Oodles of Nudels Dished Up for Lenox
LENOX, Mass. — Bjorn Somlo vision of a restaurant is simple: to serve farm-fresh products and make unique dishes suitable to his daily liking. It also means lots of noodles.Somlo's lived in Great Barrington for more than 12 years and has seen the rise and fall of numerous restaurants. Now he's taking a turn as a chef-owner with the Nudel Restaurant.
The new establishment, he said, is a "creative American noodle bar. We will have quality local and seasonal ingredients prepared fresh to order. Everything we serve here is for a reason and this is where I want to be — a chef in my own kitchen serving what I feel is marketable."
The former Dish Cafe Bistro at 37 Church St. has been completely renovated over the past four months. New plumbing, electrical, painting and seating are just some of the few attentions to detail.
Nudel will not only excite as a new establishment, said Somlo, but in the fact that its menu will be in constant flux.
"Whatever we can find fresh I'll use," said Somlo, "it just gets boring doing the same things over and over, so I feel with Nudles we can still maintain our reputation in the variance of our dishes."
With all the eateries in Lenox, he is shying away from the idea of conforming to basics.
"You won't find anything like a chicken, fish or even steak dinner here. I want to keep it simple. Just delicious variations of noodles. There's too many restaurants around just in town that offer those things. I'm not going to waste my time trying to coincide to a universal liking. I'm going to cook alternately with originality."
The seating was one of Somlo's biggest issues. In past years, Dish was small, and "crammed and fluctuated temperatures too readily. We knocked down a few walls, put in new heating and hand-crafting all the new seating arrangements. We figure we're going to house just about 30 patrons at a time, and we're fine with that."
Nudel is still in the last phases of constuction, but is slated to open its doors in just a couple of weeks. Somlo commented "we're getting there as fast as we can. It's been a long process so far and the dream is slowly becoming a reality."
