To the editor:
With the closing of Hawthorne by the Sea on Nov. 15, 2025, the North Shore lost more than a restaurant. It lost a place where life was marked in full. Birthdays and graduations. Mother’s Day. And also the quiet mercy meals that follow a family funeral, moments when hospitality becomes an act of care.
That was not incidental. It was the standard set by Anthony Athanas.
For decades, his restaurants from the Hawthorne in Lynn to the General Glover House, the Cummaquid Inn on the Cape, and Pier 4 on Boston Harbor were part of everyday life. They did not simply serve meals. They received people.
I dined in each of them with my parents. Some memories stand apart. The General Glover House on New Year’s Eve. The Hawthorne in Lynn with my grandparents. Yet Hawthorne by the Sea stayed with me most. It carried a quiet sense of occasion. It endured. Its loss feels larger than a closing. It marks the end of something that once set the tone for how people gathered.
What stays with me most is not only the food. It is the man. Anthony Athanas stood at the door of the Hawthorne in Lynn and greeted his guests himself. He greeted everyone the same way. No distinction. No airs. Only warmth. Only respect. That was his standard, and he kept it.
Then the rituals. A small spread to begin, crackers with a savory spread. Later, the popovers. Hot. Golden. Served with chowder or salad. Butter melting into the center. A small gesture. A lasting one. You were welcome here.
Pier 4 closed in 2013. The General Glover House has stood dark since the 1990s. Now Hawthorne has followed. What once seemed permanent has receded, piece by piece.
The site now enters a temporary lease. The Glover House will stand or fall on whether funds can be raised to preserve it within a larger development. These are not renewals. They are pauses with uncertain ends.
What is difficult to accept is not change. Change is constant. What is difficult to accept is the loss of a way of doing things. The Anthony Athanas Way. The duty to receive people with care and dignity. It has been replaced by something more transactional.
A place can close. That happens. But a standard should not be so easily lost. The North Shore did not simply lose restaurants. It lost a standard.
Respectfully,
Peter J. Eliopoulos
The writer was born and raised in Lynn and Swampscott and is on the Board of Governors of the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover. He resides outside of New York City with his wife.
