"[It was a] Friday night [at the Turtle Café,] and the place was booming. A bar full of boisterous patrons, a jam-packed dining room, and Dave already off and getting set up to play his set. A cutting edge restaurant (which became the East Coast Grill), the Turtle featured contemporary regional cuisine, changing its menu every three or four days not only for variety but to continually showcase whatever was in season, a relatively new concept for its time. On weekends they'd feature jazz greats: Teddy Wilson, Scott Hamilton, Sammy Price, and Gray Sargent, a guitarist who these days works with Tony Bennett. I quickly learned it was a great place to hang out and meet these legends, since they'd usually come in to eat before their gig."
Tag: The Boston Globe
A Matter of Taste: A Short, Savvy Menu with Lots of Style, by Robert Levey, Oct. 3, 1985
"The restaurant opened just five weeks ago in the former location of the Turtle Cafe. Owners Chris Schlesinger and Cary Wheaton spiffed up the interior with lots of light green high gloss paint and hints of Deco design in the lighting scheme. The open grilling station that is in full view at the back of the restaurant contributes some enjoyable steamy atmosphere."
At Home with Ron and Joyce Della Chiesa, by Brenda Marchand, July 26, 2001
From Good Stock: Tracing Boston’s culinary heritage, by Alison Arnett, December 26, 1993
"In the beginning there was the Harvest. Its kitchen begat Jimmy Burke, of the Tuscan Grill; Frank McClelland, of L'Espalier; and Chris Schlesinger, of The Blue Room. Or maybe it was the brief fling at the Orson Welles, whence came Odette Bery's Turtle Cafe and then Another Season... Odette Bery remembers 1968 at the Orson Welles, in Cambridge, where she and Joyce della Chiesa shook things up by offering a more casual and experimental style. Chris Schlesinger remembers the Harvest a decade later, when he was hired for $4.25 an hour by Frank McClelland, then sous-chef. Jimmy Burke was the chef, and nouvelle cuisine was just hitting the United States. 'We had carte blanche to order anything we wanted,' Schlesinger says."