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First of all, let’s get the matter of the name out of the way. When you place a high-end restaurant across the street from a college and give it a name that sounds like a play on a low-level course (English 101, anyone?), the average Valley restaurant-goer is likely to wonder what that’s all about.

But Chef Alan Anischik says he wanted a name that rolled easily off the tongue, and a restaurant where simplicity meant that “you can taste the product you’re supposed to taste.” He and partner Tim Hardick got both. Food 101 BAR & BISTRO at the Village Commons in South Hadley is no freshman effort.

Anischik is a local boy, born in Chicopee. He got the cooking bug years ago, when he worked at the Cavalier Restaurant in his hometown. After graduating from high school in 1989, he spent a year at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y. Then he returned to western Massachusetts and found work at a series of restaurants: Windows on the Common and Fedora’s at the Village Commons, then MULINO’S in Northampton. He left to open his own restaurant in Enfield, Conn., Tosca’s, which featured Italian fare. After three years, he sold that and returned to the Valley to start up Table 9 in 2003 in Mulino’s former space on Center Street, and later Food 101 in his old stomping grounds, the Village Commons. Anischik closed Table 9 last year to concentrate on the South Hadley location.

The Village Commons was built, quite literally, on the ashes of the old Odyssey bookstore in 1991. After two fires, the area was redeveloped into the current Village Commons complex. Windows on the Common was the high-end, dinner out-with-the-visiting-parents restaurant, and Fedora’s the everyday, let’s-grab-lunch-or-dinner kind of place.

Those restaurants are both gone now. When I first heard about Food 101, I assumed that it had opened in the spot formerly occupied by Windows on the Common. However, that space was used to expand Fedora’s. When Fedora’s was sold to the owners of the Hu Ke Lau in Chicopee a couple of years back, they re-opened it as Johnny’s Bar and Grille.

But the Commons needed a high-end restaurant. In 2005 Anischik and Hardick renovated the former Pendleton clothing store and opened Food 101.

The dining area is spacious, and features handsome touches like white tablecloths and good flatware. There is dark wood paneling and dark mustard walls (”Gulden’s, not French’s,” my wife and I decided), and agreeably high ceilings. A bar opens onto the back of the Commons, and I noticed a number of people eating there or at the small tables around it.

Although Food 101 is high-end American and not Italian, Anischik has absorbed the Italian kitchen’s emphasis on food that tastes of its ingredients and doesn’t rely on exotic spicing or trompe l’oeil plating techniques. He told me that the restaurant gets daily deliveries, and that he tries to use local sources as much as possible — places like Arnold’s Meats in Chicopee, and Schermerhorn’s Seafood in Holyoke. “I like the small guys,” he says.

From the bread sticks with a garlic, basil and chopped sun-dried tomato-flavored olive oil you are served while you peruse the menu, things are both familiar and a little bit unique. Anischik told me he serves the bread sticks because so many people don’t want to fill up on bread, but do want something to nibble on while they are waiting. I liked the sun-dried tomato idea so much that I plan to steal it for my next dinner party.

Appetizers hover around $8. On one occasion I started with fried oysters in remoulade sauce; on another, I had a special of clams steamed in a chorizo-accented tomato sauce. Both the remoulade and the clams were more refined than rustic, and both made for good eating. The portions were ample, which seems to be a Food 101 trademark.

Entrees range from $18 to $24. The rack of roast pork ($23) that I ordered on a recent visit came with two chops, cut so the loin lay flat, and was accompanied by pan-roasted fingerling potatoes, parsnips and carrots, sauced with the deglazed pork juices. Our waitress told us it’s one of the most popular dishes at Food 101. My wife’s halibut ($25) was topped with pine nuts and sun-dried tomatoes and set on a lobster-infused mashed potato base. The dish was decorated with some nice squeeze-bottle work using reduced balsamic vinegar and basil oil. Another plus: “This is the first restaurant meal in a long time that doesn’t have too much salt,” my wife observed.

The wine list is organized by varietal, and while the prices go as high as $80, there are a number of bottles for under $35. I was pleased to see there was a good beer list, with a number of Belgian beers in the $7.50 to $11 range.

A good Belgian brew, in fact, would go nicely with Food 101’s 16-ounce New York strip steak or the Maple Farms duck breast, which I ordered on another visit. The meat was perfectly cooked and had the game taste that distinguishes good duck. I had some doubts about the accompanying Brussels sprouts-potato hash –a little overpowering, I thought –but don’t let that stop you from trying the duck.

Creme brulee with fresh berries has become a dessert cliche, but Food 101 offers a good example of how to do it right. There is a selection of ports ($7 to $10) and liqueurs for after dinner, as well as Java Hut coffee.

“It takes a lot of time, money and hard work to survive in the restaurant business,” Anischik told me. Food 101 shows that he’s learned that lesson.

Originally published in Daily Hampshire Gazette, August 03, 2007

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 25th, 2007 at 2:02 pm and is filed under Pioneer Valley Restaurants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.