You can tell a lot about a community from its restaurants. The amount of disposable income in a city or town gives us a pretty good hint about the food that will be available, so it follows that Great Barrington has quite a few good places to eat.
Restaurants are very difficult businesses. You’ve got to order the food and bring the people in. Then you’ve got to cook the food and satisfy the customers. There’s a huge demand for people to do this work and a dwindling work force. This makes things even more difficult. The “Help Wanted” signs we see everywhere make it clear that there simply aren’t enough people to work in any of our businesses. Restaurants are no exception.
We ate at Cafe Adam the other night—it may very well be the best restaurant in our town. It isn’t cheap but by New York standards, it isn’t expensive either. I ate very simply—half a dozen oysters and a plate of mussels. The place was jammed. We got there at five when it opened but the maître d’ made it clear that all the empty tables we were eyeing were all spoken for. You need to call ahead to make reservations, and that’s true for all the top Great Barrington restaurants. There is always someone in your family who insists reservations aren’t necessary, even though they are.
There were an awful lot of people at Cafe Adam. If my people-spotting power is in good working order, I would say that many of the patrons were from big cities. Maybe most were from New York with a smattering of Bostonians, and many of those in attendance were a little older than the usual crowd. The older they were, the better dressed they seemed to be. The small tables facing the bar are usually occupied. Beyond the bar is the formal dining room and it, too, is often filled with people looking for an elegant, or at least semi-elegant dining experience. The wait staff is consistent and most of us appreciate the fact that even if you are not there every night, they know who you are. Cafe Adam generally tends to draw a crowd of young professionals just about every night at closing time. They are joined in that by the Prairie Whale.
It costs a lot to eat out, both in Great Barrington and in New York. When we first arrived full time in the Berkshires over fifty years ago, we had very little money, but we could enjoy a meal at a great restaurant for $20. That fed both of us. Now we are talking $100 to eat out, even if you drink very little and we drink very little. The more you drink, the better the restaurant does. I have been told that restaurants make as much money on a couple of drinks as they do on a couple of meals.
It seems like everyone thinks they could run a restaurant. Trust me, they can’t. You’ve got to work all day and all night and then turn around and do it again the next day. I remember so well when the late, great Heather Austin started the first Japanese restaurant in Great Barrington as well as the first coffee shop. Most people I spoke with thought she was living in a fantasy world. Really? In Great Barrington? It wasn’t long before there were lines at both places. Now we look back at Heather and all the other folks, like Michael Marcus and Bizen, who not only conceived some wonderful places to eat, but kept them going.
There is something about Great Barrington that makes it unique. Even the newspaper that you are reading now is better than anything coming out of Pittsfield.
