Friday was the six-month anniversary of the opening of the Albany restaurant The Boulevard\u00a0in the Southern\u00a0Boulevard\u00a0building that was home to Sam\u2019s Italian American Restaurant, which fed an estimated 1.5 million people for just over 50 years, from April 1971 to June 2021.<\/p>\n
Curious how things have been going for The\u00a0Boulevard, 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.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0Boulevard\u00a0is not the offspring of Sam\u2019s, but the two share DNA. With the blessing of the founding family, some dishes\u00a0\u2014 made from Sam\u2019s recipes by a returning chef who worked there for two decades\u00a0\u2014 are always on\u00a0the menu<\/a>. Among them, sharing space with Barge favorites like seafood chowder and a bacon cheeseburger, are pasta\u00a0fagioli,\u00a0Clams a la Sam\u2019s<\/a>, chicken or eggplant Parm, chicken Marsala and shrimp scampi. Others come back as weekly specials.<\/p>\n Echoing a lament I\u2019ve heard from restaurateurs and staff across the region, \u201cThis was a horrendous winter,\u201d West said. Cold temperatures that settled in before Thanksgiving and didn\u2019t 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\u00a0Boulevard\u00a0has seen an uptick in fans of the Barge, according to West, but older clientele who were decades-long Sam\u2019s patrons either haven\u2019t yet returned from winter quarters in warmer climes or are only now venturing out again.<\/p>\n Nonetheless, West said, \u201cThe bar crowd is picking back up.\u201d She hopes to encourage more of them with the introduction this\u00a0week of a\u00a0list of specialty cocktails\u00a0that include an espresso martini\u00a0\u2014 because of course you have to have one of those\u00a0\u2014 Ros\u00e9 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\u00a0Boulevardier, the whiskey variation of the Negroni.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Aside from a corner deli, there are no restaurants on Southern\u00a0Boulevard\u00a0besides The\u00a0Boulevard\u00a0until you cross the I-787 access ramps on the way to Glenmont, where you\u2019ll 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\u00a0\u2014 \u201cIt feels like people are always laughing together, and everyone becomes part of the same big conversation,\u201d she says\u00a0\u2014 sports on TV, regular programming, comfort food with the strong pull of nostalgia and promotions including a\u00a0midweek takeout dinner for two for $38<\/a>.<\/p>\n The neighborhood aspect is personal for West. As she says, she lives \u201cbasically around the corner,\u201d adding, \u201cI want people to feel like this is home.\u201d<\/p>\n The\u00a0Boulevard\u00a0is located at 125 Southern\u00a0Blvd. 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Friday was the six-month anniversary of the opening of the Albany restaurant The Boulevard\u00a0in the Southern\u00a0Boulevard\u00a0building that was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":187927,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[30394,17976,1070,844,610,9,11,10,49,51,50,821,31842],"class_list":{"0":"post-187926","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-alco","9":"tag-column","10":"tag-food","11":"tag-latestnews","12":"tag-local","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-new-york-headlines","15":"tag-new-york-news","16":"tag-new-york-state","17":"tag-new-york-state-headlines","18":"tag-new-york-state-news","19":"tag-restaurants","20":"tag-table-hopping"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}