Late again
She spent three years tending and managing the bar and the past year as general manager at Noir at the Charles Hotel, so Kristi McNeil is most certainly a night owl. The Somerville resident generally closes the bar five nights a week, which means she gets as much sleep as she can on her days off. She still enjoys a night on the town, but instead of club-hopping, she prefers to have a nice meal and lay low so, she says, “I can enjoy being on the other side of the game.”
@ 6:15 p.m.: As much as I’m at Noir, it really is a good place to go early in the evening. You can sit on the patio and just relax. People associate it with a late-night atmosphere, but I start my night there. And I’m sort of obsessed with the liquor St. Germain lately. We just put a drink called Scarlett Street on the menu, with blood-orange purée and Champagne. I’ll start the night off with one of those.
@ 7:30 p.m.: I go to a lot of my favorite places again and again, and one of my most favorite spots right now is East Coast Grill. It’s so relaxed in there. I always get the same thing: the mahi mahi with rice, beans, and plantains.
@ 9:45 p.m.: Being in the industry, a lot of the people I know are bartenders or in the business, and I can usually see a lot of them at once at Eastern Standard. I’ll usually let them whip up whatever they want to whip up over there.
@ midnight: The B-Side Lounge is another favorite, so I’ll head over there for a bourbon on the rocks. It’s just something easy, and I’m into the more classic stuff.
@ 2 a.m.: I don’t go to bed until pretty late because of my hours, but at least I’ll be home by now. My phone starts going off at 9 a.m., so I have to be up and ready for it.
