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Newbury Street sushi place expanding, adding beer and wine

By adamg on Thu, 12/09/2010 - 3:40pm

The Boston Licensing Board today approved plans by Snappy Sushi to move into larger quarters and buy the beer and wine license owned by Sorento's, an Italian restaurant burned out of Peterborough Street last year.

Snappy Sushi is moving from its current location at 144 Newbury St. to the former Tealuxe at 108 Newbury St. at Clarendon, where it will have 44 indoor seats and 32 seats in a seasonal patio.

The Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay supported the liquor-license transfer.

Neighborhoods: 
Back Bay
Topics: 
Dining
Free tagging: 
Japanese food
sushi
Boston Licensing Board


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Comments

By Anonono on Thu, 12/09/2010 - 4:56pm.

City of Boston sits on sideline while large sums of money are not given to it.

So why does Boston have a limited number of liquor licenses that it can give out? And why are people allowed to sell the things for hundreds of thousands of dollars (I'm feeling too lazy to look it up, but I'm sure I've seen licenses change hands for $100,000+ before) and Boston doesn't see a dime of that?

Wouldn't it make more sense to:

A) Not have a set number of licenses to hand out and instead decide by merit who is allowed to serve booze;

or

B) Revoke license not being used in a set ammount of days if not being used, or require X% of transaction price of licenses being sold between bars/clubs/restaurants go back to the city.

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By adamg on Thu, 12/09/2010 - 6:00pm.

So blame the legislature.

Of course, this being Boston, we have a different formula than every place else. In the other 350 municipalities of the Commonwealth, it's based on population (X number of licenses per 10,000 people). In Boston, the number is set by the state legislature, for the same reason the Boston Licensing Board is appointed by the governor - because 100 years ago, the Protestants who ran the State House hated the Irish who ran Boston and, somehow, it never got changed. This, of course, leads to fun such as state senators getting bribed to obtain more liquor licenses for Boston so they can promise 'em to their friends (why, hello there, Sen. Wilkerson!).

"Pocket licenses" (i.e., licenses granted, but no longer used) are illegal, but, as you can see, it takes awhile before the city notices or does anything (police actually issue violation notices, which then get acted on by the licensing board, which typically gives the license holders several months to do something).

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