BOND Helps Answer the Eternal Question: Where to Eat in the Financial District?

But while the space does retain a bit of a ballroom feel, the mod, spherical furniture strewn about the place and the friendly, unpretentious staff brings BOND back down to earth, saving it from feeling like a Brahmin relic out of step with the times. (Our waiter on this outing made us laugh as he struggled to pronounce the words "lapsang souchong," the tea we ordered after lunch.) And the young crowds who've been queuing up outside the place nightly have kept it from becoming a typical hotel bar, where a few rich single diners nosh alone and nurse their expensive Scotch. It's downright serene here at lunchtime, but the evening scene is often standing room only.

For these reasons, BOND has been compared to high-profile hotel hotspots like the Liberty Hotel's Clink, but its prices place it in the same league as more reasonable after-work watering holes like The Good Life, with better food than Foley's, more ambiance than Kingston Station, and a central location that ensures no power struggles will be had over whether to meet "near your office or mine?"

The menus for both lunch and dinner also strive for this subtle sense of accessibility alongside exclusivity, with lunch prices just a tic above the typical $10 grab-and-go lunches in the Financial District. For dinnertime there are four levels of plate sizes to choose from, with small plates starting at $8. "Most plates here are designed for sharing," explained communications manager Julie Shamrock on our recent visit. (Full disclosure: we tested this out by sharing some tasty bites with Shamrock herself, which were provided by the hotel. Their prices may be affordable, but Bostonist bloggers write for free and have no expense accounts.)

There are no novelty deals on BOND's menu (no $1 tater tots or $5 bowls of boar chili) but there are a few surprises, like the $15 steak frites on the dinner menu and the $16 lobster, crab and shrimp rolls stuffed to bursting with fresh seafood. Overall, the prices are within reason, even for the underpaid administrative assistants among us.

There's also a premium placed on local and artisan foods: the Bond Burger, for example, is a name-dropping mouthful of "Chargrilled Northeast Family Farms Beef, Nueske's Smoke House Pepper Bacon, Shelburne Cheddar, and House Made Maple Ketchup." No doubt these dishes are designed to impress both the globe-trotting tourists staying in the hotel and the conscious Boston chowhounds who tend to save their scratch for the locavore flavor-of-the-month.

The part of the menu that speaks most to its luxurious environs is, of course, the dessert portion. Trena Costello, the same wunderkind pastry chef who cranks out the Willy Wonka-esque delights at the Langham's weekly Chocolate Bar; serves up dishes like the Vanilla Macadamia Nut Semifreddo in a Blackberry Lime Soup and Enrobed Chocolate Cheesecake Lollipops for $8-9. So if you are trying to economize, we recommend skipping dinner and going straight to dessert, rather than missing out on one of Costello's creations. Think of it as the fiscally responsible thing to do.

Photo of BOND lobster rolls by Robert Rollend; image courtesy of the Langham Hotel.