My wife came back from visiting a friend in Greenfield a couple of months ago and told me about a new restaurant where they’d had lunch. “Great clam chowder,” she said. “You’d love it.” Others told me about it as well. The place was called HOPE & OLIVE, which was as evocative and poetic a name for a restaurant as I’ve heard. So, we made plans to investigate.
Thanks to my new GPS, I discovered that the name was actually the address: Hope & Olive is at 44 Hope St., Greenfield, on the corner of Olive Street (www.hopeandolive.com; 774-3150). Lucky them: There aren’t too many intersections in this area that would work as well for a name. More importantly, it sites the restaurant deeply into its neighborhood, which is where owners Evelyn Whitbeck-Poorbaugh and Maggie and Jim Zaccara, who are sister and brother, want it. They have a strong sense of community, choosing to buy locally as much as possible and pricing their offerings to encourage local drop-in traffic.
Hope & Olive is newly redone, with a dining room to your left, a bar to your right and a middle ground that offers a spot to wait. You’ll need it — the place is popular. The restaurant doesn’t take reservations for fewer than six, although you can call ahead on the day you plan to dine there to get put on the waiting list. Both times we visited on a Friday or Saturday night, we waited for at least an hour. To ease the waiting, Hope & Olive has hired a roving magician, Damien, who offers card tricks and patter. Maggie and Jim’s parents ran restaurants in Connecticut and always had magicians in them. When Damien showed up for dinner at the Hope & Olive bar one evening, hiring him seemed natural to the younger Zaccaras.
Hope & Olive rose almost literally from the ashes of Bottle of Bread, the Shelburne Falls restaurant owned by Maggie Zaccara. When it burned two weeks before Christmas in 2005, the community came out to help. The Tusk ‘n’ Rattle Cafe in Turners Falls held a benefit for the employees; a New Year’s Eve concert and an art auction also helped stabilize finances enough to open a new place. Although they initially wanted to rebuild in Shelburne Falls, the three partners realized that Greenfield offered a better opportunity to buy a place. They opened Hope & Olive last September, taking favorites from the Bottle of Bread menu and adding new ideas.
Of the appetizers, our favorites were the Eggplant Poppers, sliced eggplant rolled around herbed mozzarella, breaded and deep-fried and served with a red pepper dip, and a country-style pate served with cornichons and a spiral of beet. We also enjoyed the antipasto plate and the warm Brie and mango chutney. Bread is accompanied by olive oil and fennel seeds. When you’re seated, a large bottle of water is placed on your table, which is a nice touch. The appetizers range from $7.25 to $11.
Hope & Olive’s approach to food is seasonal, aimed at letting the flavor of good-quality ingredients take center stage. Its pork comes from Bostrom Farm in Greenfield, and its beef from Foxbard Farm in Shelburne, Mass., and Shelburne Farms in Shelburne, Vt. The fish is supplied by Foster’s Market in Greenfield, which also provided Hope & Olive with its first-of-the-season Hadley asparagus last weekend. Much of the restaurant’s sausage comes from North Country Farms in New Hampshire. This summer Hope & Olive expects to buy produce from Seeds of Solidarity Farm in Orange.
This approach comes together in dishes that make the most of these ingredients. The meatloaf, for example, showcases good meat seasoned with a hint of cumin, and is served with mashed potatoes, vegetables and a thin gravy. In other dishes, like the vegetable napoleon, built around a slice of polenta and grilled portabella mushrooms and eggplant along with whatever vegetables are fresh that evening, each ingredient was good, but I wanted something to tie it all together. The napoleon is a popular dish, carried over from Bottle of Bread, and I may be in the minority about that.
ON ANOTHER OCCASION, I had a seafood gumbo special one evening that featured andouille sausage, scallops, shrimp and mussels over a corn and red bell pepper combo and rice. The sauce had the right amount of heat, a good thyme taste and a nice roux, although I did get one mouthful of roux that hadn’t been mixed into the sauce. My wife had a pot pie with a good crust and fine gravy, but a few too many turnips in the vegetable mix. Entrees range from $12 to $20.
Desserts shouldn’t be missed. Hope & Olive’s That Chocolate Cake avoids the trap that so many commercial cakes fall into — they are either large and overinflated or dense and flourless. Instead, it has a good dark chocolate flavor, dark chocolate icing and a dollop of clearly homemade whipped cream. The apple tart was layered with custard, apples and blackberries on a nice crust, also dolloped with whipped cream.
The base wine list, which you can view online, offers glasses from $4.50 to $8.50 and bottles from $17 to $33. The emphasis seems to be on affordable, big-tasting wines rather than expensive bottles.
The bar has a good array of beer as well as hard ciders and mixed drinks, and a separate bar menu designed around smaller dishes with a tapas feel. Plus, there’s a lunch menu of soups, sandwiches, pizzas and entrees, including a Cubano sandwich I’ve got to try.
Published Daily Hampshire Gazette, May 02, 2008
