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Date: 3/30/2022
EAST LONGMEADOW – There was no major announcement or marketing campaign. No balloons and streamers. Just a two-word statement on Facebook – “We’re Open.” With that, Redstone Pasta Company lit up its wood fired oven and began serving customers at 642 North Main St.
The 250-seat restaurant was supposed to open around April of 2020. After a major renovation of what had been Pasquale’s restaurant, Redstone menus were ready, the staff was in place and Owner George Akkouris was putting his finishing touches on the place.
Then a little-known novel virus named COVID-19 made its debut on the evening news, and Akkouris knew instinctively his business was in trouble.
“I remember having our managers meeting right before we were going to open, and I said ‘This is going to be a problem. This thing’s big, this is not a small thing and it’s going to affect everything,’” recalls Akkouris. “We had contingency plans in place, but nobody was ready for the entire world to shut down.”
Akkouris’s prophecy turned out to be right. Restaurants closed their doors, some forever. Most people had no desire to eat out. It was a bad time to run a restaurant, a worse time to open one. So Akkouris kept his closed – and waited for the pandemic to run its course.
It ultimately took two years, but Akkouris finally opened his Redstone restaurant last month, and opening night was good.
“We had a great crowd. There was an hour and half wait for a table,” said Akkouris.
Akkouris planned to open months ago, but he couldn’t hire enough people. He found very few of them willing to return to the restaurant business. COVID-19 had forced restaurant workers to find other jobs, and they did.
“A lot of people were hurt, a lot of people thought they weren’t taken care of during COVID[-19]. A lot of people were overworked and underappreciated. This industry takes, and takes, and takes and doesn’t give anything back. It’s a rough industry,” said Akkouris.
Akkouris also owns Golden Irene’s, an Italian and Greek restaurant in East Windsor, CT. The restaurateur was finding it so hard to hire help, he closed Golden Irene’s and transferred the entire staff of 17 to help run Redstone.
“It was an extreme move to close my other restaurant that’s been open for 18 years and open Redstone, but it had to be done. It was the only way it could be done,” says Akkouris. “We tried to hire people and we just couldn’t find the staff.”
Even now, Akkouris has just about half the help he needs, but he’s making it work. He said he would like to be offering lunch, but he can’t so he said he’s focusing on five-star dinners. He’d like to offer 10 pasta dishes, but he’s settling for five. The prep-staff isn’t big enough to make them all. When he should be running the business, he often finds himself making all the ravioli himself, as many as 400 at a time.
Even with the challenges and delayed opening, Akkouris said Redstone is red hot.
“We put the lights on and hit the ground running. We’ve been doing great,” he said.
Redstone offers a full menu including brick oven pizza, salads, sandwiches and several meat and pasta dishes. The bread and pizza are made from sourdough, which Akkouris says is unique to the restaurant business. All of the food is made from scratch using natural, high-quality ingredients.
Akkouris’s goal is to impress and amaze with a menu of surprises.
“People have preconceived notions of what food is. They know what parmigiana and Francaise are. We try to offer food you’ve never heard of before. We try to put a different spin on food. We come up with our own variations of pasta dishes,” he said.
Akkouris has had a long journey leading up to Redstone’s grand debut. He said he never thought about quitting – he was too busy persevering.
“Faith is what drove me. I had faith that it was all going to work out,” he said. “There was no other way to do it. Faith got me through it, determination too.”