Author: 3beacon

Unorthodox goodness shining through the dark

Trina’s Starlite Lounge is not so easy to describe. It’s noir — as in dark (they only put in windows a couple months ago). It has craft cocktails, but not classics; draft beers, but only six taps; 17 bottled beers, but that’s including Miller High Life, Bud Light, and Black Label. It’s nostalgic (old beer signs, girly-magazine pages, comfort food, and water poured from antique milk bottles). It’s vaguely Southern (sweet pies, quasi-soul food, and a soundtrack from Patsy Cline to alt-country). It’s insider-y, promoting an industry brunch on Monday to attract restaurant workers (the kind of buzz that made the original Franklin Cafe and also Nebo). It’s full of anomalies — a Reuben sandwich on scali bread, chicken and waffles, a hot dog of the day, wine you never heard of before — that break any frame you put around it.

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‘Without the assistance of the state, we’re not going to survive’

Emma Hollander, 36, is managing partner at Inman Square’s Parlor Sports and Trina’s Starlite Lounge, neighborhood mainstays that are now closed, without takeout or delivery service. After a lifetime of 12-hour days, she’s adjusting to staying home — and worrying about her 37 workers.

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Mass. Restaurants And Bars Prepare To Shut Down To In-Person Diners

“We’re a neighborhood restaurant, neighborhood bar,” said Trina’s co-owner Emma Hollander.

“And we wanted to make sure … that our staff took as much as physically possible yesterday because, you know, everybody is going be out of a job for three weeks. And then we just cooked the rest off, so the neighborhood could come and take as much food as they wanted.”

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