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New York Times Review A Big Fish in Any Pond Former A.&.P. Is Reborn, This Time With Expert Chef’s Standout Menu By David Corcoran Sparkill, N.Y. Sparkill is a little town that time forgot, a sliver of a hamlet wedged between the palisades and the broad, muddy creek that feeds the Hudson River. Five Minutes north of the Bergen County line, it has the sleepy, ungentrified air of a mill town much farther upstate. It will never have the cachet or the foot Traffic, of its soigne riverfront neighbors Nyack and Piermont. So how, you may ask, did it land an astounding restaurant like Relish? The answer seems to lie in the energy and uncompromising vision of its owners Michael Gross and Stacey Cretekos. A husband-and-wife team of former chefs (he did Asian and natural foods, she did pastry), they moved from Brooklyn to Rockland County a few years ago, hoping to start a restaurant. A year ago, they opened Relish in a shed-shaped former diner that had started life, in the 1920s, as an A.& P. In it, the new owners and their decorators installed 48 seats and a lovingly eclectic assortment of furnishings: light sconces fashioned from asparagus crates, highly varnished plywood floors, room dividers of recycled moving pallets, Eames-like vinyl chairs salvaged from a Queens school, a collection of paintings and installations by local artists. But their most important installation was their chef. Read the rest of the article by visiting the New York Times, and type “A Big Fish in Any Pond” in the “search” window. New York Times |
