The Smokin’ Hippo Restaurant

Chef comes ‘home’ to own restaurant

Sunday, November 05, 2006
By DAVID A. VALLETTE
dvallette@repub.com

ERVING - First there was the Chateau de Ville in Randolph, followed by many stops, including the prestigious Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., and the Buena Vista Palace in Orlando, Fla. Now it’s the Smokin’ Hippo here, and 47-year-old chef-entrepreneur Gary H. Weiss couldn’t be happier.
He thinks it’s his final stop, and why not? Only three miles from his home in Northfield, the Hippo is where Weiss is finally working for himself, applying all the considerable food knowledge he has accumulated since jumping into the restaurant arena as a 12-year-old pot washer in Randolph.
His career, after the pots, began with a similar summer job in the kitchen of a pancake house. One night the cook walked out, and the restaurant had no replacement.
“The next day I was cooking. I was 13,” he said.
Weiss had to get special working papers for the job, but was off and running as a chef.
After part-time jobs during his high school years, it was on to George Washington University in Washington, D.C., where he went to school full time and cooked full time, and his junior year at Tel Aviv University. He graduated in 1981 with a bachelor of arts degree in political science, then moved on to the culinary institute, finishing in two years with an associate degree in occupational studies. He resumed his restaurant circuit at the Buena Vista, becoming its banquet chef, then in 1987 returned to Massachusetts to be an under chef at the Sheraton Sturbridge.
“I really missed the colors and the seasons, and Florida was too hot for me,” Weiss said.
For the ownership of the Sheraton, he became a roving, trouble-shooting chef, going to restaurants at places throughout the country, stepping in when a major event required his assistance, or there were kitchen woes to correct. That led him eventually to the Holiday Inn on Dwight Street in Springfield in 1988, where he was executive chef. It also led him to Grace Food Service and assignment to Mont Marie in Holyoke, a facility for retired nuns, and a venue for banquets. His last stop before opening the restaurant here was at Greenfield Community College where, from December 1992 until last March, he was head of food services.
Weiss said he expected to finish his career at Greenfield Community, but a series of major facility renovations got in the way, doing away with the kitchen and the school’s dining area, and he had to move on. Thus, his own restaurant.
He and his wife, the former Gail Cohen, whom he met at a singles gathering in Connecticut even though both were living in Massachusetts at the time, canvassed the barbecue restaurants of the region. They found that almost all of them featured barbecue and related spicy dishes. They determined to have a dual menu, and chose traditional New England fare as a complement to barbecue. Next, they trolled for a location, and among the sites checked was the Shady Glen, a fixture in the village of Turners Falls, in neighboring Montague. It had a good diner atmosphere, but Weiss said he was looking for something with more space where he could carve his own atmosphere. Then came along what is now the Smokin’ Hippo, a place on Route 2 on the west side of Erving. It began as a gas station in the 1940s, but has long been home to restaurants, including Stacia’s Hilltop Restaurant, and most recently the Starlite Diner. “It’s bigger and nicer inside then you would expect - typical of New England,” he said.
The barbecue side of the menu includes some items only a well-traveled chef might serve, including smoked prime rib. Weiss’s sauce recipes feature a cutback on vinegar in favor of red wine. The other menu side ranges from Chicken Frangelico to Shrimp Amaretto.
Top on the cost scale is a “large rack” of pork ribs at $17.95, and most meals come in between $12.95 and $14.95.
One nice option is a lazy Susan of Berkshire Brewing Co. drafts - small glassfuls of several beers for evaluation. Why Hippo?
“It is something I am constantly asked,” Weiss said.
When a child, hospitalized for a time, his mother brought him a stuffed hippo with a radio inside and a speaker behind its mouth.
“I loved it and carried it everywhere,” he said.
Since it was obvious he liked the hippo, people started giving him more, and even as he got older, the hippos kept coming, stuffed, glass, stone and even a jade hippo. Weiss could see no other name for his restaurant.