Hospitality with a capital K

Those three restaurants have been so very different from each other: the Partridge Inn, a seafood restaurant (David cooked a lot of seafood growing up on the Cape); the Depot Street Malt Shop, a 1950s-themed diner and ice cream parlor; and the Kneales’ present and hugely successful restaurant, Harrison’s (think Cheers with incredible food and a great wine list).

Despite their differences, these three eateries are linked by one potent common element: hospitality.

Simply put, the Kneales love people. Love meeting them, love getting to know them, love feeding them.

By the time I got to Stowe in 1990, Kathy and David had only recently sold the Partridge. Having decided the town could use a place where kids could go eat and hang out, they had bought an old house in the village and converted it into the Malt Shop.

What can you say about the Malt Shop? At the time, it was the most bustling, friendly, high-energy place in town. The kind of place where your whole family might have lunch or dinner together, or where you’d send your kids to have something to eat and then pick them up later. Kathy says she and David loved having the kids around, and that the kids tended to be better behaved when their parents weren’t with them. Go figure.

Every inch of available wall space in the restaurant was covered with framed photos of what appeared to be all the kids in town, hundreds of them. David Kneale — the biggest kid in the building —held court daily at the Malt Shop, interacting with customers through the hatch between his kitchen and the dining room while cooking voluminous quantities of tasty food. Kathy, meanwhile, kept the front of the house running smoothly and happily. I don’t know anyone who didn’t love the Malt Shop. It’s still around, but under different ownership.

Tragedy and recovery

This next chapter in the family history is an incredibly difficult one to relate. David, a much-loved character in the Stowe landscape, died suddenly of a heart attack while he and Kathy were on vacation in Mexico with friends in 1998.

David’s was a death that brought the whole town to its knees. His passing was not only devastating to his family, but it left a pervasive feeling of emptiness that impacted the village for a very long time.

“What do you remember about David Kneale?” I asked my son, Ben, who is now 28, but was 11 or 12 when David passed away. Without hesitation he responded: “He was everyone’s dad. … You’d see him hurrying down the street, but he was never too busy to stop and throw a ball around with you. And if you wanted to talk to him about something serious, he’d listen.”

David was a great guy. He is sorely missed.

So what next? The family grieved. The Malt Shop was sold. And, in 2003, Kathy and her older son Andrew, who was by now a grown man, decided to open another restaurant in the village.

They would call it Harrison’s (David’s middle name), and it would be … well, in a strange kind of way, it would be a sophisticated version of the Malt Shop. And here I refer not to the food (you wouldn’t find ahi tuna, bistro steaks or a sugar beet and goat cheese napoleon at a malt shop), nor the kids-dine-alone policy (though Harrison’s is a great place to bring the whole family). Rather, I refer to the warm and welcoming mood of the place.

From the moment you open the doors at the top of the stairs (the restaurant is in the cellar of the 19th-century Carlson building), you can feel the energy. First comes the buzz of conversation, punctuated by laughter. As you descend the stairs, the room, always full during peak dining hours, comes into view. Andrew, behind his bar, greets you the moment he sees you, as does his mom, or whoever else might be at the host station.

There are worse places in town to have to wait for a table. Aside from having a really good bar, you’re apt to run into some friends, or make some new ones, while you wait. And then there’s the Kneales. They just want everyone to have a good time.

An inevitable calling

Here’s a funny truth Andrew confided to me. He said he knew way back in the Malt Shop days, when he was in his teens, that he wanted nothing to do with the restaurant business. His parents seemed to work endless hours. Not for him. No thanks. So he tried his hand at other things, like sports marketing. But nothing seemed to fit. It was his wife, Anne, a psychologist, who told Andrew he wanted to be in the restaurant business.

“What makes you say that?” Andrew asked her.

“Well,” she said, “whenever we go to a restaurant, you say things that normal people don’t say. Not things like ‘Hmm, this looks good,’ or, ‘What are you going to have?’ But more like, ‘Gee, the traffic flow in here is all wrong,’ or, ‘Now why would they go and put the wait station over there?’”

Call it inevitable. The Kneale family was destined to stay at the forefront of the Stowe restaurant scene. Andrew and Anne now have two children, Landon and Addison, and it appears that these kids, like their father, will grow up in Stowe in a restaurant family.

Meanwhile, Andrew has developed a passion for wine. He travels when time allows to the California wine country and comes home with fresh and distinctive input for his impressive list.

Kathy does all the baking at the restaurant, her raspberry pie being a perennial favorite. Kathy tells me that 75 percent of the people who dine at Harrison’s have dessert. This is a staggeringly high figure for the industry, and it speaks to two issues: the desserts must be really good, and, when you’re out to dinner and having a good time, you don’t want the evening to end.

Let me close with an anecdote Kathy shared with me that pretty well encompasses all I have to say about the Kneale family and their restaurant presence.

One night at the Malt Shop, a couple became engaged, the guy giving his girlfriend his grandmother’s antique ring. In the excitement of the evening, the ring somehow got left in the woman’s napkin, and she didn’t notice it was missing until they got home. Frantically, she called the restaurant and got Kathy on the phone.

Hours later, Kathy, having spent the remainder of the night searching through bag after bag of trash in the restaurant’s dumpster, found the ring.

Need I say more?

Alan Handwerger is a Stowe businessman and former restaurant owner.