No Reservations - Apollo Grill
No Reservations: Flying high
“So what’s your favorite restaurant?” I asked one of my sources. That person, whom I will call The Young Woman About Town, has not eaten at home for months. “Apollo Grill,” she replied without hesitation. “It’s a great place for me to expand my taste buds. Who knew that I loved polenta? I’m still not sure what polenta is, but I know that I love it.”
That is exactly owner-chef Casey Douglass’ dilemma. When he first conceived of the Apollo Grill, his business plan called for casual food. But given the following he’d gained while he was head chef at the Del Raye BAR & Grill in Northampton, customers showed up at the Apollo and ordered the specials. Douglass followed the demand for higher-end food and the Apollo Grill became what it is today — a destination restaurant.
Located in the Eastworks Building, the former Stanley Home Products factory in Easthampton, the Apollo Grill has a look all its own. From the tinfoil astronaut outside the door to the collection of salt and pepper shakers on the bar to the metal conveyor belt visible overhead as you make your way to your table, the restaurant is funky and unpretentious.
The menu is small but interesting. It usually lists eight entrees, about that many starters, and only a couple of desserts. One cold night we started with grilled shrimp with a guacamole-filled tostito and fresh chipotle salsa, and a crab cake with coconut and pineapple curry sauce. The shrimp was grilled just right, and the salsa had some heat that the guacamole cooled off. The crab cake had enough crab in it to avoid the “let’s save money by adding some more bread crumbs” syndrome.
Our waitress was attentive. She was also a vegetarian, which limited her ability to help us choose meat dishes. Still, we settled on three. A pork tenderloin with caramelized onions was nestled on mashed potatoes. Lamb was also served with mashed potatoes, but included a side of feta and onion salad. A duck special consisted of a sauteed breast of duck and a leg of duck confit with a ginger marmalade sauce, laid on top of a disk of wasabi mashed potatoes that had been fried on each side and folded into a cone. A small pile of pickled ginger accompanied the duck.
Dessert was a pecan tart and a blueberry and peach cobbler, each served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Apollo has a good selection of wines (again, the magic number eight) by the glass and the local microbrews were a hit with a Boston friend who is not used to the Valley’s abundance of good breweries.
Sitting in the warm restaurant, looking at the art on the walls, the arch of the metal conveyor belt and a statue that appears to be a series of coffee percolators welded one atop the other, we lingered comfortably.
The appetizers hover around $7 and the entrees range from $14 to $22, with the vegetarian entrees at the low end and rib-eye steak at the high. Desserts are around $5. Our tab for the evening was about $35 per person, including the appetizer, entree, dessert, a glass of wine and the tip. Not bad for a nice evening out.
Lunch is a selection of salads and sandwiches, with specials. I’ve eaten several business lunches there and everyone found something to their liking. Apollo isn’t just a dinner-time destination.
Casey Douglass comes from a restaurant family — his seven brothers and sisters have all worked in the business. Douglass worked for his brother, who owns Icarus Restaurant in Boston, for 14 years. He moved to this area and put in four years at the Del Raye before venturing out on his own.
He says he likes to combine the flavors, textures, colors and variety of his ingredients to offer as many options as he can without creating inventory and labor problems. You can see that approach in his food. Each entree looks like a party — confetti, colored ribbons, surprises. His salmon is crusted with pistachios and served with a colorful Asian cole slaw and purple sticky rice. It’s a dish that makes you smile just looking at it. And then you get to eat it.
The Apollo is a hit and you can’t beat working a mile from your house, but Douglass told me he’s ready for new challenges. He wants to create a second restaurant, the one with the more casual feel he was originally aiming for. One possible site, the former Memorial Hall in Easthampton, fell through. He turned his attention to building a new house instead. Now that the house is completed, he’s starting to look around again.
“The Easthampton scene is nice, but the restaurants are separate and unique, it’s not a group scene like Northampton,” he said. “If one place is filled, it’s not as easy to walk down the street for other places on a similar plane.” It’s also hard to attract people from outside the area, he notes. “People from Springfield are always telling me they can’t believe how easy it is to get here.”
Northampton is too expensive for the place he is looking to start up: “You end up working for your landlord,” he said. So he’s casting around, considering places ranging from Springfield (his wife works at Baystate Medical Center) on up the Valley.
In the meantime, he’s looking forward to spring and summer at Apollo. This is the second year the restaurant is buying most of its produce from Mountain View Farm in Easthampton. “We’re coming out of the winter cooking season,” he said with anticipation. The man who loves to create is already planning new dishes to stretch the palates of Apollo loyalists like The Young Woman About Town.
Originally published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, April 06, 2007