Row 34, Boston’s Best Seafood Restaurant, Expands to Kenmore Square

While Row 34 owners Shore Gregory and chef Jeremy Sewall split off from the Island Creek businesses in 2021, they maintain close ties with the Duxbury-based oyster icon. Returning to the location they know so well (an understatement for Sewall, who also worked at Great Bay) is an exercise in honoring the past while moving Row 34 forward.

See also: Boston’s top seafood restaurants

Chilled lobster salad with avocado, sweet corn, lemon vinaigrette, chickpeas, Bibb lettuce, and dill, accompanied by the Pink Pony Club cocktail (gin, lemon, strawberry amaro, guava, and basil oil) at Row 34 Kenmore. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

It starts from the design. One detail nods to the past: A large photo on the back wall, shot by Emily Hagen at the Island Creek Oysters farm, shows Island Creek founder Skip Bennett standing in the water, looking into the distance. “It’s a very cool photo that means a lot to Jeremy and me,” says Gregory, “an acknowledgment of what the space was before.” But aside from some similarities in layout—pretty unavoidable when you’re building a restaurant in an existing space—this is very much Row 34, not Island Creek Oyster Bar 2.0.

Row 34 Kenmore. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

A prominent raw bar and the signature Row 34 marquee menu boards above it, detailing local sources of the restaurant’s seafood, grab the eye. Toward the back, a section of the dining room has been walled off for private events of up to about 50 people. There are improvements behind the scenes, too. There’s nothing the team can do about the massive kitchen’s location a floor above the restaurant, but they’ve installed an ice machine on the main level so staff members aren’t lugging buckets of ice down the stairs to the raw bar all day. Plus, a lot of attention has been paid to acoustic treatments to allow diners to converse comfortably in the big space.

Steamed littleneck clams with miso scallion broth and black garlic toast at Row 34 Kenmore. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

The food, too, is forward-focused while keeping the core bits of Row 34’s culinary identity—and winking just a little to the Island Creek days by offering Island Creek’s beloved lobster roe pasta with braised short rib on the Row 34 Kenmore opening menu. Beyond that, though, don’t expect the menu to feel like an Island Creek callback. “Row was always supposed to be more approachable, easy, less complicated food, and I’m definitely going to honor that,” says Sewall.

Oysters at Row 34 Kenmore. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

Some Row 34 favorites that’ve been on the menu since day one and continue to be offered at the new location include the crispy oyster lettuce cups, lobster rolls, and irresistible butterscotch pudding (seriously—try to save room). Plus, there’ll always be plenty of raw seafood options—oysters, of course, and more—as well as some form of the “smoked and cured” program.

Row 34 Kenmore. The large piece of art in the back of the dining room was made from a photo by Emily Hagen of the Island Creek Oysters farm in Duxbury. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

But on the novel side, “we’re constantly tinkering and trying new stuff,” says Gregory, noting that the team still thinks about its restaurant group, now 12 years old, as “very young and restless.” That means highlighting fresh, locally sourced ingredients “from people we know and love” in always-changing seasonal specials. Some newcomers available on the Kenmore opening menu include, for instance, a chilled lobster salad with avocado and sweet corn; grilled bluefin tuna with baby bok choy and smoked uni butter; and steamed littleneck clams with black garlic-slathered toast.

Grilled bluefin tuna with baby bok choy, ginger, smoked uni butter, black rice, and tomato relish at Row 34 Kenmore. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

What goes best with seafood? A unique beer list, which has always been a focus at Row 34. (Beer director Suzy Hays has been with the company for over a decade—one of many longtime employees, notes Sewall.) On any given day, one might find an imperial milk stout from Brooklyn that tastes like cinnamon babka, a refreshing Vermont lager with lemon and yuzu, or a strawberry sour ale from New Hampshire. There are usually a handful of international favorites, too, particularly from Belgium. For those more cocktail-inclined, bar director Vannaluck Hongthong is having fun with the full liquor license; the original Fort Point location has a more limited beer, wine, and cordials license (although you’d hardly know it, because the drinks over there are creative and satisfying). At Kenmore, look for concoctions like the refreshing Pink Pony Club, with gin, lemon, strawberry amaro, guava, and basil oil.

The private dining room at Row 34 Kenmore. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

Back in the old space, it could be easy to get caught up in nostalgia; returning to the address was “an unexpected but really fortuitous twist,” Gregory says. But he and Sewall are excited to put most of their attention on the future, growing the restaurant group and the talented people coming up through its ranks while embracing what they see as a new era for Kenmore. “Row has always seemed to do well in neighborhoods that are in transition,” says Gregory, “and it feels like Kenmore is beginning another new chapter with a lot of development going on, a lot of change in the square.”

Beer-battered fish and chips with malt vinegar aioli at Row 34 Kenmore. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

This isn’t the Kenmore Square of the 2010s, and it’s not the Row 34—or Island Creek Oyster Bar—of the 2010s, either. “We talk a lot about how restaurants are moments in time,” says Gregory. “[The original] Row 34 in the Seaport is occupying a space that was something else for 100 years before Row, but it’s so real to us now. This space was Island Creek for 10 years, and we spent a ton of time here and have physical memories as much as emotional memories. But it’s not a homecoming, because it’s a new chapter.”

Row 34 Kenmore. / Photo by Rachel Leah Blumenthal

See more inside Row 34 Kenmore’s location here: