Harding Allen Rises as Relish Falls

Harding Allen

Last night, we attended a function at the Harding Allen Estate. This is my first time there since they finished putting the all-season tires on the tent. It's mostly not a tent anymore, just a big function room with a fabric-draped ceiling, some solid walls, and crystal chandeliers. The addition of that space allowed them to turn the too-small, too-crowded old restaurant room into a spacious lounge with couches and a pretty large bar at one end. So now, when you walk in, instead of chaos, you are greeted by a charming, calming space. The Christmas decorations make the whole place look like a spread from Martha Stewart Living (a little much for my taste, but nicely done). Now, if they can get their act together on the food and the service...

To be fair, the chicken we had was very good. It was stuffed with something mushroomy, and wrapped in a thin pastry shell. Everyone at our table who ordered the chicken was very happy. However, neither of the women who ordered the fish ate more than two bites. At a function like this, you'd expect haddock to be baked or grilled, not a giant fried slab that looks lost without french fries and cole slaw. It was as if they drove the fish straight up from one of the Friday specials at one of the 13 pizza joints in town. Odd.

The service was less than I would expect at a relatively small function. Slow to clear the tables, etc. Perhaps it's hard to find enough staff this time of year.

Relish

Alas, it appears that Relish is no more. Their web site, phone, and sign have all disappeared. I haven't found anyone who knows the full story, but I'd guess that Glenn's food and prices were too far out-of-range for Barre. For those of you keeping score, that makes four restaurants in that space since Listening opened in 2000. Let's see what we can learn from this about what kind of restaurant might succeed in that peculiar location:

1. Have Low Aspirations. Ari's restaurant was excellent, had a steady flow of regular customers, and I hear that it even made money. But when you compare what he was able to do there to what he's done in Picasso... well, there's no comparison. The Listening space is just too cramped and segmented for a big, bustling, successful restaurant.

2. Don't Be Rude to your Customers. Anyone who ever ate at the Blue Dog knows what I'm talking about.

3. Serve Good Food. We went to South Street Cafe (I think that's what it was called) exactly once. Iceburg lettuce with croutons from a box is NOT a Caesar salad.

4. Don't forget you are in Barre. Given the square footage and peculiar arrangement, I can see why a high-brow restaurant would seem to make sense here. When you can't do high volume, do high margin instead. But the population of Barre does not have enough wedding anniversaries and birthdays ending in zero to support a place like this. And Barre is so impossible to get to that relying on bringing people in from Boston, or even from other central MA locations is not realistic.

What Barre really needs is this space is another pizza place.

Just kidding.