Finally: Boston to get place where you can eat sushi while listening to vinyl records

Update: Expansion approved.

The owner of jm Curley's and the Wig Store Lounge on Temple Place hopes to expand down the street by opening a new "fast casual" Korean place and a "fine dining" sushi restaurant where diners would be serenaded with music from actual records on a record player - hi-fi records, "so it would be a hi-fi lounge," Curley's attorney, Stephen Miller, specified at a Boston Licensing Board hearing this morning.

Hi-fi lounges are a thing elsewhere and jm Curley owner Babak Bina is looking to bring the concept to the Hub, Miller said.

The new restaurants would go into the space now occupied by Herrera's.

And that posed a problem: In Massachusetts, liquor licenses are tied to single addresses, but Herrera's is separated from jm Curley and the Wig Store by a separate building, the one housing ABCD. Miller said it just wouldn't make sense for Bina to try to buy a new license for the new spaces, "based on the numbers that licenses are selling for now." Because of limits set by the state legislature, Boston liquor licenses now go for prices approaching $600,000.

But, Miller continued, Bina and his team found a way around that: Use a rear passageway connecting the three buildings and the basements of the three to connect the current jm Curley and Herrera's spaces. Voila: Creation of a single contiguous location.

The plans call for part of the basement space in the current Herrera's location to be used for a bar with seating for 21 people.

Miller said that inspectors from the state Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission - the state's ultimate liquor-license arbiter - came to Temple Place and were "confident [the idea] would pass muster."

The board decides Thursday whether to amend the jm Curley license to cover the new spaces.