The Boston Licensing Board yesterday ordered a two-day shutdown for Empire, 1 Marina Park Dr., because police found three underage students with scorpion bowls during an inspection on Feb. 21 - almost a year after it got a one-day suspension for a similar offense.
At a hearing Tuesday, a BPD detective said that when he and his partner walked into the restaurant and club around 12:30 a.m. on Feb. 21, he saw three young looking guys at a table, sharing two scorpion bowls with several straws in them.
Two of the three turned out to be 18-year-old BU students with fake out-of-state IDs. The third was also underage - 19 - and also had a fake out-of-state ID.
An Empire manager acknowledged that the waitress who served them did not follow Empire's protocols for young-looking people with out-of-state IDs - to call over a manager for him or her to look at the IDs. She was suspended; the manager on duty was written up, he said.
Because of the incident, Empire bought a $10,000 license scanner that is updated daily, through which all IDss are now run. The manager said that since the incident, and with the scanner in place, Empire has turned away "hundreds of people" - and has getting "particularly scathing reviews" on Yelp because of how strict it now is.
The three underage patrons caught by police now face criminal charges for being minors in possession of alcohol.