Aujoudhui

For much of its run, Aujourd'hui occupied a particular position in Boston's fine-dining conversation that few hotel restaurants manage: a room with genuine local standing rather than merely a convenient option for guests who didn't want to venture out. Set inside the Four Seasons Boston on Boylston Street, the French-influenced dining room looked out over the Boston Public Garden, and the formal setting — generous spacing between tables, a composed atmosphere — matched the ambition of the kitchen. Boston Magazine ranked it fifth on its list of the city's fifty best restaurants, a signal that the room was taken seriously by local critics, not just hotel guests passing through. Chef William Kovel was the figure most closely associated with the kitchen during the restaurant's later years, and the cooking under his tenure drew consistent notice from the Boston press. The format was upscale French-influenced, with prix fixe options that placed it firmly in the premium tier of the city's dining scene. A three-course lunch was available at a price point that made the room more accessible than dinner, though the overall register remained decidedly formal. Breakfast, perhaps counterintuitively, became one of the most documented draws: the Four Seasons positioned Aujourd'hui specifically as a destination for morning service, and that reputation held across multiple sources. The restaurant closed in 2009, with the dining room subsequently converted to meeting space. Its tenure in Back Bay coincided with a period when hotel fine dining in American cities was being reassessed, and Aujourd'hui's local critical recognition placed it among the handful of hotel restaurants that were evaluated on the same terms as freestanding destinations. For a room of its type and era, that standing was not easily earned.