notice helps diners too. Usually the last meal at a neighborhood favorite turns out to be whatever you happened to order on an ordinary Tuesday. This year, South End regulars know the end date in advance and can plan around it.

The last thing Shore Leave is doing is something new

You can see the effect of that notice most clearly downstairs at 11 William E. Mullins Way. From mid-September through Thursday, December 31, the Laotian pop-up Phaeng & Phiu has taken over Shore Leave's kitchen. Chef Veo Robert worked with Traveler Street from 2021 through 2024, and he's back for the rest of the year, according to Boston Chefs.

Robert's cooking is Laotian food filtered through New England. The menu Boston Chefs described includes:

• Gỏi pa, a kingfish crudo with galanga, kaffir lime leaves and khao khua
• Laap moo tod, crispy pork belly with cara cara orange, fresh herbs and khao khua
• Mok hed, a wild mushroom soufflé with mushroom soy and truffles
• Pad kee mao talay, made with New England seafood, rice noodles, chili oyster sauce and basil
• A whole fried black bass with ginger, tamarind, fresh herbs and fried garlic
• Mango cheesecake, roasted banana ice cream or tamarind sorbet for dessert

The menu is à la carte, Tuesday through Saturday from 5 to 10 p.m., booked through the Shore Leave website. Shore Leave's tropical cocktails stay on at the bar for the whole residency.

So the bar's last menu is a new one. When Shore Leave opened on November 19, 2018, the food was Pacific Rim: bluefin tuna poke, Filipino barbecue ribs, pork belly bao, all served alongside rum-forward drinks, as Eater Boston reported at the time. The final weeks look nothing like a scaled-back version of that menu. The kitchen handed itself to a chef the group already knew and let him cook something different. Shore Leave turns eight on November 19, inside its final season.

What the other two rooms are still serving

No Relation shares Shore Leave's address and sits inside it, below street level. It opened January 4, 2019, as a nine-seat sushi bar serving a 14-course omakase that changes with seasonal seafood and is built on Japanese technique, according to Eater Boston's opening coverage. With only nine seats, it has the fewest openings of the three before New Year's. Its official site still carries its usual reservation link.

Bar Mezzana is at 360 Harrison Ave. It opened June 1, 2016, inside the Sepia condominium at Ink Block as a coastal Italian restaurant. When it opened, Boston Chefs listed daily crudo, homemade pasta, prosciutto di Parma, Italian wines and classic cocktails. It marked ten years in business this June, and the Globe called it "acclaimed." "We had 10 years, and we're really proud of everything we've done here," Lynch told the paper. Like No Relation, Bar Mezzana's homepage still shows ordinary reservations. Neither restaurant has posted a separate farewell menu or a last-night event so far, so the restaurants' own pages are the place to check for final-week details and anything about gift cards.

The group's South End brasserie, Black Lamb, will keep operating after New Year's.

A calendar for the next nine weeks

Read alongside the rest of the neighborhood's late-fall schedule, the farewell season looks like this:

1. Now through Dec. 31: Phaeng & Phiu at Shore Leave, Tuesday through Saturday, 5 to 10 p.m.
2. Nov. 19: Shore Leave's eighth anniversary, counted from its 2018 opening night.
3. Nov. 20 through Dec. 27: The 11th annual SoWa Christmas Market runs at the Power Station, 550 Harrison Ave., with more than 100 regional makers, artists, designers and specialty food vendors. Admission is $10, and children 12 and under get in free. Like Bar Mezzana, the market is on Harrison Avenue.
4. Dec. 3: SoWa's Country Night at the market, with line dancing and a mechanical bull.
5. Dec. 31: The residency's last night. The Globe put the closing on New Year's Day.

How other South End rooms have changed hands

Other recent South End turnovers make a planned goodbye look less common than it should be.

The former B&G Oysters space at 550 Tremont St. housed that restaurant from 2003 until late 2024, according to Boston Magazine. It closed after Barbara Lynch's restaurant group fell apart and, eventually, burst-pipe flooding. The address is getting a second life: Saltie Girl owner Kathy Sidell is planning the Shell Bar there for around spring 2027. Plans include 38 seats inside, 22 on the sunken patio, kettle-fried fish and chips, and a highly seasonal raw bar. Even so, the space will have been dark for more than two years by the time it reopens. Lynch and his partner Heather Lynch got their start working for Barbara Lynch, no relation, which gives the two Tremont-to-Harrison stories a shared origin.

At 416 Tremont St., Rome Pizza closed after about 30 years with a farewell message to customers, per Boston Restaurant Talk on September 24. Three weeks later, the same site reported that Roma Pizza & Company was open in the space, serving pizza, salads, wings, sandwiches, pasta and steak tips. That handoff took about three weeks.

New openings keep arriving as well. C'Yool, a Yemeni coffeehouse and bakery at 600 Harrison Ave., opened this fall from the team behind Fenway's Bab Al-Yemen. It serves Yemeni breads and pastries, sabaya and specialty Yemeni coffee, according to Boston.com and Boston Magazine. It is also on Harrison Avenue.

No next tenant or landlord plan has been announced for 360 Harrison Ave. or 11 William E. Mullins Way. For now, those two addresses have a known end date and a short program to go with it. Phaeng & Phiu serves Tuesday through Saturday until the last night of December, and Bar Mezzana and No Relation are booking on their own sites until the closing on New Year's Day.

If you'd like to talk through what the South End's changing restaurant addresses mean for your block, MacKinnon & Co. is glad to walk it with you. Request a free neighborhood consult.