89. Bimi's Canteen in Chatham

Ellen  0:03  
And truly theater and hospitality and retail. It's really all kind of the same thing, which is you have an audience, you're taking them along on the journey with you. You're hoping that they have a wonderful time. And you're hoping in our case, we're hoping that they feel like they're coming in our home and living a piece of what's magical about our life and what we want people to enjoy with their families and their friends.

Mat  1:32  
I met Zucker and this is Cidiot: learning to live in love life in the Hudson Valley, Episode 89. According to the village of Chatham's website, and the village historian Albert S. Callen, the village of Chatham dates back to the early 1700s. When the community was settled by Yankee immigrants from Connecticut, Chatham Four Corners as the community was known by the mid 1800s became a bustling hub of railroading, centered on the New York Central's Harlem division, whose trackage was extended northward from New York City, arriving at its northern terminus in 1852. Despite a great fire 17 years later, in 1869, the village persevered and was reborn, leading to Mills, shops, factories, and excellent fire service. Brian and I never really knew Chatham well favoring towns west and south of us, even though it's really only 15 minutes from Hudson, and maybe just 40 minutes from us and Red Hook. You can get a lot of places in the valley and 40 minutes during our 10 Three one experiments of renting in different places. You may remember that from an earlier episode, we did rent for a summer in nearby Spencer town. So we've come to Chatham for The Blue Plate, our restaurant that is still here, but other than the Chatham bookstore, which you may remember from the Hudson Valley bookshop episode, Episode 76, we just haven't explored Chatham. So I was pretty excited to hear from the folks at Bimi's. The cheese shop is well known, but as I told them, we just did cheese two episodes ago. But that's not why they got in touch Bimi's, owned by Ellen and Chris, had opened up a new restaurant, Bimi's canteen, and this was a chance to focus on Chatham, which I've been absolutely derelict about. Chatham is a big hub of Columbia County. And with its clock tower and quaint downtown, it's one of those places that feel both very, very American, and very, very much somewhere else. Ellen and Chris are amazing. And Brian and I, yes, we did go for dinner at the Bimi's Canteen on a Friday night recently. And I gotta tell you, it was fantastic. The design, of course is gorgeous, but they're professional production designers, so I wasn't that surprised about that. But then the menu got me salivating and amazing cocktail list. I had a white cosmopolitan and Brian had a martini. There was gluten free beer if you're that persuasion, and then the food from fish to meat to pasta. It all looked yum. I started with a pea soup, and then the pork and Brian had a tomato salad. vennett bouillabaisse. Afterwards, we went downstairs to see the speakeasy which is this beautiful bar in the basement where you just want to stay all night. Anyway, Chatham is our new favorite place. I hope you liked this episode. And getting to know Ellen. The story of Bimi's is heartwarming. Their journey up here is illuminating. She has advice for people opening a business. Why Bimi's is celiac safe. Plus, she'll share her favorite places in the Valley as well. I'll put links in the show notes to everything mentioned. And on the episode page. Plus, if you're thinking of planning a weekend, on the city blog, you'll find the first in a new series of city itineraries ideas for 72 hours or a weekend in Chatham. And of course you'll want to stop by Bimi's canteen where between now and the end of September. If you mention Cidiot, you could be treated to a glass of bubbly. So much to hear. And if you take nothing away from this episode, the idea of eating a delicious meal at the Bimi's. As you'll hear from my new friend Ellen cidiots, it's don't honk your car when parking in Chatham.

Hi, Ellen. 

Ellen  5:13  
Hi, Matt. How are you? 

Mat  5:14  
Thanks for coming on Cidiot. 

Ellen  5:16  
Absolutely. I'm happy to be here. I'm so excited to talk to you about your business and about Chatham town I don't haven't talked that much about but it's totally charming. I guess I want to start with maybe you know what kind of connection you have to this area to the Hudson Valley. My husband Chris and I both grew up in Connecticut, and I went to Williams College. So I was familiar with the Hudson Valley, just from the proximity of going to college nearby. It's gorgeous. I worked at the theater festival one summer, I'd love the area. And then we got married it also in the Berkshires, we got married at Gedney Farm, nice, 100 million years ago. So we both had a really deep love of this area. And we are both tied to the city professionally. We're both theatrical designers who now work in television. I'm a production designer, and my husband, Chris is a lighting designer. And by the time we were in our early 30s, our careers in the city had really taken off. And the options for television design at that point, especially were New York or LA. And we were not going to move to LA, our families were here and we love it out here. And but we had kids and we thought we don't really want to raise our kids in the city. But we really don't want to live in the suburbs. So  the more we talked about it, the more we thought about it. We spent three weeks every year in Southern Vermont on vacation. And that's when the kids were little. That's what we did. And we thought, You know what, we can't really plan vacations because we're freelance designers. So we have no control over our schedules. But what we can do is look for a way to recreate that Southern Vermont vacation that we have every summer, but break it up into weekends. So that really became the impetus for what we were looking for in the life we wanted to create up here. And so we looked and looked and looked and then we found this little paradise called Austerlitz, New York, which is where we live. So we bought a little cabin and Austerlitz 19 years ago and raised our kids really coming up here. Every single weekend. We came up every Friday night, we went back every Sunday night. And this has always been home. And Brooklyn in New York is where we went to for work, which therefore meant the kids had to go back with us to go to school because they couldn't live up here alone, obviously. But we spent so I would say while it was technically a weekend house, it was really a way of sort of saving our sanity. And that this was always this haven that we could come back to. So that's how we raised the kids and that's how they are they have these really amazing split personalities were they were they're very urban people, but they are very much country souls. And so we we live it up here and this really is our home. And that's Chatham changed a lot and he's 19 years. It has, you know, for probably the first eight years, I would say that we were up here. We really didn't know Chatham at all, we live in Austerlitz. We're right on the Massachusetts border. So we're way over on the other side of the county and West Stockbridge and Great Barrington are right down the road for us. So we would go to Massachusetts for groceries for play for bowling for whatever. And it wasn't Chatham was under there was a lot of municipal construction that was going on in Chatham when we first moved up here. So the roads leading to the town were a little bit closed off and they were rebuilding all the curbs and the sidewalks and it was kind of a mess. So we just didn't never go to Chatham. And then once it kind of opened up again and we discovered this little jewel of a town that had been right next to us the whole time just in the other direction. Then we started going to Chatham all the time. And it's this beautiful jewel of a town we have an amazing clock tower that greets you right when you come in our little Main Street is the the spine of the town and pretty much all there is to the village of Chatham. But on that little street we have gorgeous bank that's in the old train station that is worth it's worth stopping by the Community Bank and just a walk in People do it all the time and see what a spectacular piece of architecture it is. Then we have all these little old storefronts that are just so charming. We have the Crandall Theatre, which is a beautifully restored movie theater. And then all the way down at the other end of the street and by other end I mean it's like maybe an eighth of a mile away. It's it's not big, is Chatham Brewery. And then just beyond that, there's a lovely antique store. And there's all sorts of stuff in between. There's a great bookstore, there's a great yarn. 

Mat  10:08  
Oh, yeah. Amy from the bookstore, she dialed in to give book recommendations in my book shop. 

Ellen  10:14  
She did. Yeah, she was so substantial town. It's like, it's a really great little grind back, some of them in opera downtown, you know? Yeah. And I wouldn't I mean, Chatham is not Rhinebeck. It is not, it's really small. I mean, you know, that is for sure. But it's just gorgeous. And it's manageable. And we just fell in love. So then we started thinking, because, as I've discovered, as we've gotten older, we both have quite an entrepreneurial spirit, I would say, we've always been freelance, we own our own design firm and always have in the city. So we're not scared of the risk of starting a business. And we see the upsides of starting a business in terms of what you can do for our community. And so it really just sort of started as a, you know, dinner party game, be like if you put something in Chatham to help revivify, the downtown and bring a fresh new perspective. What would that be? And we batted around some ideas. And then once we came up with the G sharp idea, it happened really, pretty fast. Actually, we looked at a few spaces, none of which were quite right. And then we saw this space, there was a for rent sign in the window. We walked in, we made a handshake deal with the tenant that day. And then it just kind of went really fast from there. So that was in 2014. So the store is almost 10 years old now, which is amazing and exciting. And that's, that's how we ended up in chat. 

Mat  11:54  
What's Bimi's? 

Ellen  11:57  
Okay, so Bimi was my mother's grandma me name. It's what my children called her. So when we said what, you know, we're gonna have a baby, what do you want your grandma renamed to be? She said, blimey, and we thought she'd lost her mind. We had did not know what she was talking about. But apparently Bimi was her baby name. It's what her little sister called her because her name, my mom's name was Vivian gene. And her sister shorten that to be me. So bad, maybe was her grandma me name. And my mom died of cancer 13 years ago, way too young. But she was really a force of nature and just the most wonderful, intelligent, charming, amazing creature. And she was an international attorney. So she traveled all over the world for most of my life. And so that gave us great opportunities to travel with her. But her very favorite thing to do always whether it was in the States, or not in the States, was to find a little village, find their little farmers market, go get the local cheese, get the local wine, get the local breads, come home, curl up with her family and friends and just hang out and talk. And so when we were opening a cheese store, actually, it was friends of ours who said that, of course you have to name it, Bimi's. So it became this tribute to my mom. That is really a tribute to her spirit and attribute to the thing that she really valued the most, which is eating really good things and drinking really good things and cuddling up with the people you love. 

Mat  13:31  
And what about the restaurant? So how did you how did you segue into the restaurant is and then the restaurant.

Ellen  13:38  
So what happened was we probably to a fault, we never will shy away from a challenge or a puzzle that we think would be fun to solve. The store has been really successful. And actually COVID was a an amazingly successful time for the store. We closed the store to customers coming inside really, really early on before anybody else was doing that. We closed down for one day, and decided that our only goal no matter what was going to happen. I mean, this was like, you know, February of 2020 was that we didn't want any of our staff to get sick. And we didn't want to have to lay anybody off whatever that meant. So we shut down for one day, and we reopened the next day with a giant table in the doorway so you couldn't get in the store. And we operated on the sidewalk for about 18 months. And we had lines down the sidewalk almost every day. So we kept up our we have a grilled cheese bar at the store. We have a really robust gluten free program because my daughter has celiac. And we have wonderful cheeses. So people already knew us for that. But then what we figured out really quickly was that this was right as the time was like the grocery stores were emptying and you know the supply lines were all messed up. And we realized that all of our distributors just had all this food that they desperately needed to move, because it's food that used to go to restaurants. So we started, we sort of became a grocery store really fast. And we would just feel cardboard box after cardboard box with whatever people needed that we could get our hands on. So a lot, a big audience that maybe didn't know about us before. Learned about us really quickly. Part of that, yes, was people from the cities moving up here for during the pandemic, but also people who had known us for a long time, we suddenly became a supplier to get things that you couldn't necessarily find easily. Although I could never find east, we never, ever sell. So the store made it through COVID in a way that a lot of stores weren't able to do. And right as that was happening, the space next door to us opened up. And we were at a point where it was clear the store would really benefit from more space, we only up until now, we've only had six little stools in the counter and no bathrooms. So it really limited what we could do in terms of in house food, that and that that augments the cheese side. The cheese side is wonderful and fun and amazing. But you do need other release for us for cheese, stir in chat, and we need other income streams. So we have a really good espresso program with Number Six Depot Coffee, which is a local coffee from West Stockbridge, Massachusetts. And we have this these amazing grilled cheese sandwiches. And so we knew we could use more space. And when the opportunity presented itself, that more space was available next door. We started dreaming about what how, what would that mean? How would we make it work? How do you even run a restaurant because honestly, we're a set designer and a lighting designer who happened to have a cheese store as a side hustle. In retrospect, that was one of the benefits of the time and space of COVID Is it really gave us a long, long time to figure out if we took on another space, what does that mean? And how do you make that work physically, financially, and in a way that doesn't hurt the cheese store that has now become a fixture in Chatham at all, and continues to help the town of Chatham and be another driver of visitors and income and jobs in this beautiful little town. So the space next door to us. So the cheese store is at 21 Main Street. And then we've taken over the two storefronts next door. So it's 19 and 17 Main Street are now ours as well. And then we undertook this massive rebuild of the two spaces next door. Must be dramatic. Yeah, it's really beautiful. If I do say so myself, it's very pretty. The store right next door to us was a store called banner clothing, which I believe was there for 125 years, when you're doing your history research on Shadow meal, you'll know you'll learn about banner, but banner was the sort of farm and work clothes Carhart Dealer of the area. And so the same, the same business had been there for over a century. So that was that's the space where the restaurant and bar now are. But we broke a big door between the store and the restaurant space. So during the day now, we'll starting in a few weeks, once I get to this next step, use all the upstairs seating of the canteen, and the canteen bathrooms from the store. So now we have a liquor license on all three spaces. So you can come in and get wine and beer at the store with your grilled cheese sandwich. And now go over to this beautiful dining room and hang out and work and read a book and go get some knitting and sit in this beautiful space and drink me espresso. No during the day the dining room is being used for the store. And then at four o'clock that door shuts. And then it becomes five days a week, Thursday through Monday. It's its own restaurant, and that has been nice canteen and bar. So the upstairs is this beautiful dining room I was just describing. And then downstairs is our speakeasy, which is just this is the coziest dreamiest little bar in the world. And so those are open at the same time. They're open at this point. They're open five till 10, Thursday through Monday. And then the third space was and then we broke through to the third space, which was also empty. It had been the pop up there's a new shaker museum that's going into Chatham. I don't know if you've heard about this project, but it's quite exciting. There is a really big development going on in Chatham. That's going down at the end of the little Main Street down by the brewery and it is a new shaker museum with an incredible collection of shaker artifacts that I think is the largest in the world, actually. But they were they there was a huge collection up here that was basically stored in a barn for ever. And now a giant Museum is being built for it. So soon, we're going to have this incredible resource down at the end of the block as well. To learn about the shakers, yeah, so the shaker museum pop up to get people interested in that project was the third space which is now ours, I believe that pop up is now in Kinderhook above aviary, and that's a really, it's really fun to go see because the artifacts that they're putting into the shaker museum pop up, are are incredible. So that third space, the back of it is a beautiful kitchen commercial kitchen that we put in and the front of it will be but is not yet. We're opening our own gelato shop and we'll make our own gelato, gelato, I know. And since we have the liquor license on all three spaces, you can have yummy, boozy gelato and stuff. If you want to take that we we had to get to a point where we just we needed to get the restaurant and bar open. And so about eight months ago, we said okay, we have all the infrastructure for the gelato, actually, the gelato is going to be very easy compared to what we've done so far. So I was hoping we'd get it open this summer. I don't think that'll happen. I think we'll probably wait. Especially because now the restaurant and bar are packed. So now we're dealing with that. But it's wonderful.

Mat  21:41  
So now that you've done a few businesses, do you have any advice for others who are thinking about opening a business in a town like this was a really big, big liquid? 

Ellen  21:50  
Chris could answer this for me right now. Because I always say the same thing, which is, don't open a business, where your weekend home. Because then your beautiful paradise of weekend home is still a beautiful paradise, but it is I work all the time, you know, and Chris does too. But I will also say, to open your own business at all. And Chris and I have opened several businesses in several different industries together now. You need I think you need total buy in from your partner or spouse. You need to be emotionally passionate about that business in a way that it's not a job, it really is. Your life our life is there's no division between work and play. I don't know I can't explain it. We don't go to work at nine o'clock and come home at five o'clock. We create things that we want to see and that we want to be a part of. And then we pour everything we have into making that happen. And I think a lot of that drive and that passion and that focus. Probably that insanity many people would say comes from being trained as theatrical designers honestly, where your whole job and it's a joyful job is to dream up solutions to a set of obstacles or a set of problems or a set of questions that are put in your way. And truly theater and hospitality and retail. It's really all kind of the same thing, which is you have an audience, you're taking them along on the journey with you. You're hoping that they have a wonderful time and you're hoping in our case we're hoping that they feel like they're coming in our home and living a piece of what's magical about our life and what we want people to enjoy with their families and their friends because work a lot but to get out at all into the into the valley if you have a favorite place you'd like to go are you talking about my favorite place to like eat or drink are my favorite?

Because I love I'll tell you I love Gaskin's. Yeah love Rivertown, love Farmer and Sons. I love going out to eat and drink. I adore it. I love Stagecoach Tavern in the Berkshires I love old and on the green. There's so many places that are so charming that definitely were in our heads as we were creating this because we love all those places and we were like what can we create? That's not any of those but makes people feel as loved and wonderful as those places do. Ben Gable Savories which now only does pick up but it's a beautiful cafe down and at the end of Chatham down by the brewery is such good food. But if you're talking about like my favorite thing to do when I'm not at work and I'm not eating or drinking the Columbia Land Conservancy hikes are my all time favorite thing. I adore them. I think there's 12 trails Now there might be a few more that are donated land that then the CLC maintain some Grooms and they're just Just gorgeous. Each one of the trails is different. They're free, they're open all the time. And they are truly magical things to do. So I'd say that's my favorite thing to do.

Mat  25:16  
Ellen, you've been here a long time, but you probably see a lot of people come up that are weekenders now or newer to the area. Do you have any advice for us cidiots?

Ellen  25:26  
I do. First of all, for better or for worse, it doesn't matter how long you're up here. You will always be a city you will not ever escape that. But what I highly recommend as someone who is in the service industry working with both quote unquote city it's and locals. Yeah, don't be obnoxious. Don't be entitled. And don't think that you are act like you think you're smarter than people who've lived here for 100 years. You have different experiences, but you don't be entitled because that's what gives everybody from the city a bad name, which is just unfair for everyone. You know, I mean, it's funny you do see up here with many of the diametric conflicts in our country. You see a police close and personal here and navigating those in a way that is still humane and neighborly becomes very important. 

Mat  26:22  
Up here what is entitled look like

Ellen  26:25  
Um.... being obnoxious while parking in Chatham. Parking when you're parking in Chatham, getting mad at any kind of road rage incident. Don't Don't do it, just walk away. But I would say honking while parking and Chatham it just is gonna get everybody's attention and you're gonna look like a jerk. And they will remember you and your car for every option. 

Mat  27:01  
I'm trying to think of all the times I've talked when I parked but I think you're safe. I think I'm safe. Dodged that bullet. I think I've saved for Jeff. Is there anything about local farms or ingredients? 

Ellen  27:12  
Oh, yes. We're calling canteen, a Hudson Valley restaurant. And this concept of, you know, really relying on our local farmers and our local growers. And our local dairies is not it's certainly not a new concept at all. But we are definitely leaning very hard into it. And Chris and I spent a good part of the last year setting up meetings and going out and meeting and spending an afternoon with most of the people that grow things for us. We're working with this amazing farm in Chatham, called gentle time farm and they are growing a bunch of our greens for us. We work with Grimaldi farms for our steak and Kinderhook farm. We have some Samascott produce that we're using.

Our baked goods are gussets which are dreamy come from hawks roost farm, which is just a little bit north of here. We have cheese from for fat fowl, which is a lovely dairy app and Stevenstown it's about 15 minutes north of Chatham. That makes a couple of really wonderful bloomy rind cheeses. St. Stephen's is the one that most people know. And then, a little bit off track from the Berkshire's, our pastry chef for I know about half of our desserts at the restaurant come from her is from bakery called lost lamb bakery in Stockbridge is owned by a young woman named Claire riposo, who started her first job I think was at Bimi's Cheese Shop many years ago, and she wanted to grow up and be a pastry chef and she went to cordon bleu instead of going to college and became a pastry chef and opened her own little bakery. Right as COVID was starting. So she's she's very young. She is fantastic. The bakery is off the charts wonderful and gorgeous. It's right across the street from the red line and and so Claire when she's alone, Iris baking. Yeah, she's an alum of berries. And so she is baking a bunch of are yummy tarts and macrons and this week, she also made us some GF some gluten free chocolate poops that were amazing. Once that's more about the gluten free gluten and my family are celiac. So I wondered about how hard or easy it is for you to source. Gluten Free up here I'm finding it easier and easier as time goes by. So my daughter has celiac and has been for 10 years what we say in the store and what we say in the restaurant is instead of gluten free generally we say it's celiac safe. Because if you are celiac, gluten free is a different thing. Because if you're celiac, you really can't eat it really is awful if you do so we have a celiac safe station both in the restaurant and in the store and we take it very seriously. Gluten has never touched those grills or fryer has never had gluten in it. And never will. I can promise you at the Bimi's, it is if we say it celiac safe you are not going to get gluten. That's what I can tell you for sure. I haven't really found many other sources but cheese is gluten free. Yep. So that's good too. But we can make you a grilled cheese sandwich. That is celiac safe, and you will be so happy so bring all of your celiac family up to their knees and we also have free beer so they can have a beer. Oh, they're celiac safe sandwich. Oh, that's even better. Well they hear that they smell right there you go. That's great. You're welcome. Now you're a hero.