Xavier Jones, the previous BiggDaddy’s operator and chef, will open a new cafe at Adams’ historic firehouse | Northern Berkshires

ADAMS — Xavier Jones is coming back to Adams, this time to begin a restaurant at Park Street’s historic Firehouse Cafe.

Individuals might don’t forget the 38-calendar year-aged chef from BiggDaddy’s Philly Steak Household, which Jones owned and operated in Adams from 2017 to 2018 and in Pittsfield from 2018 to 2019.

Now he is returning, alongside small business spouse Warren Dews Jr., to consider a thing new: a Mediterranean-infused smaller plates cafe with a menu that will mirror the cuisines of up to 30 international locations.

“This setting up is a landmark, and we really don’t want to be just a restaurant — we want to be a spot,” Jones claimed. “People go to Lenox for excellent food. People today go to Williamstown for meals. We want people today to go to Adams and know they can get the identical good quality of food, even superior.”

Jones and Dews, who co-possess the enterprise, hope to get started running in April and are looking to use staff, they reported. They will host interviews for a sous chef, line cooks, servers, bartenders, hosts and meals runners at the cafe on Feb. 11-12.

The cafe will provide dinner concerning 4 to 10 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. 

“We’re likely to provide foods from Asia to Europe to Northern Africa,” Jones stated. “We’ll also be throwing some American, New England cuisine in there. We’ll be throwing some Caribbean cuisine in there. We’ll be having food items from all about the earth and presenting it in a Mediterranean style.”

Dews, a businessman and publisher of the Greenville Pioneer and Ravena News-Herald newspapers in the Funds Area, has a simple explanation for why he needed to be a component of the restaurant: “It’s Xavier.”

Jones, a Philadelphia indigenous, skilled at the Le Cordon Bleu Institute of Culinary Arts in Pittsburgh. He moved to the Berkshires in the early 2000s and has labored as a chef in top rated-stage positions at the Pink Lion Inn in Stockbridge and Spice in Pittsfield, amid other eating places.

When people place him in malls and stores, Jones said, they frequently mention BiggDaddy’s and his cheesesteaks. BiggDaddy’s fans will be happy to listen to that Jones has not cooked his past cheesesteak in the Berkshires.

“Maybe Tuesday night time or once a thirty day period will be cheesesteak night, where by we serve the cheesesteaks that Adams remembers,” Jones mentioned. “That’s what they know me for… So we’ll enable the town bear in mind individuals superior aged days.”

Adams Find Board users expressed enthusiasm for Jones’ return as they approved a liquor license for the cafe final 7 days.

Member Richard Blanchard joked that he was upset with Jones simply because he “had to find someplace else to go eat” just after BiggDaddy’s shut. Member Joe Nowak extra that he finds it “exciting to have that type of food scene in this article in Adams” immediately after listening to Jones explain the menu.

“Living below my complete lifetime, I never recall something very like that,” Nowak explained. 

Jones said he saved in get hold of with Bill Kolis, who owns the 47 Park St. constructing, right after working with Kolis for some gatherings at the cafe all-around 2017. They started talking about the likelihood of a new restaurant shortly in advance of the pandemic strike.

Dews and Jones experience that they are coming to Adams at the proper time and in the appropriate location. 

The firehouse, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982, initially housed the Alert Hose Co., Adams volunteer fire office, and later housed an ambulance assistance right before its conversion to business use for restaurants. 

Progress on the Greylock Glen, the prospect of a reopened Adams Theater and other modern developments led Dews to feel that “this is heading to be the area where by persons are likely to come to from all in excess of.”

“We want Adams to be the new Good Barrington,” Dews reported.

Jones has designs to workforce up with nearby artists to hang get the job done inside of the restaurant and to use products from local farms, he said. He envisions that the making would continue being accessible for the city to use for meetings and functions.

“Adams has obtained a great deal of good things likely on with the theater opening up, with the Glen, and we want to be a part of that, in particular with the rail path and the total of people that Adams is bringing in,” Jones extra. “We want to catch that wave and be a element of that success. It’s the key time, perfect possibility, best place in Adams to be.”

Dews, a member of the Berkshire Black Economic Council, additional that the pair “want to be a section of this development of Black businesses” in the Berkshires.

“The Berkshires are a gorgeous area,” Dews stated. “Equally of us enjoy this area, and we want Black-owned businesses to survive and do nicely right here simply because it is heading to assist all of the Berkshires. You’ll see younger people today of colour see opportunities to do properly in this area.”

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