Come Tuesday, there will be a new family at the helm of Family Place Restaurant.<\/p>\n
Jenny Spring and Oliver Wolfe, of The Spring Farm fame, are excited to take over from Dino and Bessie Georgas, but, rest assured, customers can expect the same great food and great service they have received for the past 35 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe plan to change nothing,\u201d Jenny says, \u201cbecause we think that Dino and Bessie have done a really good job setting things up here. We just plan to come and learn from them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Oliver is going to be Dino. \u201cFour-a.m. Dino,” Jenny says. And Jenny is going to be Bessie; well, try to be Bessie. Both Oliver and Jenny speak very highly of Dino and Bessie and what they have achieved. \u201cDino and Bessie are the hardest workers,\u201d Jenny points out. \u201cWe are going to learn everything from them. They are staying for the next four months. That\u2019s how much they care about making this work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not strangers to hard work themselves, Jenny and Oliver have been farming together in Huntsville for the past four years but say the seasonal work was hard to sustain financially. With the help of partners and staff they hope to keep the farm going while they focus on the restaurant.<\/p>\n
Jenny says they came up with the idea of buying the Family Place Restaurant last winter. \u201cWe are both very interested in being in the food industry. It\u2019s challenging running the farm in such a short season. So, we were looking for something that would allow us to stay in Huntsville because our family is here. We want to make a difference always. We want to give back to the community. But we had to figure out how to sustain our lifestyle. We really like how the Family Place serves the community, the people of Huntsville, and that they are able to employ people year around.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dino and Bessie seem very happy to be mentoring the young couple, who no doubt remind them a little of themselves. Dino was 22 years old when he arrived in Huntsville, from Greece, to join his sister in the restaurant business. He did not speak English and started out washing dishes before working his way into the kitchen.<\/p>\n
Five years later he returned to Greece to marry Bessie. Bessie arrived in Huntsville in 1977 at the young age of 17. She, too, didn\u2019t speak English but attended some classes at Huntsville High School and benefited from the kindness of a regular customer at the Sportsman – Ebby Pascal. “He took a liking to me,” Bessie said, “and we started communicating by writing down things and he would teach me words. It was a humble beginning.”<\/p>\n
Bessie says Dino always knew that he wanted to own his own restaurant. In the early 1980s Mel Taylor offered to sell the Family Restaurant and Pizza, located at the time in Brendale Square, to Dino and Bessie. Bessie learned the secret recipe for the pizza dough, and how to make the pizzas, and could be found in the restaurant every Friday night making pizzas.<\/p>\n\n\t\t