Blue Ginger, the East-meets-West restaurant that has made Wellesley a destination for foodies since 1998, is closing on June 3. So no more Sablefish, no more Ming’s Bings, etc.
The restaurant evolved over the years, adding a lounge area in 2008 and increasing its message of food allergy awareness. Blue Ginger also survived years of having a crater across the street left behind by the Wellesley Inn teardown and then withstood construction of the Belclare condos in that space.
Owner and Chef Ming Tsai calls the closing “incredibly bittersweet” even as he and business partner Sean Gildea (also of Blue Dragon in Boston) ramp up to start “ChowStirs — a fast casual Chinese concept that will not only serve delicious, healthy, affordable and freshly wokked stir fries, but will also have a mission to give back.” ChowStirs is slated to open in Boston in early 2018.
Tsai tells the Boston Globe that the closing syncs up with the end of the restaurant’s lease.
A celebratory yard sale will be held on June 4, proceeds of which will benefit Family Reach.
It remains to be seen whether another restaurant will slide into the space at 583 Washington St. Meanwhile, newer Wellesley restaurants such as Juniper and Bocado, and standbys like Cafe Mangal, will continue to dish up fine fare.
Really sad that Blue Ginger is leaving our town. Let’s hope another real estate office doesn’t take it’s place.
Seconded. I’ll miss having a famous restaurant in town, but truthfully, I’d love to see another establishment like The Local or another gastropub. We need more “hangout” type places that will increase foot traffic in the Village (and thereby benefit other businesses).
W/r/t the real estate offices, based on the volume of mail I’m getting from them, the bubble is about to burst, they know it, and hopefully some of those offices will go away. If we had implemented a demo review bylaw in the 90s, as we should have, perhaps we wouldn’t have such a glut of homes in the $1.5-3.0M range and the agents wouldn’t be crawling all over each other to move the “wonderful” new construction. (Background: when perfectly serviceable homes that would go for under a million (often the subject of a bidding war amongst young families who are coming to the realization that living in “hip” Boston neighborhoods isn’t that great after you have kids) are torn down, the developers are building houses almost exclusively in the $1.5-3M range to recoup their investment.)
By the way, last chance for a demo delay law is Monday night (4/24) – we should all hope it passes. All of the uninformed talk about diminished property values is utter bunk. The only thing diminishing property values is the aforementioned glut in the 1.5-3.0M market segment that is being exacerbated by having no controls on teardowns. The notion that “only developers will buy small old houses” is also a bunch of self-serving crap, being disseminated by parties with an interest in avoiding bidding wars (those would be mostly out-of-town investor/developers). Those folks know that if the properties get to the open market they will lose the bidding war to the many young families (and others, e.g., downsizing seniors looking to be close to their own kids!)desperately trying to get into Wellesley at any remotely reasonable price (which price will be too high for the investor/developers to have a comfortable ROI). Don’t fall for these shenanigans.