Thinking Back to The Falstaff Room at the Sheraton Boston

The most prominent feature of the Falstaff Room in the Sheraton Boston that I recall was that everything was red, including my dad's face once we received the bill. We were eating peanut butter sandwiches for the next week!  But I'll always remember that red decor -- sort like like the Piccadilly Pub with a bow tie.

More expensive than the restaurants we were used to dining at, The Falstaff Room indeed exuded sort of a semi upscale feel. The waiters were all dressed up and, incredibly, so many of them looked like John Oates from the group Hall and Oates (you know, the little guy with the mustache), as I recall.

It was nice dressing up on that Sunday morning, heading into Boston from suburbia, and feeling special. I don't remember anything about the food, thus revealing that a restaurant's atmosphere can sometimes trump anything off the menu. I remember, too, that the Prudential Building was the coolest place on earth with all that great outdoor landscaping and a whopping 30 stores.

We never went back to the Falstaff Room, but that one-time experience was memorable. That's why I'm writing about it 40 years later! That dark shopping arcade looks puny compared to today's "Shops at Prudential Center" (must be upscale, it has a preposition in its name!) with 75 or so stores and a really classy look.

Anyway, how nice it was being introduced to a fancy restaurant in the "Hub of the Universe"-- and listening to Casey Kasem's "American Top 40 on the way in -- and discovering that the Sheraton also had Kon Tiki Ports, one of the best Polynesian restaurants around! We'll write more about the Kon Tiki in a future article!