Friday was the six-month anniversary of the opening of the Albany restaurant The Boulevard in the Southern Boulevard building that was home to Sam’s Italian American Restaurant, which fed an estimated 1.5 million people for just over 50 years, from April 1971 to June 2021.
Curious how things have been going for The Boulevard, I chatted last week with owner Cheri West, for whom it represents a return to the industry. She started working at the Barge, or, more formally, the Riverfront Bar & Grill, which floated on the Hudson River at the Corning Preserve, in 1997, buying it a dozen years later. It was open until 2017, the same year West closed Park View Pub, across from Washington Park at the beginning of New Scotland Avenue, after seven years.
The Boulevard is not the offspring of Sam’s, but the two share DNA. With the blessing of the founding family, some dishes — made from Sam’s recipes by a returning chef who worked there for two decades — are always on the menu. Among them, sharing space with Barge favorites like seafood chowder and a bacon cheeseburger, are pasta fagioli, Clams a la Sam’s, chicken or eggplant Parm, chicken Marsala and shrimp scampi. Others come back as weekly specials.
Echoing a lament I’ve heard from restaurateurs and staff across the region, “This was a horrendous winter,” West said. Cold temperatures that settled in before Thanksgiving and didn’t seem to leave for four months, regular snowfall, rising food prices and an economy that felt uncertain even before the current war with Iran all contributed to noticeably diminished restaurant patronage. The Boulevard has seen an uptick in fans of the Barge, according to West, but older clientele who were decades-long Sam’s patrons either haven’t yet returned from winter quarters in warmer climes or are only now venturing out again.
Nonetheless, West said, “The bar crowd is picking back up.” She hopes to encourage more of them with the introduction this week of a list of specialty cocktails that include an espresso martini — because of course you have to have one of those — Rosé Blossom Sangria, two based on the increasingly popular Carbliss line of low-cal canned cocktails that are free of carbs, sugar and gluten and a Boulevardier, the whiskey variation of the Negroni.
Also new are weekly trivia from 8 to 10 p.m. Thursdays starting April 16, acoustic music from 8 p.m. Saturdays starting April 18, an opera singer performing Italian favorites (date TBA) and expanded hours from Memorial Day through Labor Day.
Aside from a corner deli, there are no restaurants on Southern Boulevard besides The Boulevard until you cross the I-787 access ramps on the way to Glenmont, where you’ll find a Sonic and a Popeyes. With that neighborhood advantage, West hopes to continue to build steady patronage by providing a nearby place with a good vibe — “It feels like people are always laughing together, and everyone becomes part of the same big conversation,” she says — sports on TV, regular programming, comfort food with the strong pull of nostalgia and promotions including a midweek takeout dinner for two for $38.
The neighborhood aspect is personal for West. As she says, she lives “basically around the corner,” adding, “I want people to feel like this is home.”
The Boulevard is located at 125 Southern Blvd. Through the end of May, it opens at 3 p.m. Wednesday to Sunday, closed Monday and Tuesday. From Memorial Day to Labor Day, it will be closed on Sunday and Monday, returning to Sunday service when football season starts.