by David Flint
A new restaurant that appeared in Stephentown last June, then closed after two weeks, has reopened. Knuckleheads restaurant, the red building on Route 22 near the intersection with Route 43, opened again on Thursday, September 26.
[private]Proprietor/Chef Bob Davis said that while he was well supported by the community and received a lot of good feedback, some personal problems with his health caused him to seek a respite shortly after his June opening. In the meantime he has also decided to make some changes to what was perhaps an overly ambitious startup menu. The new menu will still offer a good variety of home cooked meals.
Knuckleheads will be open from noon to 8 pm Thursday through Sunday. The featured entrée will change each week. Davis plans to open Thursday and Friday with a home style meatloaf dinner with green beans and garlic mashed potatoes. On Saturday and Sunday that will change to Baked Italian Basil Chicken with baked ziti and sausage. Davis said he will emphasize chicken and turkey – baked not fried – but will still offer occasionally his specialty barbecued ribs. Other red meats will show up, too, from time to time such as bison burger from a local farm, Italian veal and peppers, shepherd’s pie and one of Davis’ Italian favorites, braciole, thin slices of roast beef wrapped around a sausage stuffing. No fast foods and no fried foods, Davis said.
His restaurant won’t be a bar or a gin mill, but Davis will consider applying for a license to sell beer and wine in the future. He lamented that there are no good bakeries closer to Stephentown. He said he has to go to Albany, to Prinzo’s or Nino’s, to get good bread and rolls.
Davis has been cooking since he was eight years old. “I enjoy cooking. I love people. I love to create with flavors and tastes,” he said. He has a lot of experience in the food business. His Bob’s Coffee Truck business in Albany, which he ran for 10 years, morphed into the Wheat Haulers Deli company that served a multitude of coffee trucks and other vendors in the Albany area for 14 years. He followed that up with six years running the Wholly Cow Ice Cream & Barbecue at the junction of Routes 9 and 20 in Schodack. But the project in Stephentown that he spent a year and a half preparing for, this type of “ma and pa, non-commercial” eatery, he said, has always been his dream. His guiding principle in the food business – “Never sacrifice quantity or quality for price. People will pay for good food. Feed’em something good, and they’ll come back.”
Why Knuckleheads?
Why the name Knuckleheads? Davis said he grew up on slapstick comedy and the Three Stooges have always been a great favorite of his. He is also an ex-biker and aficionado of classic motorcycles. Besides being a nickname for the Stooges, Knucklehead also refers to the classic Harley-Davidson V-twin OHV engine that powered the Harleys between 1936 and 1947.[/private]