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Restaurant: Possible

Chef Matt Jennings and his team hustle to work out the details and create a special experience for the opening of his new brasserie, Townsman

Townsman chef Matt Jennings preps dishes.Aram Boghosian for The Boston Globe

Opening night at an anticipated restaurant is like the premiere of a play, complete with adrenaline and jitters. Is the chef prepared? Do the servers know their lines? Is every decor detail in place? Most of all: Will the crowd love it?

Peking duck breast.Aram Boghosian for The Boston Globe

At Matt Jennings’s New England brasserie, Townsman, the answer is yes. It’s his big debut on the once-derelict Kingston Street, and by 5:30 p.m. during the first official service last Thursday, the bar is jammed. The soundtrack bounces from ambient techno to the joyful beat of Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al.” Servers in crisp jeans and white shirts glide through the dining room, smiling. Cooks in Townsman baseball caps plate charcuterie and fetch cheeses with trembling precision. General manager and wine director Meredith Gallagher floats from table to table, pausing to greet guests with a hand on the shoulder as if she’s throwing an impromptu cocktail party. Jennings shouts orders from the crudo counter like a benevolent general while co-chef Brian Young — who looks just like a young Elvis — calls them back in a languid drawl. The only sign of trouble is a forgotten beef confit with egg yolk, idling behind the counter indefinitely. Whose is it?

Townsman, inside the swanky new Radian apartment building, has all the makings of a juicy theatrical. There’s the compelling setting — the shadowy fringes of Downtown Crossing and Chinatown — now undergoing a luxury metamorphosis. There are notable costars. Bar manager Sean Frederick oversaw Citizen Public House’s top-notch cocktail program. Pastry chef Meghan Thompson worked at Steel & Rye. General manager Gallagher arrived from the Barbara Lynch Gruppo’s Menton.

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Then there’s the protagonist, chef Jennings, whose return to Boston from Providence’s acclaimed Farmstead is being hailed as a homecoming. In 2014, local gourmands frowned when the 38-year-old chef announced that he and his wife, Kate, would close the popular restaurant to come home. In Rhode Island, he won Cochon 555, a pig-focused culinary competition, multiple times and was routinely nominated as the James Beard Foundation’s Best Chef Northeast. He’s also a social media celebrity thanks to a busy Instagram feed that chronicles his adventures as a jolly kitchen warrior and dad of two young sons.

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Alden & Harlow chef Michael Scelfo bonded with him over Instagram to the point that Jennings used Scelfo’s Cambridge kitchen for recipe-testing. “Matt’s a magnanimous guy, and humble. You want to see people like that do well,” says Scelfo, whose own restaurant is a 2015 James Beard semifinalist. “Who doesn’t like a triumphant return? He’s putting his flag in the ground in a unique part of town.”

Co-chef Brian Young working in the kitchen.Aram Boghosian for The Boston Globe

It’s a dramatic move for Jennings, who grew up in Wellesley and Jamaica Plain. “When I was old enough to take the T, my mom warned me not to go downtown. There was the Combat Zone! Now I’m opening a restaurant where she told me to never go,” he says. It’s a counterpoint to Barbara Lynch’s fairy tale of a Southie girl made good, opening Boston’s swankiest restaurant in the old neighborhood.

So, yes, expectations are high all around. His project is ambitious, calculated to upend stodgy pretenses of downtown dining in favor of freewheeling good cheer. “Pop the cork, pass the swine” is Townsman’s Twitter motto. “For Vice & Virtue” appears in bold on the restaurant’s website. The 75-seat dining room and 10-seat crudo bar offers a bit of both: fresh local fish and housemade charcuterie boards, hot curried crab and terrines, hearty steaks, rich hors d’oeuvres, and chicken-fried sweetbreads. Shellfish platters have replaced strippers as the neighborhood’s sin of choice.

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Charred baby octopus dish.Aram Boghosian for The Boston Globe

Now, the area’s busiest nocturnal character is Jennings himself. He arrives at Townsman at 7 a.m. and stays until 4 a.m. the next day to prepare. Two nights ago he hosted a friends and family meal, a way for chefs to get feedback from friendly patrons (hopefully the sort who won’t unload on Yelp if a dish is disappointing).

“I had a couple of fears come true last night,” he admits the next morning, recalling the staff’s struggle to get food out of the kitchen on time. “I had a chef who I’m great friends with come in with her spouse and kids. We were dragging pretty hard. She had to leave, which made me terribly sad. We had to pack up everything to go. Stuff like that rips my heart out, but that’s also why we do friends and family.”

Opening night will be tougher. While chefs eagerly expound on creative expression in quieter moments, the immediate focus in on technical perfection. “At this point in my career, I have an identity. I don’t worry about expressing myself through the menu as much as I worry about technical aspects: the speed at which the food leaves the kitchen, touching every plate, knowing people are having a good experience,” Jennings says.

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General manager-wine director Meredith Gallagher pours for diners.Aram Boghosian for The Boston Globe

This isn’t blind faith. GM Gallagher was hired from Menton to make it so. She began recruiting staff in the fall with a process that would intimidate any New Age CEO. “I’ve been told I’m an intense interviewer,” she says, alighting on an orange stool at the crudo counter. Servers weren’t hired based on pedigree. Instead, Gallagher sought people with qualities like “vulnerability.” Servers trained six days per week, learning to “decode” guests’ language and clearly explain menus. On snow days, they worked from home with assignments like screening “A Year in Burgundy,” studying the works of New York hospitality guru Danny Meyer, or watching TED talks on empathy.

Matt Jennings, co-owner of Townsman, made a scallop crudo.Wendy Maeda/ Globe staff

On the first real day Townsman is serving, call time was 3 p.m. Jennings presided over family meal at around 4:30, entering to ’80s music. There, servers got a menu rundown, analyzed reservations (“people called to say they’re taking the train up from Providence!” Gallagher glows), and talked mantra (“dedication and organization”). Then, showtime. Staff will linger until 3 a.m. to debrief.

Until then, it’s a command performance. Fire! Plate! Serve!

“Chef, why are you doing a tartare when I really need a crudo?” Jennings benignly asks an underling. “Let’s go, cure plate! I need you to focus. Great pace, great pace!” He has all the intensity of a Broadway director — but none of the grizzle. Everyone on the line is reverentially addressed as “chef.”

“I love you guys with all my heart,” Jennings calls to the kitchen during a lull. “Hope you all know that.”

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Seems that they do: A server materializes at his side with coffee and sets it next to him. Soon, he’ll find out if guests feel the same.

Scallop crudo.Wendy Maeda/ Globe staff


Kara Baskin can be reached at kcbaskin@gmail.com.